Codevi Ouanaminthe Free Trade Zone Files (Archive)

June 6, 2004

ALERT : GENERALIZED VIOLENCE ON CODEVI WORKERS !

Permanent intimidation, insults, constant threats, harassment, forced strippings, beatings, kidnapping… all of this, under the repression of the Dominican armed forces once again illegally called in by the free trade zone management, in direct violation of territory, as well as of the recent agreements established during the workers’ reinstatement.

According to the reinstatement agreements, the next step was to reestablish negotiations in view of satisfying the workers’ demands. Other than one meeting in which Grupo M’s representative, Mr. Cruz, received the union’s list of demands already distributed to all, no serious dialogue was ever able to be obtained. Indeed, at the next meeting, Mr. Cruz not only categorically refused the totally legal presence of Batay Ouvriye’s delegate, but further contented himself with simply enumerating a few points management accepted to consider. With this, he left the room. Nothing had ever even been initiated.

One must say that, meanwhile, the workers’ situation in the factory has seriously worsened. Exactions of all kinds, violence, intimidations and supervisors’ threats, illegal firings… and, especially, the injection of unknown “vaccines” injected to all of the factory women, without the least documentation… Might these be sterilizations? The fact remains that nine of these women had miscarriages, some of them at an advanced phase (eight months) of their pregnancy. And the exploitation hasn’t stopped increasing, daily, through a new system of “tickets” rejected by the workers in their totality,within their permanent resistance…

Finally, the bucket overflowed when at the last meeting formally accepted by management after many demands, on Tuesday, June second, Mr. Cruz presented himself at the factory but displayed his contempt for the workers and their union by not even appearing at the projected meeting, leaving shortly after, ignoring the problem totally.

This is how, assembled in meeting on the same Tuesday evening, the workers unanimously decided to launch within forty-eight hours a work stoppage to show management their general discontent. If management should choose to maintain its negative position, then a strike would follow on the following Monday (June 7th). Following legal stipulations, this decision was duly communicated to the Ministry of the Social Affairs and Labor, as well as to the Codevi direction. of the were warned duly of these arrangements, within the delay legally required; the signed receipt of these documents are with the union’s secretariat.

On the next Thursday, June 3rd, the work stoppage was held from nine o’clock to nine thirty and was unanimously followed. The main manager, Mr. Luis Gill, tried to summon to his office two members chosen by himself amongst the union, the General Coordinator, Mr. Borgella, and the Secretary, Mr. Miratel Joseph. This practice is in itself illegal because it is not management’s prerogative to decide the union’s representation. The workers, aware of their rights in this question, presented themselves with a complete delegation of twelve members chosen by them. Then, Mr. Gill chose to lecture them without end on that which he considered to be a lack of council in the union, on the fact he had been asking them the list of union members in vain, and so on and so forth, all of this in direct violation of the Work Code’s stipulation concerning management interference. The union refusing, correctly, to answer, Mr. Gill refused to let them go and it is only thanks to the intervention of their colleagues outside who, realizing what was going on, came in great number, clamoring, that they were able to get out of this difficult situation.

On the following day, Friday, Mr. Capellan himself came to the factory. Instead of holding a dialogue, he simply threatened the workers of being fired, alleging a loss of several million dollars because of a lack of productivity, but making no mention of the negotiation process and/or the various problems confronted by the workers.

Later in the afternoon, in view of firing four members of the M.D. t-shirt factory, Mr. Gill summoned them in a small room called the “dark room”, had the door locked and Dominican “guardias” (once again illegally on Haitian territory) stand outside the door. Under the threat of weapons, these women were interrogated in police fashion, their badges and shirts identifying them as factory workers were ripped off of them. As they were inside the room for over an hour or two, their colleagues became alarmed and approached the room shouting. Two Dominican guards already present called others; a whole truck arrived, the guards aiming their weapons in direction of the workers. Order was shouted to the workers to back off behind a line traced on the ground with a rifle. Thus ended this week of work, the workers not even having received their weekly pay and a good number not even having been able to recover their bikes from the factory. A four-month pregnant woman was thrown to the floor, in a pool of mud, her dress torn. The fired workers who had remained topless benefited from the generosity of their colleagues to be able to cover themselves with bits of borrowed clothes.

These events have for us an alarming significance. “Get rid of the natural, it comes back stronger” says a proverb: Grupo M once again is employing the most savage violence (beating workers and even pregnant women!), violating sovereignty in a reiterated manner (calling repeatedly the Dominican armed forces onto Haitian soil) and in sadistic horror (provoked abortions).

It is important to add the role of certain members of the Haitian bourgeoisie, Michael Roy and Carl Denis (the latter being a notorious putschist who overtly affirmed his adherence to the most reactionary and corrupt forces of the country during the three 1991 coup years), who accompany this process while attempting to bribe members of the union and even of the verification commission, and play the role of disinformation agents. Never these two men have deigned to explain themselves concerning who they represent or what brings them to interfere in this conflict.

Also, the role of this government which, after having ignored numerous requests of intervention from the May First Batay Ouvriye Union Federation, as well as from the union itself, since the beginning and all throughout the conflict --- at the slightest call from the employers sent its representatives from the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor at once, accompanying management even within its cars, and more ! intending to establish its offices in the local of the Codevi (Commission Verification report, 7 May 2004).

The Codevi workers thus find themselves alone before this orchestrated, armed, highly violent and in all points illegal and sadistic offensive. This is therefore a most urgent alert. Who knows what will become of the workers during the Monday strike? As always, your action of diffusing this information, the most extensively possible, denunciations by all means available, direct or indirect pressure and all forms of mobilization are a mark of solidarity and necessary common struggle.
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