28817: Durban (reply): To M Pierre on Labor Unions in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

Lance Durban lpdurban@yahoo.com responding to Mario Pierre (Corbett
#28775):

Mario Pierre wonders if our company in Haiti would welcome a union and
a traditional  collective bargaining agreement.  If he means a group of
workers who start from the premise that management is a bunch of no
good, exploiting monsters, then I think we?ll do without, thank you.
But frankly, I can?t see how a worker who came in with that kind of
attitude would be happy to work in any factory.  So, sorry Mario, no
job for you.

But that answer is too glib.  Our company has no employment contracts
for any employees, but salaries are discussed periodically and often it
is a group of workers who have initiated the discussion.  At the last
such meeting, management?s only condition  was that the workers choose
a committee of 12 people which is about the maximum our conference room
could hold.  As management, we are constantly striving to maintain that
happy balance of satisfied employees and bottom line profit which has
been entirely re-invested in the business since 1983.

In an uncertain world, everyone would like to have some guarantees I
suppose, but with the huge uncertainty surrounding any investment in
Haiti (which translates into whether customers will continue sending us
orders), there is no way that our company can offer long term
employment guarantees, even though that is probably the single thing
that would be most valued by our employees.  (U.S. employers operating
in a much more stable environment, formalized job/pension securities
years ago which are only now coming back to haunt them? the GM retiree
pension and health insurance commitments have that company in a
straight-jacket.)

However, our Haitian company does have a company-wide profit-sharing
plan, open books management, and starting this year, a funded pension
plan, against which employees can borrow money (for school,
construction projects, health emergencies, etc.).  Those loans are not
interest free, but all interest goes back into the pension fund and is
apportioned out to each employee every month, making ours a far better
system than ONA, the national social security system in Haiti.  The
latter is a national scandal in which few retirees every see more than
50% of the money they have paid in.

In a country where so few people have jobs, I agree with Patrick de
Verteuil (Corbett # 28797) that traditional, disruptive labor union
activity works directly against the interests of the unemployed
majority by making the country look less attractive to new investors.
And given the relative ease with which an employer can replace even
qualified workers, it probably won?t do much good for those few
worker?s either.  So what can foreign "friends of labor" such as Mario
Pierre do to help the Haitian working class.  My suggestion would be to
get involved with the political process.  Support candidates who
promise to raise the minimum wage, lobby for a total re-organization of
ONA, work with law-makers and the private sector to re-write and
strengthen the Code de Travail which remains the legal framework for
hiring people in Haiti.

And finally, if we are both in Haiti at the same time, Mario, I?ll
spring for the drinks over on the veranda of the Oloffson some day.
Although it might seem unlikely, there probably are a few things we
could agree on.

Lance Durban