Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

ACTION: No to unfair treatment and violence against workers at Willbes factories

Haiti Support Group | 27.09.2003 07:49 | Globalisation | Repression | World

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.
____________________________________________

Haiti Support Group
- e-mail: haitisupport@gn.apc.org
- Homepage: http://www.haitisupport.gn.apc.org

Comments

Display the following comment

  1. And for UK readers — bobby
Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech