https://socialistaction.org/2017/06/12/haiti-erupts-in-strikes-and-protests/
Haiti erupts in strikes and protests
/ 21 hours ago
June 2017 Haiti haitiliberte.comBy MARTY GOODMAN
Beginning on May 19, thousands of textile sweatshop workers in Haiti
walked off the job or laid down inside their textile assembly plants to
protest their starvation wages. The workers are demanding a raise from
$4.67 per day to $12.47 per day, a raise not tied to increased
production quotas for workers. Many bosses do not pay the minimum wage.
Workers are also demanding meal, transportation, and housing subsidies,
which consume much of the worker’s miserable income.
The recent wave of protest subsided by May 29, with marches estimated at
up to 18,000, but the struggle is far from over.
Militants say the workers’ upsurge has been partly spontaneous and
partly organized by PLASIT–BO, a coalition of the independent textile
unions throughout Haiti that are affiliated with Batay Ouvriye,
including SOTA-BO in Port Au Prince; SOKOWA in Ouanaminthe; and SOAGH in
Caracol. Some 40 union organizers have been fired in the course of the
upsurge.
Georges Sassine, president of the Association of Industries of Haiti
(ADIH), despite the daily firing of union organizers, called strikers
“outlaws.” The ADIH was forced to suspend business on May 19, 20, and 22.
Workers struck in the Haitian capital of Port au Prince, including at
the big SONAPI industrial park. Thousands of workers marched into the
capital on May 19 from Carrefour, a town a few miles away. Textile
workers also walked off the job in the northern towns of Ouanaminthe and
Caracol.
There are about 40,000 workers in textile assembly plants, run by
international apparel companies and their outsourced partners in Haiti.
Many plants in Ouanaminthe are owned by Dominican capitalists, whose
anti-Haitian racism is notorious.
Working-class anger was brought to a boiling point by a new 13%
government tax on all workers, supposedly to pay for basic social
services—services not received by the masses and often simply pocketed
by corrupt officials. The new tax on workers was on top of a hike in
gasoline taxes, imposed by the current U.S./World Bank puppet, Haitian
President Jovenel Moise. The gas tax increase was a deal between the
government and corrupt unions.
The gas tax ripple effect, besides its immediate impact on small taxi
and passenger vehicles called tap-taps, will be on all workers and
Haiti’s vast unemployed, which stands at 40.6% (2010 estimate), 50% for
women. Many jobs are informal, only marginally better than unemployment.
Added to that is a punishing inflation rate of 12.4% (2016 est.) on
consumer prices.
About 54% live in poverty. Roughly 2.5 million Haitians, out of a
population of 11 million, live in extreme poverty (below $1.25 per day),
mostly in rural areas.
In response to protests, the Haitian police fired gas, shot rubber
bullets, and sprayed protesters with water containing a rash-inducing
chemical. Of the rubber bullet victims, at least one woman was severely
injured, knocked down when struck in the head.
Cops blocked the doors at one factory to not let workers leave work and
join the protests. At the Sewing International factory, many workers
stopped work to join the demonstration, but were locked inside by
management. Eventually, they were able to join the march.
The Haitian cops are backed by a U.S./UN occupation force called
MINUSTAH, which has not interfered directly in the recent protests—so
far. The imperialist occupation began under Bill Clinton in 1994, with
the support of “socialist” Congressman Bernie Sanders, and was renewed
under George W. Bush in 2004. It is there to implement the austerity
policies of the U.S.-dominated World Bank and crush possible revolution.
U.S. imperialism has been central to the present crisis. Memos obtained
by Wikileaks revealed that the U.S. State Department during the years
2003 to 2010 worked with Fruit of the Loom, Hanes, and Levi’s to block
an increase in the minimum wage in the hemisphere’s poorest nation.
Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, pressured the Haitian government
to block raising the minimum wage from $1.75 a day to $5 a day, a demand
of mass mobilizations. The bosses wanted $3 a day and got it, thanks to
Hillary Clinton.
Article 137 of the Haitian Labor Code, passed under the Baby Doc
Duvalier dictatorship, calls for an adjustment to the minimum salary
every time the cost of living index registers an increase of more than
10%, often much higher. No Haitian government, be it a dictatorship or
the elected capitalist government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide,
has implemented the Labor Code.
Termination of the TPS?
On May 22, some 58,000 Haitians who fled to the U.S. after the 2010
earthquake, received a six-month extension of Temporary Protected Status
(TPS), granted for natural disasters or war. The Trump administration
had threatened cancellation of TPS for Haitians. The reversal came after
Haitian advocates organized protests and received favorable newspaper
editorials and statements from politicians.
Recently leaked Department of Homeland Security (DHS) e-mails reveal
racist efforts to demonize Haitians as criminals and welfare cheats to
justify termination of TPS. The extension granted by the DHS falls short
of the usual 18-month extension. DHS Secretary John F. Kelly’s
announcement stressed that this is likely the last extension and that
TPS holders should “attain travel documents” for a return to Haiti.
Haitian TPS will be reviewed again in January 2018. The announcement
said conditions in Haiti had greatly improved—a boldfaced lie!
The DHS’ assertions were challenged by the Institute for Justice and
Democracy in Haiti (IJDH). The 2010 earthquake killed as many as 200,000
people and destroyed much of its infrastructure. A post- earthquake
cholera epidemic killed over 9500 Haitians and sickened over 800,000
people after the UN’s Nepalese contingent contemptuously dumped human
wastes into a river used by Haitians for drinking and bathing.
The UN stonewalled blame for the epidemic until August 2016, despite
scientific studies proving UN culpability (see SA Sept. 2016). Moreover,
last October, the most powerful hurricane in 52 years, hurricane
Matthew, wiped out crops, and livestock, and was the cause of a food and
potable water shortage in Haiti’s southwest.
The DHS statement also stated: “96% of people displaced by the
earthquake and living in internally displaced person camps have left
those camps … 98% of these camps have closed.”
Lie! Many were reclassified as “permanent housing,” because residents
added to their makeshift shanties. In addition, many were driven away by
landlords. Nevertheless, an estimated 50,000 still live in unsanitary,
unsafe tent cities—seven years after the earthquake!
Expulsions by Dominican Republic
Meanwhile, the racist Dominican government has continued its practice of
expelling migrant Haitian workers and Dominicans of Haitian origin. Many
have fled the Dominican Republic out of fear of expulsion or racist
attacks. According to the International Organization for Migration
(IOM), an organization linked to the UN since 2016, about 111,400
people, or 92,000 households, have crossed the Haitian-Dominican border
since July 2015.
Georges Marc Desmangles of the Zile Foundation, a binational
organization working on the Haitian-Dominican relationship, states that
returnee Haitian migrants who remained for many months to cross the
Haitian border from Anse to Pitres, “were accused of bringing the
cholera epidemic.”
“Migrants from the bateys (plantation work camps) have been severely
affected. Thus, they are afraid of being caught up and repatriated under
inhuman conditions at any time. It is the same for workers in
construction and hotels.”
Dominican cops will seize your identity papers and then tear them apart
before your eyes, said Isidro Bellique Delmas, a member of the
Reconoci.do movement, an independent national civic network composed
mainly of Dominicans of Haitian origin who promote human rights. Delmas,
28, was able to find his documents of identity only after at least eight
years of struggle.
Some 1000 Dominican troops will join 1500 soldiers regularly stationed
along the border, it was announced May 3. Border “security” was enhanced
by U.S. advisors. Dominican spokespersons have cited US deportations as
an example to follow.
In 2013, the Dominican government targeted Dominicans of Haitian descent
with a racist court decision, known as “La Sentencia 168/13,” an
immigration ruling that stripped citizenship rights from more than
200,000 individuals whose families had migrated to the DR since 1929. So
far, the government has deported tens of thousands to Haiti, even though
many are not Haitian citizens. Many have never even been to Haiti or
speak Haitian “Kreyol.” More than 100,000 have crossed into Haiti as the
result of the threat of deportation and/or mob violence.
Human Rights Watch called upon Dominican authorities “to halt expulsions
of denationalized Dominicans, to promptly restore their citizenship, and
to respect their right to a nationality.” Amnesty International also
called for an end to deportations.
For decades, Haitians were brought to the DR by corrupt politicians on
both sides of the Haiti/DR border to work in sugar cane fields under
conditions called “modern day slavery.” Today, Dominican-Haitians also
work in the service sectors, where they face discrimination. The
Dominican government, a staunch anti-communist U.S. ally, has
historically promoted “anti-Haitianism.” Everything Haitian—whether skin
color, culture, or religion—is degraded.
U.S. policy is to blame for the misery of the Haitian masses. Their
conditions cry out for international solidarity.
(See RapidResponseNetwork on Facebook for updates on the fight to
increase the minimum wage in Haiti.)
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June 12, 2017 in Immigration, Caribbean. Tags: Haiti
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Haitian workers battle starvation wage
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