After Decades of Oppression, Colombian Women Lead Front Lines of National Strike

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Hundreds of mostly women gathered at Catholic University’s Maloney Hall during the first weekend of March to convene the first U.S.-based conference of a worldwide grassroots women’s network called the International Women’s Alliance, as well as help strengthen its fledgling U.S. chapter.

The conference kicked off early Saturday morning with speeches by Washington, D.C., “situationers,” Jacqueline Luqman and Madhvi Bahl.

Luqman, a member of the Black Alliance for Peace as well as IWA member organization Pan-African Community Action, gave an overview of how the U.S. government has oppressed Africans, starting from the late 1800s, when former slaves migrated from the U.S. South to Washington, D.C.. The U.S. Congress must approve all legislation passed by the district council and it controls the district’s budget. The U.S. President appoints the district’s judges, while it has no voting representation in Congress.

“It is because we are still a majority Black city, just barely. Forty percent Black with a 30 percent white population that is growing rapidly, due to continued rapacious gentrification,” Luqman told the crowd, which responded throughout her 18-minute presentation with hoots, hollers and applause. Luqman, also Toward Freedom‘s Board Secretary, left the mic to a standing ovation. Her talk can be found 28 minutes into this livestream playback.

Meanwhile, Bahl of the Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network described how migrants’ human rights are being violated as they are used in a political tug of war.

IWA Chairperson Azra Talat Sayeed represents Roots of Equity, a Pakistan-based group that organizes peasants, women and religious minorities in Pakistan. She described the poverty in her country, which she connected to U.S. interference. In Pakistan, 44 percent of children under the age of five are experiencing stunted growth due to lack of food.

“My country is bleeding,” Sayeed said. “It’s a massacre.”

Later, Monisha Rios, a U.S. military veteran and psychologist who lives in Puerto Rico, described the impact of U.S. militarization on women around the world and the effect of U.S. colonialism in Puerto Rico.

Then a panel discussion featured women on the front lines of the working-class movement in the United States.

Edith Saldano of Starbucks Workers United spoke of workplace harassment that led to her radicalization. “Y’all are going to cry with me today,” the Santa Cruz, California-based worker said as her face grew red. She said it is normal for customers to physically attack workers. Saldano described one incident where someone threw a banana at a barista.

The Starbucks worker identified three issues that threaten employed women: Harassment, unstable working conditions (including schedules) and workplace injuries.

“It’s consistently putting working women in survival mode.”

Saldano said already about 100 workers who have been organizing unions in Starbucks coffee shops have been fired and subsequently blacklisted from working at other company stores.

“How do we give the working class a solution?” Saldano asked.

The panel discussion also featured Christina Brown, the sister of 39-year-old Poushawn Brown, a Virginia-based Amazon employee who had no medical training, but was switched to a role that involved testing workers for COVID-19 on a daily basis. However, Christina said her sister was not provided with the proper protective gear nor with hazard pay. A few months after she began testing workers, Poushawn returned home on January 7, 2021, not feeling well. The shock came the next morning.

“She did not wake up,” Christina told conference attendees.

Now, Christina raises her sister’s 14-year-old daughter and is engaged in a legal battle with Amazon.

“I’m up against a trillion-dollar company all by myself. It’s just me doing it. I can’t stop.”

Panel moderator Monica Moorehead, who helped found the IWA, remarked on the recent U.S. federal government’s move to eliminate the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which provides food to poor households. The majority of recipients are people of color.

“This is a slow genocide,” Moorehead remarked.

The International Women’s Alliance also introduced a proposed campaign, “Meet Women’s Needs; Stop Corporate Greed!” This campaign is designed to address the failings of the U.S. government to meet the needs of women and their families, and demand change. This comes in addition to previously launched ongoing campaigns, “War and Militarism” and “Women Over Profit.”

The alliance kicked off in 2010 in Montreal in response to the International League of People’s Struggle’s 2008 call for a women’s conference to be held. 2010 was the centennial year International Toiling Women’s Day.

Later on during the first day of the conference, hundreds of women and their supporters started rallying at the Philippine embassy in Washington, D.C.

There, Vivian Flanagan from Terrapin Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines (TerpCHRP) at the University of Maryland College Park, spoke to the impacts of war on women. They focused on one weapons manufacturer found on their campus, Lockheed Martin, and shared how its former executive vice-president, Linda Gooden, is on the Board of Regents that oversees all of Maryland’s public universities.

“Let Linda’s ‘professional success’ at the expense of trafficked, exploited and martyred women affected by Lockheed Martin’s war machine be a reminder of the treachery of liberal feminism,” she said.

After marching to the World Bank, organizations from Palestinian Youth Movement, Katarungan DC, CODEPINK, and spoke about the World Bank’s role in suppressing poor countries through foreign aid that perpetuates indebtedness. Raymond Diaz from Katarungan DC shared about their parents’ migration experience.

“Much like many children of poor immigrants, my Mexican parents left everything they knew when NAFTA came in, driving thousands of laborers out of their homeland and becoming a part of the working class in this country.”

When the march arrived at the White House, speakers from United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), Committee in Solidarity of the People of El Salvador (CISPES), Anti-Imperialist Action at University of Maryland Baltimore County, International League of Peoples Struggles (ILPS), African National Women’s Organization, Resist U.S. Led War, and IWA emphasized the call for international solidarity.

At the White House, Katie Comfort of IWA called for the unity of women and urged for the need to organize.

“Women are uniting around the world against U.S. imperialism and [women in the] the U.S. [have] to be a part of that movement. The International Women’s Alliance takes seriously the call to build IWA Americas not just here in the U.S., but in the Caribbean, in Latin America, to unite women around the world, to understand our common enemy is the U.S., the U.S. state, the U.S. military, who kills and rapes our women. So, we are here today to say the movement has to start now. We are not just here this weekend to speak out about it one time, but to keep speaking out about it until this House belongs to the People. We are here to declare Women over Profit.”

Julie Varughese is editor of Toward Freedom.

Editor’s Note: This lightly edited article was originally published by The Real News.

Unless you’re buck naked as you read this, chances are that you’re wearing at least one garment manufactured in the Haitian apparel factories of Port-au-Prince, Caracol and Ouanaminthe. Those Hanes or Fruit-of-the-Loom briefs in your dresser drawer; the classic Levi’s denim jacket hanging in your closet; or that cheapo, trendy, puff-sleeved H&M frock you hope to add to your spring wardrobe—all of them were likely made by men and women in Haiti earning the barest of minimum wages.

 

Since 2019—until the government announced a modest, unsatisfactory hike just two weeks ago to quell the workers’ fighting spirit—the Haitian minimum wage for garment workers making clothing for export has been 500 gourdes a day (or $4.82 USD). The math is even crueler than expected: In exchange for an eight-hour work day, around 57,000 Haitian garment workers have been earning almost three cents less per hour than the average incarcerated worker in the United States makes, which is only 63 cents per hour.

With their products sold at major outlets like Walmart, Target, Zara and The Gap, 62 U.S. brands have profited handsomely for years by paying miserly, unlivable wages to Haitian workers. But on February 9 and 10, too poor even for strike accoutrement like matching tee-shirts or printed placards, workers marched out of the factories en masse in the first of several strategic strikes. Pouring into the streets, they raised their voices in protest of the daily exploitation and destitution they endure. Their only protest swag consisted of common leafy twigs held high in affirmation of their right to a portion of this earth’s abundance in their lifetimes. Poetry in motion; they do not stand alone.

 

On behalf of its 50 million members worldwide, the secrétaire général of the IndustriALL global union in Geneva, Atle Høie, wrote to Haiti’s Acting Prime Minister and President, Ariel Henry, urging wage relief for workers whose earning power is being crushed by inflation. Since then, the tidal wave of support for the Haitian strikers has continued to swell. Workers United, the successor union in North America to the International Ladies and Garment Workers Union, issued a statement of solidarity. Secretary Treasurer Edgar Romero admonished U.S. companies for their silence as their workers were being assaulted by state police, and reminded them that their actions are not invisible:

The world is watching, and will call to task the companies that are profiting manyfold on the backs of our Haitian brothers and sisters. It’s time for corporations, especially our American companies who import garments manufactured in Haiti to step up, and pay workers what they deserve.

Your brand is at stake.

Exploitation of Workers Is Stitched In

According to Ose Pierre, a representative of the Solidarity Center, the largest U.S.-based international worker rights organization, who is working to support the labor movement in Haiti, a typical Haitian garment worker starts their workday at 6:30 a.m. Too early to cook and eat before they leave home, many workers buy breakfast from vendors, a meal referred to in Haiti as “lunch before work.” With food and drink, “lunch before work” costs about 100 gourdes, Pierre told The Real News. They also buy their “manje midi,” or noon meal (a plate of rice, beans and meat), for about 200 gourdes. Transportation, depending on where they live, could cost 100 gourdes. With four-fifths of their day’s earnings wiped out by necessities, the only way to get marginally ahead is to volunteer for “the wages of production.”

Though the phrase might sound innocuous, wages of production is a discretionary bonus system based on over-and-above production, wherein a line of 10 or so workers make side deals with their bosses. “An importer decides, ‘Well, you were going to make 5,000 of these, but if you do 7,000 you can have some extra money,’” Pierre explained. “The workers have to work extra hard and fast.”

Almost every economic hardship in modern Haiti can be traced back to the unprecedented reparations debt that Haiti, the victor over France in its revolutionary war, was saddled with in 1825 in exchange for recognition of its independence and sovereignty—the equivalent of $21 billion, which has been paid over 122 years, and was resolved only in 1947. As a consequence, Haiti’s development has been strangled and mauled at every turn, a structural power inequality that has led to a neocolonial dependency on foreign investment that has proven impossible for any Haitian government to overcome. All of former Prime Minister Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s efforts to significantly increase wages—in 1991, 1994 and 2004—were answered with coups, sanctions, smears or all of the above.

Similarly, many of the political hardships Haiti faces today, like the ongoing instability and insecurity in the aftermath of the July assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, can be traced back to the Core Group. Imposed upon Haiti by the United Nations in 2004 after the U.S.-backed coup that ousted Aristide, the Core Group is a multi-national supervisory body with the nebulous mission of “steering the electoral process.” Its creation was originally proposed as a six-month interim transition support measure, yet it endures to this day.

Proponents of the Montana Accord, a civil society proposal put forward by a coalition of 70 political organizations and social groups, want to plan for a transition of power to stabilize the country and move toward free and fair elections by 2023 without outside interference. By contrast, acting President and Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who is answerable to the Core Group, has been pushing for elections later in 2022, which will again presumably be “steered” in service of the interests of the oligarchic forces within Haiti and the forces of international capital at the expense of another generation of Haitian workers.

Garment Workers Forced to Strike, Face Tear Gas and Live Rounds

In tension with these systemic constraints, the Haitian constitution (Section 35: Freedom to Work) explicitly guarantees workers certain rights and duties: Among them the right to a fair wage, rest, vacation and bonus, and to unionize and strike. But legal ideals aside, for decades, garment workers have been denied anything approaching the standard of fairness.

In theory, the Superior Council of Wages (SCW) is responsible for analyzing socioeconomic factors and ensuring that the minimum wage reflects changes in the cost of living at scheduled reporting intervals. Additionally, any rise in inflation over 10 percent triggers a requirement for action under Article 137 of the Haitian Labor Code. But the SCW hasn’t fulfilled its charge; thus, on January 17, noting a current inflation rate of 22.8 percent, a coalition of nine trade unions representing or affiliated with garment workers in Haiti sent an open letter to Henry seeking a wage increase from 500 gourdes ($4.82) per day to 1,500 gourdes ($14.62). With that, the unions fired their opening salvo in what Mamyrah Prosper, international coordinator of the Pan-African Solidarity Network, called in her March 2 piece for Black Agenda Report, a “Different Fight for 15.”

In February, having been ignored by Henry, the unions joined the workers in the execution of a number of strategic, multi-day strikes to force the issue. Interested onlookers could follow events as they unfolded on the “Madame Boukman—Justice 4 Haiti” Twitter account, after she began posting about ValDor Apparel, a Florida-based company that shuttered its factory in Haiti on December 31, absconding with its workers’ wages. Madame Boukman told The Real News that, building on the positive international responses to her tweets, she’s seeing growing support for the workers’ movement in and outside of Haiti.

“It’s a movement that can transfer immense power from the small, but powerful, economic elite to the poor masses,” she observed. “Haiti’s minimum wage is the lowest in the region due to years of violent suppression by external and internal forces. With a near non-existent parliament, a de facto prime minister and no president, the masses are taking it into their own hands to set a path to a living wage.”

Their actions have started to move the needle. Talks between the government, foreign factory owners, and the unions have resulted in several incremental advances and concessions on wages and proposed supports, like transportation to work. But so far the negotiations have fallen short of the strikers’ primary demand: On February 21, the SCW acted to raise the minimum wage across sectors, and the highest wage, applicable to garment workers who are part of the import/export tranche, is now 770 gourdes, which amounts to roughly half of what garment workers are demanding.

Strikers returned to the streets again on February 23, but this time they were met with lethal state violence meant to terrorize them back to their sewing machines at any price. Pierre suspects this police violence has had the opposite effect and has stiffened strikers’ resolve, though videos of the police assault against peacefully demonstrating strikers are certainly shocking.

“The workers were protesting: They have their mobiles with music, and Haitian music is playing, and they’re dancing, and they have their flyers saying what they want—their demands,” he explained. “Then the Haitian National Police came. They used tear gas.”

Besides choking on the gas, some of the workers were burned by canisters that hit their bodies and feet. Amid the mayhem, another unknown police force reportedly came and shot into the crowd.

“Masked police without any identification badges came in white cars with generic plates… and they shot the peaceful workers, and three journalists,” Pierre said. Photojournalist Maxihen Lazarre was killed, and two other journalists were injured. Another worker was shot in the foot, three people were hospitalize and many others were injured, according to local reporting. The factories were then closed—ostensibly, the closures were for Carnival celebrations, but more likely they were intended to allow worker outrage, like the toxic gas fired by police, to dissipate.

“People ask me if I am safe in Haiti, and I say, ‘I am not safe, but I am quiet,’” Pierre said.

A History of Unaccountability Pervades the International Community’s “Investments” in Haiti

Sandra Wisner, senior staff attorney for the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, thinks it’s time the international community acknowledged its role in creating these conditions on the ground. “It needs to take a look at itself,” she told The Real News, “and focus on providing a long-term, rights-based approach to development in the country instead of prioritizing foreign interests.”

The Caracol Industrial Park, where the recent spate of garment worker actions started, is a good case study.

In 2010, after the devastating earthquake, it was decided by foreign actors—the United States and the Inter-America Development Bank—to locate a new garment center in the northeast district, distant from the epicenter. But in the process of building the garment center where they did, Wisner explained, Haitians were dispossessed of valuable fertile land, replacing subsistence farming with a textile industry that exploits cheap labor. A dozen years later, hundreds of farmers and their families are still waiting to get paid for the seizure of their land and the loss of their livelihoods.

“It was slated to provide 65,000 new jobs to the country,” Wisner said of the original plan for the garment center. “But as of two years ago, it had only provided around 14,000 jobs. When the international community comes into the country and decides what development is going to look like, no matter the repercussions for Haitians, there needs to be accountability for that.”

“Where is the accountability for that?” she asks.

Frances Madeson writes about liberation struggles and the arts that inspire them. She is the author of the comic political novel, Cooperative Village. Follow her on Twitter at @FrancesMadeson.

Early in October, the United Kingdom introduced new rules for international travel in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. A “red list” of 54 countries was announced that mandated quarantine for passengers from mostly Global South countries. A few days later, the red list was revised to retain seven countries—Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Haiti, Panama, Peru and Venezuela. 

But how will these travel restrictions affect negotiations at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)’s 26th Conference of Parties, also known as COP26? This summit is scheduled to be held next month in Glasgow, Scotland, where delegates from more than 190 countries are convening to figure out how to meet the stipulations of the 2015 Paris Agreement.

However, people from the seven red-listed countries traveling to the United Kingdom must undergo a mandatory quarantine, even if they are vaccinated. And while the U.K. government has announced it will cover quarantine costs, these rules may be contributing to an already inequitable COP set-up. Previous COPs had ended in less-than-ideal outcomes over issues concerning equity.

“[The red list] evidences disparities between countries and the reality of vaccine inequality,” said Maria Alejandra Aguilar, associate lawyer in the climate justice division at Ambiente y Sociedad, an environmental non-governmental organization (NGO) in Colombia. Aguilar is an accredited observer for COP26 and despite her credentials, she worried about being able to travel to Glasgow. “The visa process was a nightmare for me and several delegates—even official ones,” she added, noting how her visa arrived on October 20, two days before her flight, even though she had applied for the visa on July 27. 

Aguilar tweeted about her experience with the British Embassy in Colombia, noting how they held onto her passport for two months without an answer. Then on October 6, they asked her what COP26 is and what she intends to do in the United Kingdom.

I want to share the level of incompetence of the @GOVUK visas&immigration- I applied the 5th of August for a visa to attend @COP26 as accredited observer @UKinColombia 2 months without answer + withholding my passport, today this was their reply #COP26 pic.twitter.com/JjFcwTwgxU

— Maria Alejandra Aguilar (@AguilarMaria21) October 6, 2021

Meanwhile, Colombia is only reporting around 1,000 cases per day compared to the United Kingdom’s approximately 50,000 cases per day.

“I haven’t been able to understand why my country was on the red list, but the U.S. was never on the list, even though they had many COVID cases,” said Adrian Martínez, director and founder of La Ruta del Clima, a Costa Rican NGO focusing on climate governance processes and climate justice. As of publication, the United States had about 80,000 cases per day, whereas Costa Rica had around 600 cases per day. “We felt that we were being differentiated because of where we’re from,” he added. 

Until a few days ago, most of Latin America was on the red list. Martínez said that is why countries like Mexico were considering sending only the core team of negotiators to Glasgow. He also added many NGOs in these countries did not try to obtain visas because they thought they would not be able to participate in COP26, given the restrictions.

If a country only sends a core team of negotiators, experts who routinely accompany negotiators to climate-change negotiations very likely will not be doing so because of the uncertainties that have arisen in the process, even with the revised red list. These countries also may reduce the number of negotiators they would send to Glasgow.

Martínez described the situation as a “distraction” from the prep work negotiators and other experts normally engaged during the weeks prior to previous COPs. “How to participate [at COP26] and who can get there has become the main issue,” he explained. 

A COP26 spokesperson said ensuring the voices of those most affected by climate change are heard is a “priority for the COP26 Presidency.” The spokesperson also added financial support is available for delegates from developing countries for quarantine stays. But the spokesperson has yet to respond to what extent such financial support can remedy problems Global South representatives have faced in the last few months and will continue to face during negotiations. Meanwhile, the U.K. Department for Transport has yet to reply to this reporter. Questions also were sent to the UNFCCC. This article will be updated when responses are received.

“This closed, gatekeeping approach [to COPs] is political,” Martínez said. “It was supposed to be the most inclusive COP, but it has been the opposite. We had to complain and fight and persevere.”

Rishika Pardikar is a freelance journalist in Bangalore, India.