22365: Walton: RE: 22351: Simidor Re: 22340: Durban: on the Grupo M plant Clo sing (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: "Walton, Robert" <robert.walton3@us.army.mil>

Mr. Simidor wrote:

"I'm sorry that workers may be losing their jobs, but I wouldn't be sorry to
see Grupo M get the hell out of Haiti.  It was a lousy deal that let them
in, in the first place, Aristides selling out of the Haitian quota on the US
market to the Dominicans, and the ruin of the Maribahou plain, cemented over
for what?  And now the arrogant bosses are throwing a tantrum because the
workers want to be treated like human beings?"

My take is-

Haiti had given public properties and economic advantages to a business in
return for receiving promised benefits. Those benefits have disappeared, if
in fact they ever existed. Grupo M ran an operation that was close to being
a "slave-labor" camp, needed to away and finally, has gone away.  Grupo M
likely leaves behind a vacant physical structure with machinery, some raw
materials and a number of trained, but now unemployed workforce.

The physical plant was erected for the purpose of serving the people, on
farmlands formerly owned  privately. The vacated plant no longer serves any
useful purpose and it seems reasonable that it should revert to the people.


What prevents the workers from organizing a coopertive to manage the plant
and resume manufacture?  The cooperative would market its production and pay
the workers a living wage.  It seems to me that the government would support
such a venture if the cooperative returns a portion of its income to the
state as taxes or as a rent.


Bob Walton