Our Files - Sokowa, Interference!

Grupo M’s constant interference practices are notorious. Already, the IFCTU reports showed various forms of pressure this management exerted on their factory workers in the Dominican Republic to hinder them from participating in the lives, and especially the struggles of their factories’ unions.

Recently, the support letter addressed to the Haitian Grupo M workers, co-signed by the Fedotrazona and the CGT (June 9th, 2004) in the Dominican Republic, denounced the establishment of a yellow union in one of the factories in conflict, the FM, in Santiago.

At Ouanaminthe’s Codevi, repeated illegal interferences at all levels by Capellan himself (or his mandated delegates) to attempt to set aside the presence of the May First Batay Ouvriye Union Federation from debates are well known. Recently yet, his lawyer expressed his “strong desire” to not deal with us. Illegal practices, if there ever were, the SOKOWA union being duly affiliated with our Union Federation. They are, in fact, reinforced, by other forms of interference, such as the attitude upheld by management to wish to “prepare training sessions for the union” (sic) (besides, they write this without the slightest shame, as one cans see in various elements of correspondence of which we have copy).

Presently, however, these practices have marked a qualitative advancement: a truly systematic campaign has been initiated. For, even when these illegal intrusions always existed – ever since the first case of Ariel Jerome, or mentioned as an illustration in the Verification Commission’s May 25th report: such worker “had good relations with Mr. Moises, from Human Ressources, until the day he began attending union meetings…” -, it is now a war that management has opened. Indeed, since the Interministerial Commission’s visit, the three unionized workers who answered in all honesty to its questions have been persecuted. One of them was suspended. All three were harassed: “who allowed you to answer to this commission’s questions?”. We denounced this significant lack of integrity by letter to the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor during our picket in front of its offices on Friday July 2nd. Furthermore, reinforced by the fact that the government hasn’t been able, or wished, to give an adequate answer to this management’s repeated exactions, Codevi management has gone one step further in its illegal repression: now, at the MD factory, almost all the unionized workers have been fired during the last June 4th large wave of firings when, without the least warning, 370 workers were kicked out. Seizing advantage of this vacuum, a new, yellow union committee has just been introduced; it meets directly within the factory and whoever refuses to join is liable to be fired, the recent firings never having ended and presently also systematically occurring on this basis. We hold this information not only from various workers who complained about it during the union’s last general assembly last Sunday July 11th, but also from a factory worker, present at the assembly (whose name we will preserve for the moment) who a manager had asked to participate in the above-mentioned committee. Having refused, arguing that there already existed a union with its executive committee, that she was a member of it and didn’t understand why managers (especially!) were insisting on forming a new one, she was directly sent in quarantine, at the training center, where she has been ever since! Moreover, at the end of the same meeting, some fifty workers of the yellow union being formed appeared at the assembly, declaring that they represented the new MD factory union and that, besides, the latest ministerial delegation that came to discuss with management last July 9th, met with them!

This new committee, similarly to its homologue fabricated by Grupo M’s illegal maneuvers in the Dominican Republic, has the objective of consolidating a terror, amongst the workers, of adhering to SOKOWA. Terror based, in reality, in the present targeted firings / reinstatements (the firings being, we repeat, all illegal in content and procedure).

A tract, annexed, circulated by the factory management, confirms the latter’s present resolutely anti-union choice. With sugary and crudely misleading terms, this rag distributed within the factory itself refrains as yet from formally naming the “group of persons who never were in agreement with the project” but attributes to it the responsibility of the MD factory’s possible closing. First of all, this allegation, naturally false (as is generally the case with this Grupo, which we are being to know well) inverses the conditioning set down by the giant customer Sara Lee which, quite to the contrary, demanded significant advancements from Grupo M in its relationship with the union and the reinstatement of the fired workers in order to begin to envision continuing with orders. But, worse, according to the position implicitly set forward in this leaflet, management has decided not to satisfy its customers’ demands!

Our immediate reply, also annexed, sets the record straight but certainly won’t hinder this Grupo which, caught between two fires, has deliberately chosen - and this, since the beginning of its operations - to practice the most complete illegality. Assisted by the weakness and complicity of the Haitian State, it is now intending to enjoy the most total impunity. The present update and attached pieces of evidence should nevertheless make more evident, if still necessary, how far Grupo M is from accomplishing its commitments. “We respect workers' right to form and join organizations of their choice and to bargain collectively without unlawful interference. We will ensure that workers who make such decisions or participate in such organizations are not the subject of discrimination or punitive disciplinary actions and that the representatives of such organizations have access to their members under conditions established either by local laws or mutual agreement between us and the workers organization” (IFC-World Bank loan covenants to Grupo M)! And the IFC to specifically add in these very specific terms: “failure to abide by these provisions will be treated explicitly as an event of default”.

INTERFERENCE!

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