Workers Struggle in Haiti
Workers Struggle in Haiti:
Victory to the Haitian Working Class!
Reinstate All Fired Workers!
The CWG demands immediate rehiring with full retroactive pay and benefits for Telemarque Pierre, General Coordinator of Apparel and Textile Workers Union (SOTA-BO), Clergé Félixon, Cadet Mackenzie and Adrien Jean Anslo, trade unionists of the Textile Factory Union Platform-Batay Ouvriye (PLASIT-BO) of the Palm Apparel garment workers, fired for protesting for a higher minimum wage in Haiti. The union is demanding that the government institute a minimum wage of 500 Gourdes ($7.94) for an eight-hour workday.[1] This demand is even far below the $12.50 per day that the Workers Rights Consortium reported in 2008 that a working family with one worker and two dependents needed per day to live.
The imperialist super-exploitation of Haitian workers by garment factories contracted by American corporations such as Levis, Hanes and Fruit of the Loom, is backed by the U.S. Department of Labor, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and by the U.S. Embassy (as revealed by WikiLeaks in 2011.)[2] In commenting on the leaked documents, The Nation noted that “What emerges is an extraordinary portrait of Washington’s aggressive management of Latin America’s first sovereign nation—and its bare-knuckled tactics on behalf of US corporate interests there.” This was not only the Bush era, but the Obama administration too, while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State working with the corporations against the wage increase.
2016 saw angry protests directed at corrupt and now former Haitian President Martelly, the United Nations and against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who helped put Martelly into power. At one of the protests, an unemployed worker stated:“You see all these people here? It’s because of what Mrs. Clinton did five years ago that we are facing this situation.” [3] A Haitian rights activist and New York radio show host, Dahoud Andre added, “A vote for Hillary Clinton means further corruption, further death and destruction for our people.” Haitian born activist attorney Ezili Dantò wrote, “Five years ago, after the catastrophic Haiti earthquake, the international community – a self-defined ‘Core Group’ under the leadership of former President Bill Clinton – took over Haiti recovery and reconstruction and announced they would ‘build Haiti back better.’ But this was a euphemism for land grabbing, privatization, occupation and imperial plunder.”[4]
The class struggle fight for higher wages needs to go beyond bread and butter demands and link up to a revolutionary working class political program to expropriate both the national and imperialist bourgeoisie and achieve national independence via workers revolution throughout the Caribbean and the Americas. The victory for workers’ rights, for bourgeois democratic rights, for national liberation, can only be achieved by the leadership of the working class at the head of the oppressed masses. These tasks are bound up with and only achievable through socialist revolution. This is Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution, that in the colonial and semi-colonial countries, in countries of combined and uneven development, that the indigenous bourgeoisie is too weak and too tied to their imperialist masters and social backwardness to carry out the historic tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution. These tasks can only be achieved by the working class as part of the struggle for socialist revolution.[5]
Immigrant workers from Haiti and the Caribbean and Latin America bring traditions of militant labor struggle and are a bridge for the American working class for united struggle across borders. Right now, Puerto Rico, a colony of the United States, is facing a crippling debt crisis that is being taken out on the working class and the whole society as budget cuts will lead to gutting of public services from schools to hospitals to even public health measures, such as fighting the Zika virus. Haitian workers should join their struggle with the working class in Puerto Rico to oppose U.S. imperialist measures, linking the struggle with the millions of Puerto Rican and Haitian workers residing in America, along with the entire working class for international class struggle.
- Down with the discriminatory anti-Haitian citizenship laws, from New York and Florida to Santo Domingo! For factory committees, neighborhood committees, workers councils and councils of the unemployed! For workers’ militias!
- For an internationalist revolutionary workers party in Haiti and Puerto Rico as sections of a new revolutionary workers international, the world party of socialist revolution! For a revolutionary workers’ government!
- For Permanent Revolution from Haiti to Puerto Rico to Mexico!
- Down with the anti-socialist Castro government and its capitalist restoration project!
- For a socialist federation of the Caribbean!
We repeat the solidarity call from the Textile Factory Union Platform-Batay Ouvriye (PLASIT-BO) below:
http://www.workersstruggle.org/solidarity/
We denounce the repression against our comrade. We say, “an injury to one is injury to all of us.” We’re calling on our friends and comrades, brothers and sisters in national and international organizations to demand the reinstatement of Telemarque Pierre in his post immediately.
To do so, contact the companies and agencies below:
Premium Apparel (factory): premium@agacorp.com
Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor (MAST), Haiti : maffairesocial@yahoo.fr
In addition, you can contact the following:
AGA Corporation (Premium is its subsidiary):
7209 NW 41 St., Miami, FL 33166-6711
305-592-1860
Gildan (the international clothing brand that contracts with Premium):
Jason M. Greene, Director of Supply Chain: 843-606-3750
Corporate office (Montreal): 514-735-2023; toll free 866-755-2023; info@gildan.com
Customer Service (Charleston, SC): 843-606-3600
Twitter: @GildanOnline; facebook.com/GildanOnline/
Use #RehirePierre #SolidarityForever #500Gourdes
Send statements of solidarity directly to the textile workers, and let them know of your activities: batay@batayouvriye.org
[1] Workers Struggle, “Call for Solidarity: Demand Reinstatement of Union Organizer in Haiti”http://www.workersstruggle.org/solidarity/
Workers Struggle, “Response to solidarity: statement from garment workers in Haiti”
http://www.workersstruggle.org/response-to-solidarity-statement-from-garment-workers-in-haiti/
Workers Struggle, “Garment workers in Haiti: text of press conference June 10”
http://www.workersstruggle.org/garment-workers-in-haiti-text-of-press-conference-june-10/
[2] The Nation, “WikiLeaks Haiti: The Nation Partners With Haïti Liberté on Release of Secret Haiti Cables” [3] New York Times, “High Hopes for Hillary Clinton, Then Disappointment in Haiti”http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/15/us/politics/hillary-clinton-haiti.html?_r=0
[4] Ezili Dantò , “Five years later: Haitians step up their fight for independence and democracy” [5] Leon Trotsky, “The Permanent Revolution & Results and Prospects”https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/
