[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]Haiti's Elections: 'Beat the Dog too Hard...'
by Mark Schuller

(Port-au-Prince) Today was the final round of elections for a third of the Senate in Haiti. I woke up with a start as several UN helicopters zoomed to and from downtown from uphill. Given this week's events, I feared the worst. As it turns out, it was nothing.

I went out this morning around 9:30, when some church services like the brand-new Spanish-language "United Pentecostal Church of Latin America" were just getting out. I walked 12 minutes to the site of a polling place and I didn't see anyone. I couldn't even see where the polling place was. I knew it had to be there because of the police truck where 2 officers stood guard and 2 others rested in the cab.

On my way back I perused the neighborhood market, quieter than usual for Sundays after church. Even compared to this past January when I was last in Haiti, the global financial crisis is particularly noticeable for the timachann, the street merchants. Some have stopped chèche lavi (literally, "looking for life" - making a living) in the neighborhood. On my street, one family has packed up and left for a bidonvil (shantytown) far away in the Pòtoprens (Kreyòl for Port-au-Prince) metro area. The stands where I usually get cans of juice or tomato paste are always almost completely empty. One didn't even have a dime bag of bread to sell.

The streets were almost completely blanch - empty, very little traffic. The National Police issued a curfew against motorcycles in effect until a half hour ago, in an effort to bring security to the electoral process. Most everyone I know simply stayed home. If they went out at all, it was to their local market or to church. I called a friend who is a high-ranking member of the government. He was the only one I spoke with (more than 30!) who voted today. When he voted, around 12:30, his was the fifth ballot of several hundred eligible voters for his neighborhood of some 20,000 people. True, it was a kilometer or more to the polls, which is a long way in crowded Pòtoprens.

I went down to his polling place, on Channmas (French: Champs-de-Mars), the national plaza containing the National Palace and most of the central government bureaucracies. I took Lalue - the normally very busy thoroughfare connecting downtown to the suburb of Petyonvil. As I crossed the street not a single car was in sight. Channmas itself was emptier than I had ever remembered seeing it. There were a couple of places where small crowds huddled.

Thinking a crowd would be the polling place, I went to one. As I arrived, the crowd of 20 or so men cheered. Apparently Brazil had just scored a goal. It was a soccer match. Hungry, I went to a timachann selling a lukewarm plate of rice. Today was not good business for her. I asked her what the score was: Brazil 3, Italy 0. I asked where the polling place was. She laughed and said she didn't know. I retorted, but you know it's election day, right? She said a variant of what many friends I've known since 2003 or earlier said: "these elections don't concern me." To some, they didn't vote because their party was excluded. Others said "elections do nothing for us pep la (poor majority)." Still others said that they had to work to make a living.

As it turned out, the polling place was some 30 meters away, across from the UN truck (incidentally staffed by the victorious Brazilians). I sat in the plaza for almost an hour - until just before polls closed at 4, and the only people I saw coming or going were the police officers standing guard. And this was the polling place for several precincts, not just my friend's.

According to friends who were here for the first round of elections on April 19, it was the same, except for road blocks and all traffic being stopped. Fanmi Lavalas, the party of deposed president Aristide, was excluded from the first round in April, so they continued to be excluded in today's runoff elections.

It's now 5:45 and the clouds are beginning to cover Pòtoprens while the sun still shines over the bay. The first rumblings of thunder from the east, from beyond the mountains, are just now barely audible. Today is the first day in almost two weeks that it hasn't rained (it just did, at 6:40, for a short time). A couple of days ago, the UN troops (MINUSTAH) gave a press conference about the upcoming elections, promising that they would be secure and devoid of violence. The only thing that worried the UN was the weather.

Why is the UN so interested in these elections, especially since it seems clear that many people here aren't?

At this same press conference, the MINUSTAH spokesperson was questioned by several journalists about their increasing aggression against the Haitian population. On Thursday, UN troops roughed up a partisan of deposed president Aristide at a funeral and following demonstration for Father Jean-Juste, a leader within Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas party. This triggered a reaction from the crowd, and according to the spokesperson, MINUSTAH fired seven shots in the air. At least nine were audible in footage by Tele Ginen. One person died at the protest, found lying in a large pool of blood. The UN denied it was by their bullets (they ignored the question of whether they were metal or rubber), suggesting he died from someone throwing a rock. To date, if there has been an autopsy, the results have not been published.

For the better part of the month of June, college students have been staging almost daily protests, that began with a localized concern about taking away labs and shortening classes in the State University of Haiti's School of Medicine but have broadened to support the movement to raise Haiti's minimum wage. At many of these protests the UN has responded by firing teargas. It has been the cause of concern for many neighboring residents and doctors at the State Hospital, adjacent to the School of Medicine where many canisters of teargas have been shot.

The UN evaded all questions about the severity of the response, instead asking journalists a rhetorical question if they didn't have a duty to respond when public property was destroyed. In a case last Wednesday, the only provocation was a tire was burned on a street corner and a burned-out minivan was blocking traffic in front of campus.

Right or wrong, many Haitian people are increasingly fed up with the UN occupation, which according to many sources spent $600 million last year. For the first time since I've been coming here since 2002, I have begun to hear people to tell me to f*** off and go home. Other blan (foreigner / white people) are noticing the same.

Many people are speculating about the timing of the UN's escalation of violence. Some have theorized that it represents the UN's putting in place a new order, a new stage in the country's development. On Wednesday, the day before the UN allegedly shot the Lavalas member, Haitian president René Préval officially announced his objection to the law raising Haiti's minimum wage from 70 goud ($1.75) to 200 goud ($5). The day before this, former U.S. President Bill Clinton officially accepted his post as UN Special Emissary, in which he promised to bring together a range of donors, including the private sector, to bring jobs to Haiti. In his presentation with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, Clinton cited the Collier Report more and in greater detail than a plan ostensibly coming from the Haitian government.

The Collier Report - and ostensibly the Haitian government's strategic plan, UNLIKE its first strategic plan published in November 2007 - argue that Haiti's future lies in low-wage manufacturing work, exploiting Haiti's dual "comparative advantage" of proximity to the U.S. and very low wages. Granted a unique opportunity in the HOPE Act, a nine-year tax relief that according to industry sources is $1.50 per pair of pants, Haiti needs to act quickly to privatize two of the remaining four public utilities (the port and electricity - a third, telecommunications, is already on its way to being privatized) to capitalize on this momentum and create jobs, says the Collier report (and according to Clinton, who said he read both, the Haitian government's plan). Of two dozen grassroots activists who are actively engaged in civic life and debate world events such as Iran's elections and Israel's settlement policy, none have heard of the Collier Report or its author, Oxford economist Paul Collier (and all I've heard from since Bill Clinton's speech haven't heard about the government's plan either).

The manufacturing lobby, just granted a unique opportunity not given any other country in this $1.50 customs exemption, have made it their top priority to stop the passage of the minimum wage law while refusing to testify and submit to Parliament's questioning until the previous weekend, more than a month after the Senate unanimously passed the minimum wage legislation. Some workers believe that industrialists are afraid to be asked about their bookkeeping practices, among others. Several workers complained that while their taxes were taken out of biweekly pay, the Haitian social security office didn't even have a file for them. The industry lobby threatens that the 200 goud minimum wage will be the cause of 15,000 jobs lost. One of the eight primary industrialist families, presidential candidate Charles-Henri Baker, allegedly sent a pink slip to 300 workers, saying they would be fired the day that the 200 goud minimum wage law is put in effect.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/127/396503640_193dd72a71.jpg
Charles-Henri Baker

http://www.blackcommentator.com/171/171_images/171_maxwell_haiti_election_2.gif


Research with several factory workers reveals that the average quota for pants is 500 per day and average wage is 100 goud ($2.50) per day in Pòtoprens factories, which is 20 Haitian cents per pair of pants per person. Since the average size of factory lines is 25, this is 5 goud, or 12.5 cents for ALL Haitian laborers on a pair of pants. Consequently, doubling the minimum wage would be 10 goud, or a quarter per pair of pants. This extra 12-and-a-half cents pales in comparison to the $1.50, to say nothing of the final retail cost. According to union sources, in the Wanament Free Trade Zone, the average quota for t-shirts is 3000 per day per ‘module.' Average wage is 150 goud, or 5 Haitian cents per person per t-shirt. Again 25 people per module and this figure is 1.25 goud (three and an eighth cents) for all Haitian labor.

Article 137 of Haiti's Labor Code obliges the Haitian government to augment the minimum wage to keep up with inflation if it's greater than 10% in any given fiscal year (Oct 1-Sept 30). The last time the minimum wage was increased was in 2003. Given the global food crisis felt acutely in Haiti last April, it is long overdue, and 200 goud is actually lower than it should be to keep pace with inflation and the devaluation of the goud.

This conflict, the UN's increasing use of the trigger, and the debate in Parliament are likely to continue with increased intensity when Parliament will reconsider the act in light of the President's objections next Tuesday. This conflict is but one manifestation of a larger global system that is reeling from an economic crisis and shifting following the new U.S. administration. Speaking of the UN and their attacks against both the students and Lavalas, I was told of a proverb, bat two fò, chen pap rele. If you beat a dog too hard, it can't bark anymore.



Mark Schuller is Assistant Professor of African American Studies and Anthropology at York College, the City University of New York. He has co-directed documentary Poto Mitan: Haitian Women, Pillars of the Global Economy (2009) and co-edited Capitalizing on Catastrophe: Neoliberal Strategies in Disaster Reconstruction (2008) among other reports and articles about Haiti, development, and globalization. He is in Haiti for the summer.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/06/28-0 [/quote]


:puke:

I hope to live to see the day that people like [link:www.haitiaction.net/News/HIP/1_18_6/1_18_6.html|Charles Henry Baker], and his other "Gang 184" thugs who were behind Aristide's ouster, hanging from trees.

12.5 cents for ALL Haitian laborers on a pair of pants?

These are major crimes that need armies, like the complicity UN forces in Haiti, to protect them. Anyone who wants to know what the UN is all about, just needs to look to Haiti. Nothing more than an imperial army.

So this guy is raking in millions, forking out a 12.5 US pennies for that pair of jeans people are so thrilled to find on "sale" here. It's not just jeans, it's sweatshirts, tops, dresses... anything.

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF] LABOUR-HAITI: Workers Fight for Rights in Free Trade Zone
By Jane Regan

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jul 27 ((200x) (IPS) - When some 300 workers lost their jobs at factories in northeast Haiti last month, the two sides in the struggle pitting a clothing maker against a young union only dug in deeper.

The stakes are much higher than just one more boss versus dissatisfied and low-paid workers. More and more textile plants in North America are closing their doors and shifting production to low-cost factories in the South that labour activists call "sweatshops", and Haiti's minimum wage is the hemisphere's lowest. A union's fight for higher wages calls into question the "race to the bottom."

As accusations of union-busting fly, labour bodies like the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) are protesting; Levi Strauss - which closed its last U.S. plant last fall and whose jeans are sewn at one Haitian factory - is taking heat; a 12-million-dollar World Bank loan is on the line; and Haiti's own factory owners and interim government are scrambling to calm the situation as they strive to attract international investors.

On Jun. 11, Dominican Republic clothing giant Grupo M dismissed almost one-third of the 800 or so workers at its two Haiti factories in the CODEVI (Industrial Development Company) Free Trade Zone (FTZ), located outside of Ouanaminthe on the Haitian-Dominican border.

Grupo M, the largest employer in the Dominican Republic, where it has 13,000 workers in 24 plants, built the zone and the first two of a dozen projected factories there with a 12 million-dollar loan from the World Bank's International Finance Corporation (IFC).

Although international mobilising forced the IFC to include language in the loan about respect for workers' rights, CODEVI has been the site of labour strife almost since it opened.

Among those left jobless last month - the company says they were laid off, the union says they were fired - were seven of eight members of the executive committee of the recently founded in-house union. SOKOWA (Union of CODEVI Ouanaminthe Workers) said its members and other workers were fired because of their organising efforts. The massive move came after a one-day strike that was almost universally respected by workers.

"We want decent salaries, better working conditions and collective bargaining," organiser Georges Augustin told IPS. Augustin, a former solderer, works for Batay Ouvriye (Worker's Struggle), the labour group that helped organise SOKOWA earlier this year.

It is not the first time SOKOWA members lost their jobs. Last time around, on Mar. 1, only a few weeks after the union registered with the government, 34 employees were summarily fired. A month of international mobilising and a push from Levi got them their jobs back and elicited promises that negotiations would take place.

But as months went by, tenuous relations turned sour. After several failed sessions and what SOKOWA says were scare tactics by management, workers decided to hold a one-day strike Jun. 7. When they showed up the next day, they were locked out. Three days later, the lay-offs were announced.

"The company refuses to negotiate," Augustin said during an interview at Batay's Cap-Haitien office, a tiny hole-in-the-wall in a slum surrounded by fetid open sewers. "Instead, they harass and beat people and are threatening to close down completely unless workers join a 'yellow union' management is setting up."

Grupo M denies the allegations and said it has officially recognised SOKOWA. At the same time, however, it blames Batay and the union for the lay-offs.

"Excessive labour activism by radical groups" has meant that Grupo M's plants are not operating "with the necessary efficiency," company spokesman Gonzalo Parra told IPS in an e-mail interview Jul. 26. "Batay Ouvriye has gone so far as to make all kinds of threats against workers to make them quit or work reluctantly, affecting our production pace."

On Jun. 11, the company moved five production lines back to one of its Santiago plants, about two hours away in the Dominican Republic.

The strike and lay-offs have had their effects. Shortly after, Sara Lee - maker of Hanes, Wonderbra and other clothing lines - cancelled its contract with Grupo M's Haiti facility, saying it wants labour-management issues resolved.

Levi Strauss has not yet pulled its contract but "is concerned," Jeff Beckman, the firm's director of worldwide communications, told IPS.

Beckman said productivity at the plant has dropped in recent months and added that Levi "is encouraging Grupo M management to engage in mediation with SOKOWA representatives." In the meantime, Levi has reduced its orders of jeans from the Haitian plant.

Grupo M said it respects Haitian labour laws, paying workers at least minimum wage - 12 dollars (432 gourdes) for a six-day, 48-hour week. The average is 20 dollars, Parra said, and will rise as productivity increases.

But SOKOWA and local rights groups say workers regularly work a 55-hour week with no overtime pay, and that most employees earn 12 and not 20 dollars. Workers in Grupo M's Dominican plants make on average 30 dollars a week.

Even if a Haitian worker is paid 20 dollars a week (3.30 dollars per day), or one-third more than the country's minimum wage, that amount is only 30 cents more per day than the three dollars a day minimum wage set by dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier two decades ago.

Haiti's current minimum wage of 70 gourdes per day (two dollars) was established in 1995 by then President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, but was contested by Haitian unions and human rights groups. Neither two dollars nor three dollars is enough to live on, SOKOWA notes.

"A plate of food outside the plant costs 25 gourdes (almost one dollar). If you eat twice, that's most of your salary," Augustin said.

SOKOWA wants higher wages now, and also wants what it says is intimidation of union organisers to end.

The CODEVI conflict once again raises questions about FTZs and whom they benefit. With 43 million workers in the centres worldwide, the model is not going away any time soon and has been embraced by unlikely leaders.

Former President Aristide, once known as a "radical fire-brand," was a strong promoter. He promised to open 14 FTZs by 2006.

"Haiti has an extraordinary potential to transform herself into a pole of attraction," he said in his inaugural speech Feb. 7, 2001.

Despite strong opposition to the CODEVI project, Aristide pushed the initiative and bussed in his own supporters for the groundbreaking with Dominican President Hippolito Mejia 26 months ago.

The Haitian government has investigated the Grupo M conflict and should have trained labour inspectors in the region by Aug. 15, said an official from the ministry of social affairs. No wrongdoing has been found yet, he added.

"We don't want to move too quickly; we want to promote dialogue," Jean-Yves Georges, general director of the ministry, told IPS.

As far as the lay-offs, "a boss has the right to fire people," he said. If the union thinks the lay-offs were a union-busting move, it can file legal complaints and let a judge decide, Georges added.

Haitian factory owners, while head-on competitors with Grupo M, side with the company, according to Charles Henri Baker, vice president of the Association of Haitian Industrialists (ADIH). He blames the lay-offs on the union organising.

"I'm very disturbed because as a Haitian, I'm trying to create jobs," he told IPS. "These people (Batay Ouvriye and its international supporters) are spreading lies on the Internet. This kind of thing kills our business here."

Baker runs PB Apparel and was also a main leader of the opposition movement against Aristide. When he was arrested and jailed for a few weeks late last year he lost all his contracts.

The entrepreneur is hoping to get back in business soon. He predicts that if the U.S. Congress [link:www.govtrack.us/congress/record.xpd?id=108-s20040716-34|approves] the pending [link:wikileaks.org/wiki/CRS-RS21839|Haitian Economic Recovery Opportunity (HERO) Act], which will eliminate duties and tariffs on Haitian-sewed clothing, the number of jobs in the assembly sector could rise from the present 30,000 to over 200,000.


((Some history/documents here: wikileaks.org/wiki/CRS-RS21839))


That benefit will come on top of other advantages Haiti has due to its impoverished state. In fact, saving labour costs is perhaps just one reason Grupo M shifted stitching operations to its neighbour's soil.

With 52 free trade zones and 200,000 workers producing 4.7 billion dollars worth of textiles (2002 figures), the Dominican Republic has reached the limit of its U.S. textile import quota. But if the final stitch is sewed in Haiti, a Dominican company can send clothes to the United States with a "Made in Haiti" tag, thus taking advantage of that country's largely unused quota.

Baker feels strongly that Haiti should take advantage of what it can, including its low wages.

"Our job as Haitians is to create jobs, even if it's at 70 gourdes (about two dollars) a day," he said. "That is, by far, more than workers make farming."

The businessman was a promoter of the "social contract" put forward by the Group of 184 coalition during the anti-Aristide mobilisation last year. The contract calls for universal education, a "fight against poverty," environmental protection and other measures, but it does not call for an increase in the minimum wage.

IFC Officer Mark Constantine told IPS he blames both the bosses and the union for the impasse at CODEVI. In his 20 years at IFC, he said, he has never seen a more complex case.

Grupo M is in a "learning curve" as far as working with and respecting unions is concerned, Constantine noted, but while some of the union's claims are exaggerated, "there is a kernel of truth in all of them."

The IFC plans to send a professional labour arbitrator to Haiti within the next two weeks to help SOKOWA and Grupo M negotiate a contract and working conditions acceptable to all parties, he said.

"We don't have a lot of time," Constantine added, saying Grupo M is losing money in Haiti. With a 12-million-dollar debt staring it in the face, the company might give up and go home. Worse, it might declare bankruptcy, he said.

"We are going to try like hell to save this project. The interim government is trying to gain some traction. To have this fail would send a horrible message."

In the meantime, labour activists remain mobilized. A large coalition of British unions and the "No Sweat" campaign are planning a protest Thursday at Levi's London store.

Back in Cap-Haitien and Ouanaminthe, Batay Ouvriye and SOKOWA are not backing down. They know that by continuing to demand that the union's members and other workers are rehired, and by struggling for higher wages and better conditions, they are taking the risk that the factory will close down altogether.

"We were opposed to the FTZ, but now that it is here, we are fighting for the workers' rights," Augustin said. "When you are trying to make people do what's right, you have to go all the way." (END/2004)

http://ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=24820 [/quote]

http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/04vhaNv3rt4h7/610x.jpg

http://waysandmeans.house.gov/hearings.asp?formmode=view&id=1898

http://citizenx.org/wp-content/05haiti_slide02.jpg

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]haitian mud-pie recipe citizens get ready

a new culinary sensation is heading to your town..sooner than you think

most important..as the name suggests..is the mud.

you are probably NOT going to get your hands on any of that PRIME haitian garbage dump mud..

suffused as it is with generations of flavorful (and nutritious) trash scraps.

but you CAN have the next best thing..

on garbage day..and WITHOUT rinsing the can..fill your trashcans at the bottom with four fingers of soil lightly tossed with any new food scraps you can get your hands on..
then add another four fingers of fine gravel and top with an old window screen that fits
TIGHTLY into the bottom of the can.

now just use the can as usual for six to eight weeks..

then just remove screen and..as they say in haiti..VOILA!

sweet mud!

now the FUN part..

[div class=excerpt style=background:#FEFEFF]
(two cups of mud will yield about two dozen “pies”)

- two cups of mud
- one cup of any kind of cooking oil..(be creative) or BUTTER (lucky you!)
- two tablespoons of sugar or sweet substitute

mix into paste

portion into silver dollar sized rounds on a cookie sheet..
(or the fender of a UNFOR armored personnel carrier on a sunny day)
and bake at 350 degrees for thirty minutes.. [/quote]

enjoy with your choice of beverage on the veranda!

http://citizenx.org/2008/04/19/haitian-mud-pie-recipe/ [/quote]