[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
16845: Fw: ACTION: No to unfair treatment and violence against workers at Willbes factories (fwd)
From: Max Blanchet <MaxBlanchet@worldnet.att.net>
From: <Tttnhm@aol.com>
ACTION ALERT - Haiti
Issued by the Haiti Support Group - 26 September 2003
Protest the physical abuse of Haitian workers in Port-au-Prince sweatshops!
Say no to the violation of workers' rights!
Support Haitian workers' attempts to organise unions!
The Haiti Support Group joins the Batay Ouvriye workers' organisation in
condemning recent acts of aggression against workers in Port-au-Prince
garment
assembly factories operated by the South Korean Willbes Company.
The latest chapter in a long-running catalogue of abuse of workers' rights
began on 12 August when workers at the Willbes Haitian S.A. factory No. 5
in
the Shodecosa Industrial Park were beaten up and shot at by armed factory
security guards and riot police. These violent attacks followed factory
workers'
attempts to stop security guards from beating up a co-worker who had
demanded
severance pay after being arbitrarily fired. During the course of the
attacks,
several workers received gunshot wounds, many were beaten with police
batons,
and one worker who attempted to photograph what was happening was beaten
unconscious and then detained overnight in the Cité Soleil police station.
Subsequently a new factory manager at Shodecosa Factory No.5 has begun
arbitrarily firing the workers involved.
More recently, the Batay Ouvriye workers' organisation reports that a female
worker at the Willbes garment assembly factory No.42 in the other
Port-au-Prince industrial park - SONAPAI - has been beaten up by the factory
supervisor,
and then fired without any severance pay.
Please write letters of protest - demanding an end to violent and abusive
treatment of workers at the four Willbes garment assembly factories in
Port-au-Prince, and calling for the full respect of workers' rights under
Haitian and
international law - and send them to the following email addresses:
info@willbes.com (Willbes & Co. Ltd. Head office in South Korea)
oscar@willbes.com (Willbes & Co. Ltd. International Textile Business
Division
in South Korea)
adih@adih.org (Marie-Claude Bayard, president of the Manufacturers'
Association of Haiti, of which Willbes Haitian S.A. is a member)
Please cc copies to batayouvriye@hotmail.com and haitisupport@gn.apc.org
A SAMPLE LETTER CAN BE FOUND ON THE HAITI SUPPORT GROUP WEB SITE
Mailing and fax addresses:
The CEO
The Willbes & Co. Ltd.
Mirae-wa-saram Building
494-3 Sinbu-dong
Cheonan-si
Chungcheongnam-do, 330-943
SOUTH KOREA
Fax: 82-41-552-5503/4/5
The Willbes Haitian S.A.
Bldg. No. 41 SONAPI
Route Nationale 1
Aeroport
Port-au-Prince
HAITI
Mme. Marie-Claude Bayard
Association des Industries d’Haiti
199 Route de Delmas
Port-au-Prince,
HAITI
Fax : 509-246-2211
Background information
The Willbes & Co. Ltd was founded in South Korea in 1973. It established
garment assembly factories in the Dominican Republic in 1986, in Honduras in
1991,
and in Haiti in 2001. It currently runs four factories in Port-au-Prince,
Haiti: Unit 5 in the Shodecosa Industrial Park, and units 34, 41, and 42 in
the
Sonapi Industrial Park.
Willbes Haitian S.A. lists amongst its main clients the following companies:
Target, Wal-Mart, GAP, Kmart, Newport News, Venator, Sears, ShopKo, C&A, and
Kohl's. Workers at the Willbes Haitian S.A. factories are currently
producing
Cherokee jeans and shirts for the US Target company.
According to information supplied by Batay Ouvriye, the violent incidents of
12 August are just the latest instance of Willbes Haitian S.A. calling on
the
police to intervene in a labour conflict, even though it is the
responsibility
of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labour to resolve such disputes. When
faced with labour disputes, instead of adhering to proper arbitration rules
according to Haitian labour legislation, the company has consistently chosen
to
call in the police to physically abuse and mistreat workers.
Workers at the Willbes Haitian S.A. factories also suffer from a variety of
other arbitrary and illegal measures implemented by the managers. These
include:
· Stealing workers' pay by the deliberate under-calculation of the record
cards punched at the beginning and the end of each workday;
· Forcing workers to pay for drinking water and for use of toilets;
· Deducting more from workers' pay than legally stipulated for national
insurance schemes;
· Firing workers as soon as it appears that a contracted order will not be
completed on schedule;.
· Making workers clean dirty clothes and repair faulty garments as extra,
unpaid work.
Batay Ouvriye notes that while all of these practices are taking place,
inspectors from the Labour Bureau of the Ministry of Social Affairs never
visit the
Willbes factories. The abusive Willbes Haitian S.A. managers benefit from a
state of complete impunity.
In a 29th August press release, Batay Ouvriye situates the abusive practices
of the Willbes Haitian S.A. management in a global context, and warns that
workers at the garment assembly factories now opening in the new free trade
zone
on the Maribahoux Plain, near Ouanaminthe in north-east Haiti, can expect
the
same treatment:
"We are calling everyone's attention to an important point. We already know
what is going on in the free trade zones throughout the world. These same
types
of violations, exploitation, and physical abuse happen in Honduras and
Guatemala. What is happening at the Willbes factories shows us clearly what
the free
trade zones can bring to Haiti. Remember that the free trade zones are
isolated areas without any real regulation or controls. The Willbes company
management in Port-au-Prince, who came here from the Dominican Republic, has
set up
its operations in the same way that the Dominican company, Grupo M, will in
the
free trade zone at Ouanaminthe Free Trade Zone. Thus, as they continue to
make
propaganda concerning the employment opportunities they are supposedly going
to provide the Haitian people, we need to clearly perceive the concrete
exploitation and domination that they are in fact bringing. We need to
understand
that it is not very much different from slavery, two hundred years since
Haiti
won its independence in 1804". - Batay Ouvriye, 29 August 2003.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
Note: see the Haiti Support Group web site: www.haitisupport.gn.apc.org for
more details about campaigns in support of workers' rights in Haiti, and
about
the controversial new free zone at Maribahoux in north-east Haiti.
______________________________________________
This email is forwarded as a service of the Haiti Support Group.
See the Haiti Support Group web site:
www.haitisupport.gn.apc.org
Solidarity with the Haitian people's struggle for justice, participatory
democracy and equitable development, since 1992.
____________________________________________