Tuna canneries have been the foundation of American Samoa’s economy since the 1950s.
Until recently, the COS Samoa Packing Company plant (which canned Chicken of the Sea tuna) and a competing StarKist plant together accounted for about two-thirds of the U.S. supply of canned tuna.
The two plants together employed 4,757 workers, representing over 27% of all jobs in American Samoa. Over 40% of those jobs will be lost with the closure of the Chicken of the Sea plant, although the American Samoa Government is attempting to find the money to buy the plant and re-open it on a much smaller scale.
Even more troublesome is speculation that the StarKist plant, which faces the same international competitive pressures that forced the Chicken of the Sea plant to close, cannot survive in the long run.
For years, American Samoa enjoyed an exemption from the federal minimum wage, and the minimum wage applicable to American Samoa’s canneries was $3.26 per hour as recently as 2007.(American Samoa had separate minimum wages for each industry.) Even with wages that were very low by U.S. standards, the American Samoa canneries found it difficult to compete with canneries in places like Thailand that pay wages of 60 to 70 cents per hour.
That competition became more difficult in 2007, when Congress passed legislation requiring all minimum wages in American Samoa to increase, in stages, to $7.25 per hour by 2014.
