22400: (Arthur) ICFTU - Grupo M continues union-busting in defiance of investors (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Tttnhm@aol.com

Haiti: Clothing company Grupo M continues union-busting in defiance of
investors

Brussels 17 June 2004 (ICFTU Online): After ducking efforts by the local
Haitian union, Sokowa, to address a series of grievances, Grupo M, a Dominican
Republic-based company, has precipitated a strike, organized a lock-out of the
workforce, and has finally fired more than half its employees at the Ouanaminthe
plant, which manufactures jeans for Levi’s. The International Confederation
of Free Trade Unions is protesting against another attempt at union-busting on
the part of one of the biggest textile companies in the Caribbean, by calling
on the World Bank to intercede in favour of the laid off Haitian workers.

The events in recent days have led to a storm of international protest at the
company’s recurrent abuses of workers. According to Neil Kearney, General
Secretary of the International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers’ Federation
(ITGLWF), workers’ were protesting at the Ouanaminthe Free Trade Zone in Haiti
“because of inhuman treatment including violence, intimidation, harassment,
forced stripping of women union leaders, beatings, kidnappings and non-payment
of wages”.

The plant in question was built using a $20-million loan from the
International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank's private-sector lending arm. A
one-day strike on Monday June 7 ended in an agreement between Grupo M and
Sokowa for a return to work and the start of negotiations to address workers’
grievances. The following day Grupo M locked out the workforce and announced by
letter the closure of their jeans factory in Ouanaminthe. On the Wednesday, the
letter was partially rescinded, and the company restarted production, but on
Friday, in another apparent ‘U-turn’, it was announced that the firm was laying
off 254 workers. However according to the Sokowa union, 370 workers (around
60% of the workforce) have been sacked.

While Grupo M claimed to be laying off the workers temporarily, it emerged
that they were being pressured to accept severance payments at the same time,
which the company may try to use as a pretext to make the dismissals permanent.
“The sacking of the workers was an effort to retaliate against them for their
strike, and was discriminatorily aimed at the union leaders. All but one of
the union's executive committee members have been fired,” said ICFTU General
Secretary Guy Ryder.

While the IFC has proposed mediation between Grupo M and the union, such
efforts are likely to remain futile so long as 370 workers have been fired and do
not know if they have any chance of being rehired. The ICFTU has sent a letter
to the acting President of Haiti, Alexandre Boniface, demanding the immediate
rehiring of the workers by Grupo M and the start of serious negotiations with
the union. It is also calling on the IFC to withhold its loan payments until
production is restored at the Haitian plant.

Grupo M is a particularly abusive employer. According to information received
by the ITGLWF, Grupo M CEO Fernando Capellan started threatening to fire
factory workers as early as June 3, saying that the factory was suffering several
million dollars in losses because of lack of productivity. The same day
managers “summoned four women workers into what is called the 'dark room', locked
the door and posted Dominican guards outside. Under the threat of weapons, the
women were subjected to a police-style interrogation. Their factory badges and
work shirts were ripped off of them, leaving the women topless. After they had
been in the room for nearly two hours, their co-workers grew worried and
started to approach the room, shouting for the workers to be let out. The guards
posted outside the room summoned back up. A truck full of guards arrived. The
guards aimed their weapons at the workers, ordering them to back off behind a
line traced on the ground with a rifle. A four-month pregnant woman was thrown
to the floor, in a pool of mud, her dress torn.”

According to Ryder, “It is vital that the World Bank’s IFC step in and
ensure that these Haitian workers, who are in a desperately poor situation, get
their jobs back as soon as possible and be allowed to work under humane
conditions. In view of Grupo M’s obligations in the loan agreement it signed, the IFC
should suspend disbursements on the loan until the workers are rehired and a
serious process of negotiations has begun with union to address the workers’
grievances”. Last January, following earlier submissions by the ICFTU on the
company’s labour rights abuses, the IFC agreed to make its US$20-million loan to
Grupo M conditional on the company’s respect for the freedom of association and
right to collective bargaining of its employees.


The ICFTU represents 151 million workers in 233 affiliated organisations in
152 countries and territories. ICFTU is also a member of Global Unions:
http://www.global-unions.org

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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.
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