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Date of publication: November 15, 2011

Source: The Gazette (Montreal)

Author: Alison MacGregor

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MONTREAL - Workers’ rights advocates are demanding that Gildan Activewear Inc. and Hanesbrands Inc. reinstate six Haitian workers who were allegedly fired from Haitian factories – or forced to resign – as a deterrent to other workers after they formed a new union in September.

“They decapitated the union,” said Yannick Etienne, a Haitian workers rights advocate during an interview in Montreal on Monday.

The coordinator of Batay Ouvriye, a Haitian organization that has been working with the six union leaders, Etienne has been busy meeting with local workers’ rights groups and the media in an attempt to pressure Montreal-based Gildan into taking up the matter with its Haitian factory subcontractors.

“We want (Gildan) to demand explanations from its Haitian factories,” she said, adding the company said it would look into the matter and get back to them, but “we’re still waiting.”

Four of the Haitians worked for the Genesis S.A. factory near the Port-au-Prince airport. The tax-exempt plant, owned by the powerful Apaid family, produces almost exclusively for Gildan.

Another factory, One World Apparel, where workers assemble garments for Winston Salem, N.C.-based Hanesbrands, allegedly dismissed the union’s secretary after he handed out flyers outside of the factory before his shift. One World Apparel is owned by Charles Baker, a former Haitian presidential candidate.

After a devastating earthquake hit Haiti in January 2010, expanding the Haitian apparel industry was considered by some experts to be an important economic opportunity for the country.

In an April 2009, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech at an Apaid family factory – the same family owns the Genesis factory – in which she praised the creation of new jobs in the industry, with wages at “two to three times the minimum wage.”

But Etienne said that in reality many of the factories take advantage of their workers. She said workers are often required to assemble an unrealistic number of garment pieces per day to earn a daily wage of 250 gourdes (about $6.30 Canadian). Since it is impossible to complete the work in a regular workday, the workers, who are usually woman, end up working 12- to 13-hour shifts.

She said that most people don’t mind working the extra hours, but they want to be paid fairly for those hours.

Her group has succeeded in unionizing garment factories in the Ouanaminthe area near the border with the Dominican Republic. These plants now pay their workers fair wages, she said.

An investigation into the firings is being carried out by Better Work Haiti, a program partnered with the International Labour Organization (ILO) that aims to insure compliance with labour work standards.

In an interview, Gildan senior vice-president of public and governmental affairs Peter Iliopoulos said his company is investigating the allegations and has been speaking with the owner of the Genesis factory in Haiti.

“Up to now, we have not been satisfied with the responses that we have received from the factory in terms of the reasons of dismal for the (four) employees,” he said, adding that the Gildan has been looking into the matter since the firm first heard about it last month.

Iliopoulos said his company has a strict code of conduct that requires compliance with local labour laws, “so this is something that we take very seriously.”

He said Gildan is awaiting the findings in the Better Work Haiti report this week and intends to act on its recommendations.

“If the report indicates that there has been a violation of the freedom of association and the right to unionization, then clearly we are going to be acting on that,” he said.

In a phone interview, Hanesbrand spokesperson Matt Hill said his company was aware of the incident involving a worker at one of its Haitian factories.

“It is under investigation right now,” he said, adding that his company has spoken with the owners of the factory claimed they did not to know the fired worker was a member of the union and that the worker in question was simply one of several hundred people who were laid off.

“We’ve been in Haiti a long time and (the owners) understand our ethics,” he said. “It would be totally unacceptable to lay off a union representative for the sole reason of being a union representative.”

Hill said Hanesbrands is also waiting for the results of the Better Works Haiti investigation and that after his firm receives the report his company will take “appropriate action.”