#4782: Re: #4778.: Grand Marnier workers - Dorce replies to Bebe Pierre-Lo... (fwd)

[Robert Corbett <bcorbett@netcom.com>]

From:LAKAT47@aol.com

Bebe Pierre-Louis and Corbetteers,

I too read with distaste the posts cautioning us not to be too hasty with our 
condemnation of factories with inhumane and inhuman conditions.  I realize 
that they come to Haiti BECAUSE of the conditions not in spite of them.  When 
those conditions change, 
they will not come.  So let them go!  Who needs foreign factories??
I met a man (US citizen) once who was completely broken by the Haitian and US 
governments when he opened a factory in Haiti to manufacture car parts.  He 
paid a decent wage, still way below minimum wage in the US but way above the 
wages other factories
were paying.  He was warned not to pay these wages, he declined to change 
them.  He was arrested and put into prison and his factory 
confiscated.  He told me if a Reuters corespondent didn't 
keep him in the news every day, he might have been killed in there.
As it was they only made him permanently disabled.  The US
government was in agreement with the Haitian government in his
arrest, incarceration and loss of all his worldly possessions in 
Haiti.  He and his wife left with their lives and their clothes.  Their 
belief in their country long gone along with their fortune.  That
was the day I grew up and realized that the red, white and blue
was not the guy in the white hat anymore (was it ever??).  

I hear people like Kathie Lee Gifford say, well that is the wage
that they are used to so it's ok.  It's not ok.  People with bleeding
hands are not ok.  I wrote to the company that makes Grand Marnier
and told them I would not be able to buy their wonderful product
knowing how it was made.  I got no answer but the person who 
gave out their e-mail address sure got a lambasting and I doubt
they care if I don't buy my one bottle a year.  I don't see how
bare subsistence is beneficial to the poverty stricken populace.
If the factories go away perhaps the city dwellers will go back 
to the land where they can make their own food like they used 
to.  To hell with the factories.....let them go!  The only people 
who will really be hurt are those who take bribe money from
them to operate with impunity.  To hell with them too!

(sorry I'm a little on edge after the Republican convention!)

Kathy Dorce~