Cables reveal: US Embassy helped Levi’s & Hanes in fight against increase in Haiti’s minimum wage

[EFerrari]

WikiLeaks Haiti: Let Them Live on $3/Day

Contractors for Fruit of the Loom, Hanes and Levi’s worked in close concert with the US Embassy when they aggressively moved to block a minimum wage increase for Haitian assembly zone workers, the lowest-paid in the hemisphere, according to secret State Department cables.

The factory owners told the Haitian Parliament that they were willing to give workers a 7-cents-per-hour pay increase to 31 cents per hour to make T-shirts, bras and underwear for US clothing giants like Dockers and Nautica.

But the factory owners refused to pay 62 cents per hour, or $5 per day, as a measure unanimously passed by the Haitian Parliament in June 2009 would have mandated. And they had the vigorous backing of the US Agency for International Development and the US Embassy when they took that stand.

To resolve the impasse between the factory owners and Parliament, the State Department urged quick intervention by then Haitian President René Préval.

http://www.thenation.com/article/161057/let-them-live-3day

[Bacchus39]

1. from the Nation article I see no connection between the quotes and US "help" to keep

the wages down, rather, simply an analysis of consequences and impacts of a wage increase.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Whoa. I just missed it. It will be posted again on June 8th.

Looks as if they are going to have some important writing on Haiti for at least several weeks to come.

Thank you, EFerrari. Really want to see this material.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Someone swiped my recommend. n/t

[Peace Patriot]

4. Someone swiped mine as well. This OP starts getting at the truth about Haiti,

which is to be a slave labor zone for U.S. corporations, in the U.S. "circle the wagons" region (Central America/the Caribbean). ("Circling the wagons" against increased independence and organized, cooperative clout among LatAm nations). This is what the $9 billion in international earthquake aid to Haiti, that Bill Clinton and Bush Jr. control, will be used for--to line the pockets of U.S. contractors and to build the capitol of the corporate slave market.

And I can only suspect that those interests have operatives trolling DU to do things like this--unrecommend the truth.

[EFerrari]

5. Our donations are going to build work camps, not homes,

under the aegis of former presidents and the State Department. That should disgust anyone following this story.

[Peace Patriot]

6. K&R! (not so you'd notice, though) nt

[Bacchus39]

7. funny, they pulled the story n/t

s

[Judi Lynn]

8. You have an odd sense of humor. They are running it June 8th. n/t

[EFerrari]

9. That's too bad.

It sounds like a big project to coordinate. Generating a lot of excitement, though, at The Nation and at HL.

[Judi Lynn]

10. Cory777 posted on this story today, Saturday, in LBN here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4872605

You beat the traffic on this one, of course.