Feb. 25th, 2006

Batay Ouvriye wishes to inform the press and the public in general that, following the tireless struggles of the SOKOWA-Batay Ouvriye union at the Ouanaminthe free trade zone, and thanks to the vigilance and important commitment of the union sector and national and international progressives, peoples of the whole world will from here on benefit of new standards destined to lessen to some degree the ferocious exploitation of multinationals on the planet.

Indeed, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) which is the World Bank’s investment branch and had loaned 20 million dollars to the Dominican Republic’s Grupo M, to set up this Haitian free trade zone, has finally adopted a set of regulations conditioning its disbursements to social responsibility and sustainable development. Amongst these regulations are the right to unionize and collective bargaining, health rights and protection against unemployment.

Certainly, this measure has serious limitations, particularly concerning efficient measures of implementation, as well as an often vague terminology and insufficient specific constraints. These are the reflection of the real resistance the Corporation had opposed to its adoption, thus revealing its basic unity with the multinationals. The Code remains nevertheless (and all the more) a turning event, that we have to continue to advance so it can spread, diffusing towards all the international organizations investing in our countries. It's also our responsibility to continue to force the regulatory code as such.

With this struggle that has set a worldwide historical precedent that will allow workers internationally to benefit of these significant advances, Batay Ouvriye wishes to call out to the attention of the Haitian private sector, and the Association of Haitian Industrialists (ADIH) in particular, how vain, archaic and unsustainable are the attempts of its members to block the fundamental rights of the workers at the national scale. Yet recently, the application of the wage adjustments in the free trade zone were slowed by the reserves and comments of members of this group.

The Batay Ouvriye movement will continue without halt in all national and international struggles in defense of all exploited workers:

ORGANIZED WORKERS WILL CARRY VICTORY, ALWAYS!