Wikileaks: U.S. Intervened To Keep Haiti Slave Wages Low On Behalf Of Hanes, Levi Strauss
I'll try to keep this simple: The Nation published a Wikileaks story which it then pulled to run Wednesday with the Haitian publication with which it partnered. But the Columbia Journalism Review picked it up anyway, because it's such an important story - namely, that it's apparently U.S. policy to further undercut wages in the Third World, not incidentally making it even less likely that manufacturing jobs ever return to the U.S..
The Nation didn't pull their other Wikileaks Haiti exposé (see video above), which recounts how the U.S., pressured by Exxon and Chevron, tried to interfere with an oil agreement between Haiti and Venezuela that would save Haiti, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, $100 million per year:
Two years ago, Haiti unanimously passed a law sharply raising its minimum wage to 61 cents an hour. That doesn’t sound like much (and it isn’t), but it was two and a half times the then-minimum of 24 cents an hour.
This infuriated American corporations like Hanes and Levi Strauss that pay Haitians slave wages to sew their clothes. They said they would only fork over a seven-cent-an-hour increase, and they got the State Department involved. The U.S. ambassador put pressure on Haiti’s president, who duly carved out a $3 a day minimum wage for textile companies (the U.S. minimum wage, which itself is very low, works out to $58 a day).
The Nation:
Still the US Embassy wasn’t pleased. A deputy chief of mission, David E. Lindwall, said the $5 per day minimum “did not take economic reality into account” but was a populist measure aimed at appealing to “the unemployed and underpaid masses.”
Well, hey. Imagine Haitians doing things for their “unemployed and underpaid masses” rather than rich Yankee corporations. The outrage! No wonder we have 9.1 percent unemployment and 16 percent underemployment here while the folks who sent the economy in the tank are back making millions.
Let’s do a little math. Haiti has about 25,000 garment workers. If you paid each of them $2 a day more, it would cost their employers $50,000 per working day, or about $12.5 million a year.
Zooming in on specific companies helps clarify this even more. As of last year Hanes had 3,200 Haitians making t-shirts for it. Paying each of them two bucks a day more would cost it about $1.6 million a year. Hanesbrands Incorporated made $211 million on $4.3 billion in sales last year, and presumably it would pass on at least some of its higher labor costs to consumers.
CJR points out that Hanesbrands CEO Richard Noll, on the other hand, got a nice cushy $10 million compensation package last year.
And that five dollars a day that wasn't "economic reality" for the U.S. embassy representative? The Nation reports that a Haitian family of three (two kids) needed $12.50 a day in 2008 to make ends meet. So the U.S. is on the record in favor of poverty.
This is what we need to fight. This is the truth. This is our brotherhood.
"Either they don't know, don't show, or don't care about what goes on in the hood" ~ boys in the hood
First they came for... and I didn't speak out.. Then... Then they came for me.
"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
...and making some tweaks before it happens right here in the good ol' U.S.of A.
Lower the retirement age.
Typical US citizen
"Are you ignorant or apathetic?" . "I do not know and I don't care".
It is amazing how vile the multinational corporations are. They go in and under the guise of helping, exploit the local people with the help of the local govt. When people here glibly say that the rest of the world hates America because of freedom, blah blah blah, it has to be pointed out that no, we are hated because of the US foreign policy and the MNCs.
I've known for quite a few years now that our country is far from being the bastion of democracy and freedom that we claim to be, and that we are rapidly turning into the 21st Century equivalent of ancient Rome.
Never trust anyone who insists that patriotism requires you to blindfold yourself with the flag.
to discover that the only cables mentioned date from 2006. Remind me again, who was President then?
Hasa Diga Eebowai
Had to have been one of those un-American Democrats. Oops, it was a Bush?
is intended to be a factual statement
I don't know about Ms. Susie. She is still pissed that Hillary did not win.
What's wrong with the article?
There's a hate Susie cadre at C&L.
I always read Susie's posts because she doesn't overlook us little people.
"If the US government enforced its banking laws like it did its park regulations, we wouldn't be
in this damn park in the first place." OCCUPY.!!
I don't hate Susie. She occasionally posts things with which I entirely agree. That's rare enough but it happens. I think she shoots from the hip on a lot of issues where a little basic research would quickly demonstrate the world is not quite as simple as many seem to think.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
Did I say you did? Are you a cadre?
"If the US government enforced its banking laws like it did its park regulations, we wouldn't be
in this damn park in the first place." OCCUPY.!!
I have noticed that the cart goes before the horse some times .
Those Haitians should be happy to have a job, right Peter?
"If the US government enforced its banking laws like it did its park regulations, we wouldn't be
in this damn park in the first place." OCCUPY.!!
because if many people who call themselves progressives had their way tariffs would be used to kill every single Haitian job. For their own good ,of course, to protect them from evil corporations.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
because if many people who call themselves progressives had their way tariffs would be used to kill every single Haitian job. For their own good ,of course, to protect them from evil corporations.
This has NOTHING to do with my comment. NIce try though.
I know you said that about Jamaicans, so I just assumed the same applies in Haiti.
"If the US government enforced its banking laws like it did its park regulations, we wouldn't be
in this damn park in the first place." OCCUPY.!!
Or hadn't you noticed that. My post was a bout the timeline underlying Susie's post.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
OK. You got me with that one. My bad. Guess I couldn't resist. I can be a brat.
"If the US government enforced its banking laws like it did its park regulations, we wouldn't be
in this damn park in the first place." OCCUPY.!!
And this is just the place to indulge it don't you think?.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
Anywhere. Anytime. I'm always good to go. :^)
Peace.
"If the US government enforced its banking laws like it did its park regulations, we wouldn't be
in this damn park in the first place." OCCUPY.!!
that's what you're talking about eh?
Democracy is too important to be entrusted to politicians.
Rise Up!
Protest!
Peter G doesn't come back to answer for his outrageous posts.
"If the US government enforced its banking laws like it did its park regulations, we wouldn't be
in this damn park in the first place." OCCUPY.!!
What killed the Haitian economy was the export agricultural subsidy war between the US and Europe. They dumped so much surplus food on the international market so cheaply it knocked subsistence farmers all over the world for a loop.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
haiti isn't in this position because it dared to fight the french, and had to pay for their early 19th century revolution hundreds of years on, many times over the principal amount, at the expense of their society and economy. it isn't what it is because of our, canada's and france's support of haitian dictators, like baby doc and his daddy. it isn't in this position because of our support of two coups of a popularly supported and elected leader over the last 20 years, nor are they in this position because we support groups who don't allow candidates on the ballot that will conflict with corporate and elite interests within the country. it also isn't in this position because of a horribly failed developmental model that has NEVER lead to development. a south korean economist named ha joon chang has showed without any doubt that state protection (yes, tariffs, amongst other things) has been the ONLY policies that have ever lead to development. in all his research, he found TWO exceptions to this, two countries that have developed using the "free market" and neither did so recently. every country that has followed the advice of people like you is in shambles, india and china have grown by ignoring the type of advice people like you always regurgitate. you wouldn't care to learn that the us had the highest tariffs in the world for a century and a half, and they copied the british before them who developed behind a centuries long wall of protectionism and state support, or that we have the most protectionist agriculture in the developed world. certainly lifting tariffs on the very subsidies that could protect domestic food production has done wonders for haitian farmers. just like if we didn't protect domestic industry for a century and a half we wouldn't have been destroyed by the far more superior british industry. even "free trade" bill clinton admitted that recently, the negative effects of "free trade" on haitian farmers. never let a good ahistoric, reality less right wing myth get in the way of trying to understand reality.
the japanese government literally owned and supported toyota for 30 years before they were strong enough to compete. in china, where i lived for a year and a half, they want to start their own car company. are they letting the tariff less "free market" decide their fate? of course not, this is reality and they have brains, they are putting a 150% tax on car imports to protect their infant industries from much stronger foreign competition. that is all that has EVER lead to economic development. the left is wrong, in your mind, because they pay attention to economic history and reality. what fools.
for a huge number of reasons not the least of which is massive governmental corruption. We're not helping. Aside from a lamentable colonial history and a good deal of bullying they have no real resources besides cheap labor. They have no raw materials to speak of, an agricultural land base that is severely degraded and subdivided into tiny plots which is further imperiled by deforestation. They have to import just about every erg of energy and machinery and to top it all off, they are right smack in the middle of hurricane alley. Their entire economy has been kept afloat by loans which amount to charity since no one really expects repayment.
The fact is that their only hope is to use their abundant labor to bootstrap some sort of local economy to maybe, just maybe, establish enough political and economic stability to add things like tourism to their economic base. For that to happen they will require free and unimpeded access to world markets. And they aren't the only third world country that needs that access. And have that ability while simultaneously being able to limit and control imports so that they can target cash reserves for essential imports like fuel and fertilizers and pesticides and medicines and everything else.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
We're not helping.
That's an understatement. I'll go further and suggest we might be hindering their growth and undermining any chance at political stability. .
"If the US government enforced its banking laws like it did its park regulations, we wouldn't be
in this damn park in the first place." OCCUPY.!!
none of that justifies what so ever the economic policies that we have supported in haiti. how does pushing for trade policies that further harm haiti's ability to feed ITSELF, something "free trade" clinton even admitted to, help? for one, those policies DON'T lead to economic development and secondly, once another country has cheaper labor or is willing to destroy their ecoystem even more than haiti, once wage demands get too high, the investments go elsewhere. its called a race to the bottom for good reason. if we use your logic, no country is ever going to be out of this situation. china for example is losing jobs now to bangladesh and vietnam because of the recent gains by workers, striking workers in fact. this model is a failure and doesn't lead to development of lift people out of poverty. at some point something else has to take its place, more than anything for ecological reasons. since these policies DON'T lead to economic development, but dependency, this is a dead end.
"aside from a lamentable colonial history and a good deal of bullying they have no real resources besides cheap labor."
yeah, outside massive amounts of of oil and gold. outside of the fact that the climate is perfect for certain crops that, if the ecological system was replenished and sustainable methods were used, along with the protection of domestic farmers, could help haiti feed itself and be less dependent on foreign aid and capital.
ever hear of the international jubiliee campaign, debt forgiveness? how about making up for the ecological destruction in haiti that was largely a result of french colonialism? europe's soils were after all horribly depleted, this is something that marx actually wrote about in the mid 19th century. the result was wars in south america over guano, which was used to help replenish the soils of europe. it isn't like the west can destroy a country like haiti, then support brutal dictators and squash attempts at fundamental change, then trap haiti into a set of economic policies and debt peonage that make a bad situation worse, then stand in the way of a country like venezuela that is trying to help for our own selfish geopolitical reasons, then wipe our hands of the situation and walk away. there is a moral responsibility in haiti, probably more than most countries. i should also mention that cuba (another country right in the middle of hurricane alley) is building a good portion of the haitian health care system. not helping here or there, i mean supplying thousands of doctors, building hospitals, etc. THAT is the type of stuff that is needed. too bad its another poor country who didn't help destroy the country doing so.
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff01192010....
Cuba adopted a two-pronged public health approach to help Haiti. First, it agreed to maintain hundreds of doctors in the country for as long as necessary, working wherever they were posted by the Haitian government. This was particularly significant as Haiti's health care system was easily the worst in the Americas, with life expectancy of only 54 years in 1990 and one out of every 5 adult deaths due to AIDS, while 12.1% of children died from preventable intestinal infectious diseases.[2]
...By 2007, significant change had already been achieved throughout the country. It is worth noting that Cuban medical personnel were estimated to be caring for 75% of the population.[3] Studies by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) indicated clear improvements in the health profile since this extensive Cuban medical cooperation began.
Improvements in Public Health in Haiti, 1999-2007[4]
Health Indicator 1999 2007
Infant Mortality, per 1,000 live births 80 33
Child Mortality Under 5 per 1,000 135 59.4
Maternal Mortality per 100,000 live births 523 285
Life Expectancy (years) 54 61
Cuban medical personnel had clearly made a major difference to the national health profile since 1998, largely because of their proactive role in preventive medicine-as can be seen below.
Selected Statistics on Cuban Medical Cooperation
Dec. 1998-May 2007[5]
Visits to the doctor 10,682,124
Doctor visits to patients 4,150,631
Attended births 86,633
Major and minor surgeries 160,283
Vaccinations 899,829
Lives saved (emergency) 210,852
By 2010, at no cost to medical students, Cuba had trained some 550 Haitian doctors, and is at present training a further 567. Moreover, since 1998 some 6,094 Cuban medical personnel have worked in Haiti. They had given over 14.6 million consultations, carried out 207,000 surgical operations, including 45,000 vision restoration operations through their Operation Miracle programme, attended 103,000 births, and taught literacy to 165,000. In fact at the time of the earthquake there were 344 Cuban medical personnel there. All of this medical cooperation, it must be remembered, was provided over an 11-year period before the earthquake of January 12, 2010.[6]
In the case of Haiti's minimum wage, the whole thing was sparked by something that happened two years ago:
I think Obama was President at that time.
The best Republican president we've had since Clinton.
When the MSM starts reporting on this heads are going to roll. Wait, what did I just say? Let me rephrase. IF!!! The MSM is part of the Corporate monster called Capitalism, they wont touch this. Levi's, Baseball and apple pie, ain't that America.
is intended to be a factual statement
Unfortunately, that's all we can do.
I agree. So are there any manufacturers of women's underpants in the USA?
"Protecting American Interests Abroad"
Always has been.
Oust Guatemala's democratically elected president - for United Fruit Company.
Oust Iran's democratically elected president - for the Oil Companies.
American foreign policy is ALWAYS about "protecting American Corporations' interests abroad".
Always has been.
Democracy is too important to be entrusted to politicians.
Rise Up!
Protest!
This isn't "society", one that works so that all segmants benefit and can live a happy life,
it's rape, pure and simple. Roman Empire anyone? Prescott Bush(and friends) must be partying in their graves.
Thank God someone like Smedley Butler comes along once in awhile to throw a monkey wrench into their plans.
Where's our Smedley Butler today???? This is much worse than finding out that Santa is fake, it's the Stars and Stripes that's a fraud, a false bill of goods. How much lower can this go? These "people" that rape, need a real good going over. How?? How???
If you were in Central Casting and wanted a drawling, jowly, portly, unctuous cracker pol, you'd send out Haley. He is a hack whose forebears voted Democratically until the Kennedy's and LBJ. Barbour's long history of being Old South in his thinking and motives would come to the fore if he ran for president. Other states have their conservative counterparts in the presence of "Blue Democrats," many of whom fought Obama tooth and nail during the health care debates. Barbour is such a seasoned liar and hack it is amazing anyone would give him twenty minutes. He reminds me of the character Burgess Meredith played in the Otto Preminger movie, "Hurry Sundown." With reference to an African-American woman, Meredith, a cracker pol, hisses, "She's nothing but an old, syphilitic n****r woman." While we can debate whether that film could be released today, or whether it should be shelved, the next time you hear Haley Barbour talk, close your eyes and imagine him saying it.
"Respect for the rights of others is peace." --Benito Juarez
once again, for the umpteenth time.
Maintaining resource disparities between the US and Latin America for our corporations is our official policy.
"Fascism is capitalism plus murder." Upton Sinclair
just how accepted is the meme that the Wikileaks cache (after "Collateral Murder") was actually the impetus for the Middle Eastern uprisings (exposing the corruption of their governments)?
This story is fucking outrageous. -_-;
Two stories about the EXTENSION of the Patriot Act powers, not just the Patriot Act itself, coupled with a story where the US's apparent version of "terrorist" is anyone who goes after corporations (like Greenpeace, etc).
It's a corporate police state.
It's become a fascist state .
Everyone feel like singing America the beautiful ?
Reminds me of Tom Delay and his slave labor / sweat shop operations in the Mariana's I think it was ? Yesssirrreeee , from sea to shining sea .
Then we have the gaul to turn around and lecture China about their human rights record.
derived from their Cuban lighbulbs to open their own T-shirt factories and pay the government workers they employed union scale.
Perhaps if the link to the wage issue was to a story which contained more than one sentence from the original story, which itself only contained parts of one cable, we might have a better idea.
TFR
No other way to describe it. I'll have no pity on the CEO's, officers and board members when the tipping point is reached and the majority of the world's population figures out what evil is being worked by the corporations they allow into their countries. It's akin to inviting in a vampire; when you invite then in, you're also giving them permission to destroy you. The International Criminal Court at the Hague needs to be putting wooden stakes through each one of the guilty principal's hearts.
World-wide boycotts are also in order.
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