Democrats pledge to extend federal minimum wage to all U.S territories

Saturday, January 13th 2007, 1:44 pm

By: News On 6

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Fending off charges of favoritism, House Democrats say a just-passed minimum wage bill will be changed to cover all U.S. territories -- including American Samoa -- before it reaches President Bush's desk.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters she has instructed the House Education and Labor Committee to help get the bill changed to "make sure that all of the territories have to comply with the U.S. law on minimum wage."

Her remark Friday followed accusations from Republicans a day earlier that American Samoa, which is not now covered by the $5.15 an hour federal minimum wage, was not included in the law raising the federal pay floor to $7.25 an hour because StarKist has a large cannery in the island chain. StarKist is owned by Del Monte Foods Co., which has its headquarters in San Francisco, Pelosi's district.

"Something is indeed fishy when the federal minimum wage is good for all Americans as espoused by the Democrat majority, yet we exempt a small, in many terms economically struggling island," Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., told colleagues on the House floor last week.

The bill was passed Wednesday by the House as part of the Democrats' 100-hour agenda. The measure included in its coverage another U.S. territory, the Northern Mariana Islands, which had been shielded in the past from the wage law with the help of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff, now serving a prison sentence.

Spokesmen for both Pelosi and Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the author of the minimum wage bill, said it excluded American Samoa at the request of nonvoting Delegate Eni Faleomavaega, a Democrat who represents the Pacific island territories in the House.

Raising the federal minimum wage would devastate the local tuna industry, Faleomavaega said in a statement last week, noting that American Samoa's economy is "more than 80 percent" dependent on two U.S. tuna processors, Chicken of the Sea and StarKist. Faleomavaega said the Labor Department reviews Samoa's minimum
wages every two years.