15581: Lyall comments on labor strategies (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: j.david lyall <jdlyall@netscape.net>

A difficult but useful strategy for organizing the factory jobs in haiti
would be to
collaborate with the owners to try to get the government to upgrade the
infrastructure
of the industrial area. Fix the roads to/within the industrial plants,
streamline the
port/doane procedures, etc.

While this does sound like the business of the owners of the factories
it is also the business
of the workers who want to keep their jobs. If they want to create more
jobs for their
friends/family it is even more their business.

This is a corporatist style strategy which doesn't sound good to
traditional radicals but
it used to work well for building trades and longshore unions in the usa.

Setting up the beginnings of health care insurance plans for the members
would then be
a good idea. Some sort of ONG could possibly assist with this. I've
heard of some groups
trying to start minimal health insurance plans. Self employed folks are
reluctant to pay
an insurance premium tho. Industrial workers could make the regular
minimal payments
for such a plan.

>Charles' response to my post rather enthusiastically misinterprets my point.
>This was not to 'blame labour organizers' or to advocate lower wages as a
>competetive advantage, but rather to suggest that in discussing the plight
>of the assembly industry we not only consider factors like political
>upheaval (the coup included), lack of infrastructure, etc, but also evaluate
>the circumstances and effects of organizing so far -- for the sake of
>developing *more* effective strategies,  whereby labor organizers will have
>*greater* success and workers will have *more*, not less, jobs, and *higher*
>wages.
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