Haitian workers battle starvation wage

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SOCIALIST ACTION JANUARY 2014 3 It seems like a nightmare. Haiti’s 30,000 assembly workers, working mostly in textiles, will actually face a wage cut as part of a new $5.23 a day minimum wage (225 Haitian gourdes), which goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2014. That’s far short of the $11.63 a day (500 Haitian gourdes) demanded by unions.

Feeding the profit frenzy in textiles is international capitalism. U.S. corpora­ tions such as Walmart, Levi’s, the Gap, Hanes, and others reap super-profits at the price of Haitian misery. Haitian bosses answered recent protests with the need to “keep Haiti competitive.”

Haitian president Michel Martelly, elected in 2011 under intense U.S. manipulation, has shamelessly de­ clared, “Haiti is Open for Business.” The notoriously corrupt president has a daily spending account of $20,000, with massive financial perks for fam­ ily members in shadowy government projects. In contrast, workers and the unemployed (some 80% country­ wide) widely complain of having the “Clorox hunger” to describe the pain of starvation in their stomachs.

On Nov. 29, the Supreme Council on Wages (CSS), composed of business, labor, and government representa­ tives, voted to approve a 12% increase in the official minimum for most workers, from $4.65 to $5.23 a day (225 gourdes) or from 58 cents to 65 cents an hour. Eight of the nine mem­ bers of the CSS, including all three union representatives, approved the 225-gourde wage.

“We think it is a shame that the CSS union representatives agreed to the miserable wage of 225 gourdes. At a meeting the night before, we request­ ed that they refuse to sign any agree­ ment that was less than 300 gourdes,” said Yannick Etienne of the leftist Batay Ouvriye (Workers Struggle), a sweatshop-organizing group that is part of the KOSIT coalition of textile unions.

However, for assembly workers, mostly women, the official wage was about 87 cents an hour or $7 a day. Pay will now be legally reduced to the $5.23 a day rate.

Doubly enraging sweatshop workers is the fact that bosses have ignored the designed, and laid out entirely by volunteer labor. Name City State higher legal rate since it was passed by parliament in 2009. In an October 2013 report, the UN connected Inter­ national Labor Organization found that all 23 factories surveyed were “non-compliant” with the law. In addi­ tion, according to an Oct 2013 report from the Washington-based Workers Rights Consortium, Haitian workers were regularly cheated out of over­ time pay.

“If I hear there is going to be a demon­ stration, I’ll be there,” one woman told International Press Service. “I cannot make it with this pocket change. The bosses know that. They are just cruel.”

In the lead-up to the Nov. 29 CSS decision, 5000 marched near a “free trade zone” in Ouanaminthe on Nov. 7, chanting “500 gourdes!” near the Do­ minican border. Hundreds marched in the capital.

On Dec. 10, International Human Rights Day, three days of strikes and mass protests began in Port-auPrince, the capital. Hundreds, maybe thousands according to some, of gar­ ment workers walked off their jobs in Port-au-Prince. Strikers and support­ ers marched on the Parliament Build­ ing, chanting, “Down with the CSS.” The marchers, largely young women, Editor: Michael Schreiber Canada Editor: Barry Weisleder ­— $37 for two years Address Zip called for a daily minimum wage of 500 gourdes.

Said one sympathetic parliamen­ tarian, Fritz Gérald Bourjolly, “These days a person can’t eat and drink on 225 gourdes.” On Dec. 11, protesters headed to the comparatively wealthy Port-au-Prince suburb of Pétionville, where the CSS was said to be holding a meeting. Riot police blocked their way, and the marchers eventually re­ turned to the large Sonapi Industrial Park.

On Dec. 12 factory owners respond­ ed to the wildcat strikes by closing their plants. The factories reopened on Dec. 13, but some activists were suspended or fired. The actions were the largest demonstrations by assem­ bly workers since August 2009, when workers mobilized in the thousands for passage of a new minimum wage. Protesters were met with gunfire from the U.S./UN occupation force known as MINUSTAH.

A 2011 study by the AFL-CIO’s Soli­ darity Center found that a factory worker living in the capital and sup­ porting two children would need to earn about 29 dollars per day (1152 gourdes), six days a week, to support his or her family.

• Ashland, Ore.: [email protected] • Boston: [email protected] (781) 630-0250 • Carrboro, N.C.: (919) 967-2866, [email protected] • Chicago: P.O. Box 578428 Chicago, IL 60657, [email protected] • Connecticut: (860) 478-5300 • Duluth, Minn.: [email protected]. www.thenorthernworker.blogspot.com • Kansas City: [email protected] (816) 221-3638 • LOUISVILLE, KY.: [email protected], (502) 451-2193 • Madison, Wis.:

[email protected] • Mankato, Minn.:

[email protected] • Minneapolis/St. Paul: (612) 802-1482, [email protected] • New York City: (212) 781-5157 (Left) Protesters say that the new minimum wage would not be enough to adequately feed their families.

According to documents re­ leased by Wikileaks to The Na­ tion and Haiti Liberté magazines, U.S. corporations were lobbying heavily to lower the Haitian min­ imum wage in 2008. Moreover, key players of the sweatshop economic development strategy are Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Since the strike, an ominous call to action went out from a Haitian business website called “Economic Forum of the Private Sector.” It said, “This situation, created by armchair revolution­ aries and manipulative politi­ cians, gives the advantage to our foreign competitors, who will win back the orders that cannot be fulfilled by factories in the metropolitan region. The Haitian Nation and State must not toler­ ate these troublemakers!”

In related news, four years af­ ter the Jan. 2010 earthquake, which killed over 200,000 Haitians, 300,000 still languish in hellish unsanitary and dangerous conditions in tent cit­ ies around the capital. After a major cholera outbreak, which killed 8000 in late 2010, Haiti had over 1100 chol­ era cases a week in 2013. Cholera is a water-born disease preventable by clean potable water.

Yet, according to CNN, only 37% of the $4.6 billion pledged for Haiti in post-earthquake relief has been dis­ persed.

In few places on earth are the cruelty and anarchy of capitalism and U.S. im­ perialism as apparent as it is in Haiti. The solidarity of U.S. and internation­ al labor is vital.

It has been apparent for many years that the “Fanmi Lavalas” (the Lavalas Party) of former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide has proven in­ capable of solving the crisis or to even move the struggle forward. Advancing beyond middle-class populist lead­ ership is essential. Haitian workers need to organize their own working-class party armed with class-struggle politics for a revolutionary break with occupation and misery. n • Philadelphia: [email protected] • Portland, Ore.: (503) 233-1629 [email protected] • Providence: [email protected] (401) 592-5385 • Salem, Ore.: [email protected] • San Francisco Bay Area:

P.O. Box 10328, Oakland, Ca 94610 (510) 268-9429, [email protected] • WASHINGTON, DC: [email protected], (202) 286-5493 National Office

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Associated Features then says that ecosocialists should initiate energy re­ ductions today, by encouraging changes in consumer behavior. “These modifications—travelling differ­ ently, eating less meat and more seasonal vegetables, for instance—should be undertaken immediately, because time is short and there are immediate im­ plications.” (73)

This call for immediate lifestyle changes—unlike Tanuro’s well-documented account of the social roots of the climate crisis—is brief and impressionistic. He dismisses out of hand any idea that eliminating pol­ luting industries and stopping hyper-consumption by the rich could by themselves achieve our goals. He simply asserts, without proof, that the transition requires working people to reduce their living stan­ dards. He may be right, but he doesn’t make his case.

Nor does he explain how a call for sacrifice could contribute to building effective mass movements to replace capitalism and implement massive global en­ ergy changes. He may not intend it, but he appears to be calling for an ecosocialist austerity movement, and that would seem to be a non-starter.

As he admits in the Preface to this English transla­ tion, “this strategic direction—the greening of strug­ gles—should have been amplified in ‘L’impossible capitalisme vert.’” (18) That’s a major weakness: having been convinced that green capitalism is a con­ tradiction in terms, readers have a right to expect a more convincing account of the ecosocialist alterna­ tive—what it may be like, and how it can be achieved.

In his final chapter, Tanuro says Marxism needs re­ vision because Marx and Engels didn’t understand the difference between renewable and fossil energy. That questionable claim requires a more complete response than is possible here: I will discuss it in a future article.

Although some aspects are open to challenge,

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