From The Seattle PI
By Yvonne Abraham

Remember that huge raid in New Bedford last year?

Federal officials arrested more than 300 illegal immigrant workers at the Michael Bianco Inc. factory, a waterfront plant that sewed backpacks for the military.

U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan said conditions inside the factory were like a 19th-century sweatshop: workers fined for being minutes late or for talking during work hours. Double shifts with no overtime. More fines for spending too long in the bathrooms, where there was little toilet paper.

Nobody should endure such Third World conditions. And particularly not in the service of a U.S. military contract – vital, taxpayer-funded work.

The Defense Department had a monitor at Bianco. Day after day, quality assurance officer Carmelo Kercado was surrounded by the immigrant workers and the supervisors who exploited them. And yet, amazingly, he was ignorant of all of it, according to a spokesman at the Defense Contract Management Agency.

All he knew was, the backpacks were getting done.

Desperate to keep the company’s jobs in New Bedford after Bianco’s tens of millions of dollars in military contracts were canceled, local officials brought in Missouri-based Eagle Industries to take over the operation.

Now there’s trouble at Eagle. Some of the 350 workers there say conditions at the plant are still bad, and they’re trying to unionize.

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