BATAY OUVRIYE PRESS STATEMENT

Port-au-Prince, February 10th, 2005

Batay Ouvriye greets the press with us today as we present the latest information on the developments at the CODEVI free trade zone in Ouanaminthe. We thank you also for your continued concern regarding this question that has kept the news throughout last year. We’re asking you to maintain this interest since the struggle is continuing also. The workers still have numerous point of struggle to carry out in order lower the exploitation they are facing in the free trade zone.

Contrary to what we’ve been hearing, that the conflict has been resolved between the workers, the union representing them and management, we believe an advancement has been made in this question, since gains were established during the two days of negotiation spent with the company, but that doesn’t mean at all that the conflict is over. We believe that the struggle will be hardest after the agreement protocol. That will be another moment for careful workers to be most vigilant in order for the sentences written on paper to be truly applied. In this moment, anything can happen. The SOCOWA union and all the other workers have to continue to mobilize for the agreement to be respected and they need to use this document to seize their rights and obtain still more gains. This is how we understand the agreement signed on February 5th, 2005, two days before SOCOWA’s first establishment birthday. In this sense, we can say that with this agreement’s signature, SOCOWA has a tool to use to advance in another new year. It is an progress, a step ahead, with respect to last year.

For us, at Batay Ouvriye, who were at SOCOWA’s side throughout the two days of negotiations, facing the CODEVI management representatives, we can say there are positive aspects which were obtained in the agreement. For instance:

* The company’s recognition of union freedom, which means that the owners have to respect the SOCOWA union’s right to operate unreservedly throughout the free trade zone. It is in this framework that we understand its agreement to reinstate 5 union leaders presently, a few days after the agreement. Besides, as we speak, these workers should already be working. This is a first proof that CODEVI management recognizes SOCOWA’s presence in the factory, by accepting for all the union’s leadership to be reinstated in the work. In addition, an agreement was settled upon for the over 150 workers fired between June 11th and 20th to return to work gradually as Levi-Strauss and Sara Lee return orders to the free trade zone. These 151 workers will have priority in reinstatement. We should add that CODEVI intended to reinstate only 40 workers and asked for these workers to sign a document saying that they renounced to the use of violence. This didn’t happen. We succeeded in ensuring the 150 workers reinstatement with no condition and with no one having any files saying they ever recognized any violence. This question of violence the company brought up was never proved and besides the June 11th and the following days firings were massive, indiscriminate, ones, to destroy the union. Quite the contrary, another major element of the settlement is the formal accord prohibiting the use of the army or security guards in workplace conflicts.

* In order for the workers to be able to obtain a form of compensation, we accepted a compromise as a help fund for the workers still waiting to return to work. We had demanded for their reinstatement without any discrimination and with compensation, which means that they would maintain their seniority and receive a sum equaling 7 months of their salary. The CODEVI representatives demonstrated that the company was in major economic difficulties, that it wouldn’t be possible for them to accept the cost of these reinstatements. They agreed to rehire the workers and for both parties to work together to try to obtain funds to assist the workers still waiting to return to work from various foundations.

* Creation of a Joint Commission with representatives of both sides to investigate workplace conflicts in the meantime for an agreement to be attained on the procedure for conflict resolutions. For us, this Joint Commission will be a place of struggle for the workers to bring forward their demands and seek solutions to the conflicts, as well as to mark more gains in the development of their fights.

* Another aspect reinforcing the earlier point concerning union freedom is a concrete application of these rights: the agreement in principle that within the six months following the agreement protocol signed, the union will meet with management to negotiate a collective convention. This point is for us an essential gain as a battleground for the workers to advance in their deeper demands, to emerge from individual contracts that tie their arms in order to arrive, rather, at a collective contract that allows them more than the limits imposed by the labor legislation.

* A last aspect we consider important and that we are asking for the press to continue to follow up on is the vaccinations question. The union should be receiving all CODEVI / Grupo M management files to try to shed light on this question. The company has agreed to give all explanations necessary and, if the union feels there is basis for the issue to be furthered on to justice, it will be legitimately entitled to do so. So, SOCOWA will have a large task to accomplish to obtain this scientific material and the assistance of other persons or organizations to clarify this question.

These are the few points we feel important in the settlement agreed upon. We think it is a positive step but the major work is still ahead: the struggle must continue to ensure this agreement’s respect and application and for it to continue to be a basis for further advancement.

We salute the tenacity and conviction of the SOCOWA union workers who initiated this battle over six months ago, a battle in which they confronted a major company of the industrial sector who was furthermore upheld by all of the Haitian bosses of the Association of Haitian Industrialists (ADIH) and that had the complicity of the various government authorities, especially the Ministry of Commerce and Industry and the Prime Minister’s Office. We are taking the opportunity to point out that a large number of these bosses are presently talking about a “new social contract” but don’t even accept to negotiate collective work contracts within their own factories. For us, this protocol of agreement is an example for all workers in the assembly industry of the Port-au-Prince Industrial Park to use in the advancement of their own battles. Only in the fight will we find solutions to our problems in the factory, not in telling ourselves that “we’re better off worse than out”.

We, at Batay Ouvriye, will continue to advance in this path for the mass of Haitian workers, whether agricultural day laborers or poor sharecropper peasants, and all other exploited and dominated workers to find a solution in their battles. As we always say: our lives, as workers, is a battle with no pause, a battle with no stopping.