U.S. Pressured Haiti To Lower Minimum Wage

[Saya]

The Nation has a scoop—or had, actually—from Wikileaks cables showing that the Obama administration pressured Haiti not to raise its minimum wage to 61 cents an hour, or five bucks a day.

The magazine posted the story the other day and has now pulled it, saying it will repost it next Wednesday “To accord with the publishing schedule of Haiti Liberté,” its partner on the piece.

But you can’t stuff the news genie back in the bottle. They already put it in my browser and many others, so I’ll summarize what it said (and I’ll link to it once The Nation republishes it).

Two years ago, Haiti unanimously passed a law sharply raising its minimum wage to 61 cents an hour. That doesn’t sound like much (and it isn’t), but it was two and a half times the then-minimum of 24 cents an hour.

This infuriated contractors for (UPDATE: I originally wrote that the companies themselves did this here, but The Nation wrote that it was contractors for the companies, so I’ve added “contractors for” here) American corporations like Hanes and Levi Strauss that pay Haitians slave wages to sew their clothes. They said they would only fork over a seven-cent-an-hour increase, and they got the State Department involved. The U.S. ambassador put pressure on Haiti’s president, who duly carved out a $3 a day minimum wage for textile companies (the U.S. minimum wage, which itself is very low, works out to $58 a day).

The Nation:

Still the US Embassy wasn’t pleased. A deputy chief of mission, David E. Lindwall, said the $5 per day minimum “did not take economic reality into account” but was a populist measure aimed at appealing to “the unemployed and underpaid masses.”
Well, hey. Imagine Haitians doing things for their “unemployed and underpaid masses” rather than rich Yankee corporations. The outrage! No wonder we have 9.1 percent unemployment and 16 percent underemployment here while the folks who sent the economy in the tank are back making millions.

Let’s do a little math. Haiti has about 25,000 garment workers. If you paid each of them $2 a day more, it would cost their employers $50,000 per working day, or about $12.5 million a year.

Zooming in on specific companies helps clarify this even more. As of last year Hanes had 3,200 Haitians making t-shirts for it. Paying each of them two bucks a day more would cost it about $1.6 million a year. Hanesbrands Incorporated made $211 million on $4.3 billion in sales last year, and presumably it would pass on at least some of its higher labor costs to consumers.

Or better yet, Hanesbrands CEO Richard Noll could forego some of his rich compensation package...He could pay for the raises for those 3,200 t-shirt makers with just one-sixth of the $10 million in salary and bonus he raked in last year.

And that five dollars a day? The Nation reports that a Haitian family of three (two kids) needed $12.50 a day in 2008 to make ends meet.

But, of course, the clothing companies are hardly America’s only imperial beneficiaries in Haiti, as The Nation reports in a story on the oil companies that it hasn’t pulled.

Further Reading:

A Triangle Shirtwaist-Like Disaster, Buried By the U.S. Press. Outsourcing tragedies while paying a sliver of what our workers made 100 years ago.

Race to the Bottom. A Times story illustrates a peril that is a virtue to some.

(Ex) Titans of Industry Against Free Trade Fundamentalism. Intel founder Andy Grove calls for a serious re-examination of our trade and industrial policies.

http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/a_pulle..._us_booste.php

Next person to say that Haiti is poor because its people are lazy gets a punch in the nuts.

[CptSternn]

There is not enough information to say whether it was a good or bad idea. Raising the minimum wage for no reason other than to stoke popular support is not good for any economy. Just because their current wage is so low COMPARED to the USD doesn't mean it is bad. Factors like cost of living and employment are supposed to drive wages, not government decisions.

If you don't take into account all the factors you end up with inflation and then devaluation.

It reminds me of all of those people who complain about the wages of people in India and China. I am against sweatshops sure, but pay is based on more factors than what the US dollar is worth. People who claim workers are being taken advantage of but fail to realise even though they might only get $10 a day after the conversion of their money to USD that the amount they are getting is double or treble the normally daily rate of everyone else in their country, meaning they can live like kings in their own economy.

You have to take into account the prices of things in that country. If $5 USD in Haiti is say 25% of your rent for the month it's not so bad is it?

Until bush took office the Canadian dollar and Australian dollar were worth less than half of the US dollar. Today, both are worth more than the US dollar. Does that mean the US should raise it's minimum wage to keep it's people paid as much as Canadians or Australians simply because they now have less on a global scale?

It's all relative.

[Saya]

You idiot, the article says $12.50 a day is whats needed for a family of three to make ends meet.

And the Canadian dollar wasn't worth half, it was worth 65 cents American in 99, and that goes up and down every year. And if the cost of living is comparable in both countries, it does seem the minimal wage in the US is unlivable. Here its 10 dollars an hour, and I pay less in rent than what some American gnetters say they pay.

Also, it still doesn't make it okay for the US to compromise a nation's autonomy just for the sake of being able to pay a slave wage, don't say they had Haitian's best interests at heart, its for profit's sake.

[Despanan]

This is unconscionable.

[CptSternn]

Originally Posted by Saya

You idiot, the article says $12.50 a day is whats needed for a family of three to make ends meet.

And the Canadian dollar wasn't worth half, it was worth 65 cents American in 99, and that goes up and down every year. And if the cost of living is comparable in both countries, it does seem the minimal wage in the US is unlivable. Here its 10 dollars an hour, and I pay less in rent than what some American gnetters say they pay.

Also, it still doesn't make it okay for the US to compromise a nation's autonomy just for the sake of being able to pay a slave wage, don't say they had Haitian's best interests at heart, its for profit's sake.

You are aware America doesn't have a living wage? Working for minimum wage in America won't even pay for your rent, much less support a family of three. Shouldn't Americans be fighting for their own living wage before they start going after other countries and criticizing them for not doing something they themselves are not doing?

It's hard for America to tell any country they need to raise their minimum wage when it is such a huge issue in their own country.

[JCC]

I don't think Sternn's brain works once someone mentions America.

[Ben Lahnger]

THIS ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ +1

Originally Posted by Saya

Next person to say that Haiti is poor because its people are lazy gets a punch in the nuts.

They got screwed in the deal when they won their independence, and ever since they've been getting screwed by other countries and by having corrupt governments (until relatively recently.)

[Grausamkeit]

I was told they were poor because they made that deal with the devil?

*runs*