22352: Vilaire: On the Grupo M Debacle (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Vilaire@aol.com

Here we go again! Another sweatshop operation (Grupo M) decides to shut its
doors and discard 700 workers like second-hand pèpè jeans. Without fail, the
worker rights group (Batay Ouvriye) and its supporters are being maligned for
this closure. The question has been asked many times and it still begs an
answer: are Haitian workers supposed to simply lay down and bury their heads in the
sand, forget about their rights? Is that part of the price for being a
national of the "poorest country in the western hemisphere"? The notion that Batay
Ouvriye is responsible for Grupo M's decision is preposterous. May I remind
everyone that the right to union representation was enshrined in the financial
arrangements that funneled millions of dollars to Grupo M. Did Grupo M expect to
take the money and not have to deal with this inconvenient issue of worker
rights? Even Levi's Strauss made that point clear to Grupo M... Obviously, I
don't know the details of Grupo M's shenanigans, but I suspect very strongly that
labor-relations is just a convenient scapegoat for their closure. The very
feeble explanation just doesn't add up.

This latest saga is eloquent testimony to the stupidity of banking on such
operations as a development strategy. Not to take anything away from the
employment they provide, they carry tons of deep-seated problems: they're flighty,
they cut and run when things get hot, the value-added to the local economy
doesn't go beyond the meager wages, they pay no taxes, there's zero transfer of
technology, zero transfer of skills... It's beyond me how any government can
prioritize this as a development strategy -- especially since no other developing
country, not one, has successfully developed its economy on the basis of that
failed strategy. And to do so by taking away fertile land is to commit the
most outrageous form of governmental malpractice. Indeed, one of Aristide's most
serious sins was on this score. But notice how no one from Haiti's enlightened
Group of 184 took Aristide to task on this issue. Hell, they're salivating to
make all of Haiti a sweatshop free-trade zone themselves. Agriculture to
them? Oh, that is so passé!

Marx-Vilaire