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

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.

Prajakta Khade walked into a public health center daily for three months in early 2021, without ever receiving medical care. The healthcare worker’s 26 notebooks—containing more than 3,000 pages of community health records—point to why she couldn’t seek treatment for her ailments. She was simply too busy.

In March 2020, India’s health ministry tasked 1 million Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) like Khade with COVID-19 duty in rural areas. This, in a country where 65 percent of its 1.38 billion people live outside cities. Suddenly, ASHAs’ workload increased exponentially. Yet, they remain underpaid and now suffer stress-related chronic ailments.

“If a positive case was found in the area, we had to visit the patient, contact trace, arrange medical facilities, measure their oxygen and temperature levels daily, and ensure they complete quarantine,” Khade explained about the added duties to treat the infectious respiratory disease. But all Khade was given to do her job in the assigned area in India’s Maharashtra state was a single N95 mask and 200 milliliters of sanitizer.

ASHAs, an all-women healthcare cadre, remain the foot soldiers of India’s rural healthcare. One worker is appointed for every 1,000 citizens under India’s 2005 National Rural Health Mission. ASHAs are responsible for more than 70 tasks, including providing first-contact healthcare, counsel regarding birth preparedness, and pre- and post-natal care. Plus, they help the population access public healthcare and ensure universal immunization, among other things.

The World Health Organization announced a pandemic in March 2020. But in many countries, lack of adequate healthcare and no social safety nets amid lockdowns wrecked the lives of ordinary people. In India, for example, an additional 150 million to 199 million people are expected to enter poverty in 2021 and 2022.

Chronic Illnesses Spike

One day about a year ago, while surveying people in her village of Vhannur in India’s Maharashtra state, 40-year-old Khade felt dizzy. But she couldn’t take a break. “At one point, my face was swollen, and I could barely see anything.” It turned out her blood pressure level had surged to 252/180 mmHg (millimeter of Mercury), much higher than the standard limit of 120/80. That is how she got diagnosed with hypertension.

However, a month’s worth of medications didn’t help because she continued to experience stress as her workload increased. Senior officials at the health center had early on issued an order to submit patient records daily by noon.

ASHAs, who aren’t considered full-time workers, receive performance-based incentives paid on the number of tasks completed. “For COVID duty, the government decided our worth as merely 33 Indian Rupees per day (43 U.S. cents),” she said. “We received this amount only for three months in the past two years.”

Moreover, during the peak of COVID-19 cases in 2021, salaries for Maharashtra’s ASHAs were delayed by five months, according to Khade. Netradipa Patil, an ASHA from Maharashtra’s Kolhapur district and leader of a union that represents more than 3,000 ASHAs, confirmed this.

One day last year, Khade’s supervisor asked for a list of hypertension and diabetes patients from her village of about 1,200 people—at 10 o’clock at night.

“How could I survey the entire community in the night?” she asked.

Often, such orders meant skipping lunch and staying hungry for 11 hours at a stretch. ASHAs worked four hours prior to the pandemic. Now, 12-hour days are normal.

When medications didn’t help, Khade consulted two private doctors. “After six months of hassle, the doctor doubled my dose to 50 milligrams.” Khade lost over 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of weight and was placed on medications to address anxiety. Even today, she suffers from fatigue.

“I was never this weak,” she asserted.

Chronic diseases among ASHAs are rising rapidly because of the workload, says Patil. “We protect the entire community, but there’s no one to look after our health.” ASHAs in Maharashtra, she says, average a monthly income of Rs 3,500 to 5,000 ($45 to $66 USD).

This reporter spoke to ASHAs’ senior officials from Maharashtra’s Kagal block. (In India, a cluster of villages form a block and several blocks form a district. Vhannur village is in the Kagal block of Maharashtra’s Kolhapur district.) Senior officials said they are not responsible for ASHAs’ deteriorating mental and physical health, and pointed to the Indian government’s order to submit data. The officials didn’t want to be named. Instead, they relayed that they also are overworked.

“ASHAs do the majority of the health department’s work, and they are massively underpaid for their duty,” said Dr. Jessica Andrews, a medical officer at Kolhapur’s Shiroli Primary Health Center. She has been handling mental health cases. “Without them, the health system will collapse.”

‘Not Treated As Humans’

Several ASHAs across India have worked for over a year without a break. One of them is Pushpavati Sutar, 46, diagnosed with hypotension (low blood pressure) and diabetes within seven months of COVID-19 duty in November 2020. Like Khade, she experienced constant spells of dizziness.

“Often, there was fake news of community COVID transmission in my area,” she said.

Every day, senior officials at the health center hounded her to find more details about such instances.

An ASHA for 13 years, she’s never made an error in her surveys and was sure of no community transmission. “After investigating, I found that the accused was COVID negative. Instead, two of his relatives were positive.”

She had to clear such misconceptions almost every day, answer senior officials’ questions, collect records and perform her regular duty. “For several days, I couldn’t sleep,” she remembered.

Further, fearing COVID-19 guidelines and quarantine rules, community members began demanding ASHAs hide COVID-19 cases. “People even accused us of spreading COVID as we would survey the entire village,” Sutar recounted. Moreover, she said senior officials asked ASHAs to visit the families of COVID-19 patients—instead of allowing data collection over the phone—putting them at risk of infection.

“At several places, there have been instances of community violence, where ASHAs were beaten up,” said Patil, who has filed legal complaints on behalf of the assaulted workers and is helping them mentally recover.

Kolhapur’s ASHA union has written to several government authorities, including Maharashtra’s chief minister and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, highlighting the mental toll of COVID-19 duty. Still, none of their letters have garnered a helpful response.

“Forget adequate pay,” said Khade, as she continued surveying, juggling between completing her task and trying to keep her mind at ease. “We are not even treated as humans.”

 

Sanket Jain is an independent journalist based in the Kolhapur district of the western Indian state of Maharashtra. He was a 2019 People’s Archive of Rural India fellow, for which he documented vanishing art forms in the Indian countryside. He has written for Baffler, Progressive Magazine, Counterpunch, Byline Times, The National, Popula, Media Co-op, Indian Express and several other publications.

CALÍ, Colombia—Former militant-turned-politician Gustavo Petro had sharp words for his flashy millionaire opponent, who is thought to have won votes among the Colombian youth because of his presence on a social media platform.

“You can’t combat corruption with phrases on TikTok,” Petro told a crowd on Sunday night in Bogotá. He referred to Rodolfo Hernández, 77, who ran his campaign on ending corruption based on his success in the construction industry.

During Sunday’s first round of the presidential election, Petro did not garner the 50 percent needed to avoid a second round on June 19. He won 40 percent of votes while Hernández received 28 percent. The first round attracted 47 percent of the country’s 39 million registered voters.

Hernández, who ran on the League of Anti-Corruption Governors ticket, has been compared to former U.S. President Donald Trump and former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, both known for sex scandals and off-the-cuff remarks. However, what might help Hernández win the presidency is an alliance of right-wing and center-right candidates who had run in the first round. Competitors like right-wing Team for Colombia coalition candidate Federíco Gutiérrez and center-right-wing Hope Center coalition candidate Sergio Fajardo announced their support for Hernández in their concession speeches Sunday night.

Ajamu Baraka, an advisor to Francia Márquez, Petro’s vice-presidential running mate, said right-wing forces combined with systematic voter suppression through violence and intimidation will make it difficult for the Pacto Histórico ticket to pull off a win.

“Turnout is going to be key, but as we saw yesterday, there are areas where paramilitary forces intentionally prevented communities from voting,” he said. “Communities that—if they voted—they would have voted for the Historic Pact.”

AfroResistance, a group that advocates for Afro-descendant women and girls in the Americas, helped organize a 29-woman election observer delegation, the largest group of observers in the history of Colombia’s elections organized through Misión de Observación Electoral (Electoral Observation Mission). Half of the group observed the process in Calí, while the other half monitored in the predominantly Afro-descendant port city of Buenaventura.

Election observers founded irregularities in Buenaventura, where a 2017 civil strike shut down the country’s main port on the Pacific Ocean for 22 days.

Representatives from Pacto Histórico—the left-wing coalition Petro ran his campaign through—were kidnapped and disappeared from the polling site after the group of observers left. Parties were permitted to keep party observers at each voting station. After consulting with a Buenaventura-based observer, the observers decided to not return to the site to inquire. Election officials were not immediately available to comment to Toward Freedom.

Buenaventura is known for “chop houses,” buildings where paramilitaries have been known to cut adversaries’ bodies alive as a warning to others. Paramilitaries in Colombia have guarded for years the production and flow of drugs out of the country. Meanwhile, the United States has for 22 years poured $4.5 billion in the form of military training and arms into Colombia.

Voting appears to go smoothly in another voting station in Calí. Local activist Charo Mina Rojas (@renacientes) says many more people are voting, but fear of the repercussions for expressing opinions have kept campaign signage on cars and buildings to a minimum. #ColombiaDecide pic.twitter.com/Vf9ULHIcrm

— Toward Freedom (@TowardFreedom) May 29, 2022

Jemima Pierre, an AfroResistance delegation observer who represented the Black Alliance for Peace as the organization’s Haiti/Americas Coordinator, said polling stations in Calí were categorized on a range of one to six, with six representing the most affluent neighborhoods. She and her group of observers were assigned to visit polling stations that ranged between three and six. They noticed the more affluent neighborhoods contained biometric machines that checked voter identification cards.

“It seemed to me there was a correlation between class, color, access,” she said.

Charo Mina Rojas, a member of Proceso de Comunidades Negras, an alliance of Afro-descendant organizations in Colombia, said it’s normal for people to post signs of campaigns they support on their cars and homes. This year was different, though.

“It’s a lot more low-profile, low-key this time,” she said, adding she hadn’t heard people openly speaking about for whom they are voting. “It’s hard to know. I think some people feel afraid of saying who they are voting for because it’s so contested and kind of dangerous for some of us.”

Indeed, many voters declined to speak with this reporter outside a poll in Calí, citing their fear.

“People may be voting for a change, but keeping it quiet to keep safe,” Mina said after voting at a poll in Calí.

But some voters were happy to share their perspectives with Toward Freedom.

“[Change] depends on us. We have to stop what’s been happening for years,” said Jaime Rodriguez, 69, commenting on decades of paramilitary violence tied to the Colombian elites and U.S. control of the state. That’s why he said he voted for Petro. “The government meddles everywhere.”

Margarita Ramirez, a retired marketing firm researcher who spent her career traveling through urban and remote areas of the country, told Toward Freedom she voted for Petro.

“The situation of the people in the city is very different from the situation in the rural areas,” she said, describing her travels to Amazonian areas like Arauca, where she witnessed a mother with no food to feed her children breakfast. The World Bank states 35 percent of Colombians live in poverty. Only 69 percent of Colombians eat three meals per day. “Those people do not have access to electricity, to water, to education, to food. There is no dignity.”

Meanwhile, in the cities, house maids can work upwards of 13 hours a day, leaving their children to fend for themselves, said Ramirez, 59.

“Why don’t those people help those people’s children have access to shoes, to education?” she asked. “It’s time for a change.”

Julie Varughese is editor of Toward Freedom. She recently reported on Colombia’s presidential elections here and here.