History of HERO
HERO is a bill authored by Senator Mike DeWine (R-OH) regarding Haiti. HERO stands for Haiti Economic Recovery Opportunity Act.
DeWine began planning HERO in 2002, and he found a series cosponsors, such as Senators Bill Nelson and Bob Graham of Florida, both Democrats, as well as some Representatives, including Kendrick Meek who represents Miami and other Black Caucus members like Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters and Charles Rangel (a couple of whom have withdrawn sponsorship). It is supposed to give Haiti ”favorable trade status” advantages.
On July 16, 2004, days before the Donor’s Conference in Washington, the U.S. Senate passed the bill, with an amendment that gave the Haitian government more conditions to follow. Now it is at the House of Representatives, in the Ways and Means Committee. Again, Kendrick Meek is listed as a sponsor, with five other Representatives from Florida: Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Mark Foley (who also visited Haiti this year), Porter Goss (recently nominated and confirmed as the next CIA director), Katherine Harris (who directed George W. Bush’s 2000 Presidential campaign for the state of Florida while also serving as Florida’s Attorney General, responsible for overseeing the elections), and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.
What is HERO?
HERO would benefit owners of Haitian textile factories with an exemption of tariffs. It is a “free trade” legislation, like the FTAA. The bill would amend and update the Caribbean Basin Initiative, a neocolonial vision brought by President Reagan in the 1980s. The author of HERO said that it would bring about several tens of thousands of new jobs for the country. Other institutions, like the National Coalition for Haitian Rights (NCHR), advocated for the passage of the bill, because they believe it will bring jobs to many Haitians.
Problems with HERO:
Even if it has several conditions for workers, they lack specificity. Other conditions in the bill, especially that the Haitian government must follow, to protect U.S. financial interests, have far greater specificity. It references “international workers rights,” but it doesn’t cite any specific Conventions, Tribunals, or institutions such as the World Labor Organization (WLO). Also, the bill doesn’t contain any language of enforcement of workers’ rights in Haiti. While these rights that exist on paper, in reality unions still do not have the right to organize. The situation in the Free Trade Zone shows that, despite Haitian laws and international conventions, factory owners can act with impunity. The Haitian government doesn’t have the means, or the will, to protect workers. The HERO bill is very specific in other domains, like protecting U.S. economic interests (more detail below). Why doesn’t it have well-defined criteria to protect workers, to reinforce the investigative or litigation abilities of the government, to force factory owners to respect already-existing laws? The workers in the Free Trade Zone have been waiting for more than three months for justice, and are still waiting.
Before all its stated advantages can come to the country, the President of the U.S. has to certify that Haiti has met all the conditions. This gives too much power to the President’s office. It’s a tool to play politics, to keep Haiti in the President’s pocket.
HERO interferes with Haiti’s sovereignty. It contains a condition that says that Haiti cannot “engage in activities that undermine United States national security or foreign policy interests” – Section (d)(2). While it is clearly not a good idea for the U.S. government to support a measure that threatens national security, this language is vague, up to interpretation of the President. More seriously, to explicitly forbid the government of Haiti – or any other country for that matter – to act in its own interest, counter to the US “foreign policy interests,” exploits the “carrot” provided by the bill to secure acquiescence to US hegemony, in the region and in the world.
Like the experience of the Free Trade Zone shows us, even if foreign governments or international institutions invest money, it does not help workers. A very good example: in June, merely nine months after the factories in the Free Trade Zone opened, Grupo M fired 370 workers. This is to say, the new jobs to be created by HERO do not have a guarantee that they will still be there for the workers. Further, the jobs are unstable: Grupo M claims not to be able to rehire the 370 workers because they do not have the business.
In addition, there are not a series of new owners that say they want to do business in Haiti. This is evidenced by a slide show put together for a trade show in Indiana, to entice foreign investors to come to Haiti: http://haitipolicy.org/Electrical_files/frame.htm. Because of this, one can only say that HERO will help people, including American citizens, who currently have factories, like André Apaid. HERO would give them a series of new advantages, to make more money.
Several conditions in HERO are too vague, e.g. that the Haitian government establish or make progress towards “elimination of barriers to United States trade and investment” (Section (d)(1)(C)) like “the provision of national treatment and measures to create an environment conducive to domestic and foreign investment.” Because of this, again, this puts more power into the hands of the President of the U.S. It is a tool to continue the “death plan” (the Haitian term for neoliberalism), structural adjustment.
The analysis behind HERO is that Haiti needs more neoliberal economic policies. Rather, the reverse is true. The Haitian economy is the most open economy in the Americas! It is one reason that it is also the poorest country in the region. Now “Miami rice” (rice from the U.S., at lower-than-US-market prices, known as “dumping” or “gifts”) has invaded the Haitian market. Haitian peasants can’t compete, and have a difficult time selling their rice, and the downward spiral continues, with more peasants out of work.
An Open Letter In Support of The HERO ACT S-2261
Dear Congressman Thomas,
Given that I am an educator rather than a textile or trade expert, it may not be readily apparent why I would request to speak on behalf of the HERO Act. Since 1996, I have directed Louverture Cleary School, The Haitian Project’s free secondary school for academically gifted children from the poorest regions of Haiti. The objective of the school is to form our young, talented students into civic-minded, productive leaders for Haiti - a country that has suffered far too long from the instability created by an economically divided society easily exploited by mercurial and divisive leaders who find little challenge in manipulating the country through threats of revolution and oppression simultaneously. Therefore, as an educator, my interest in the HERO Act is very pragmatic. Haiti needs a stronger, larger middle class to buoy its nascent democracy. Therefore, its people need jobs. Specifically, our graduates need jobs if they are going to make a difference.
I also believe extending the HERO Act to Haiti will benefit the United States. It is in our best interest to work cooperatively with all our brother and sisters in the Americas to create a more stable and economically healthy region. No offense to Mr. Frost, Trade Acts, not walls, will make better neighbors and neighborhoods in the end.
Part of my responsibilities as the president of Louverture Cleary and The Haitian Project is to work with the business community of Haiti to find meaningful employment for our graduates as they pursue their university education. This activity has provided me with the opportunity to visit, on numerous occasions, factories in Haiti involved in production ranging from textiles to electronics. While many of our students are employed in retail companies and others are studying medicine at the top universities in Haiti, a significant portion work in industrial settings as quality control managers, accountants and inventory managers. I must say that my visits, again which are frequent and unannounced, have never left me with the impressions that I hear stated by some of your colleagues in the name of protecting the Haitian worker. This leads me to wonder if the negative descriptions, which have at times been very personal condemnations, used to describe the working conditions in Haiti are motivated more by politics than a true interest in helping the Haitian worker. I suppose I would believe the sentiments of those who oppose Haiti being assisted in finding work for its people through trade acts such as this one, if those same politicians would propose opening our borders to allow all the unemployed Haitians, over 60% of the country, to move here and compete for jobs. At the very least, I can say that their words have little basis in reality given my experience in Haiti.
Certainly, salaries in Haiti are very low - too low for the missionary-minded like my self. However, how will wages ever increase without competition? We are not counting on altruism in this country to improve laborer’s pay - we should not expect to find it doing so in other countries. With increased employment comes training and increases in productivity. Increases in productivity provide laborers with the chance to organize into unions and demand more of the profits their work produces. Increased employment also creates stability and funds infrastructure advancements both of which reduce the risk for investors backing companies looking for new locations for their factories. This, in turn, increases the number of companies willing to compete for Haitian labor - the last natural resource Haiti has to bring to the global market. We can continue to pour money into Haiti through USAID and other non-self-sustainable programs, or we can provide ways for Haiti to develop an economy.
We also know that this trade initiative comes with significant requirements that must be fulfilled in order to “merit” the advantage. These requirements will encourage improvements in the treatment of labor in Haiti as well as positively motivate the government of Haiti to improve itself. It is easier to invite a horse to water than push him there. The HERO Act invites social and political responsibility by offering a tangible reward for doing the hard work of maturing a country from revolution into statehood.
As a final point, each day I am approached by at least five people who are looking for work in Haiti. Depending on their circumstances and education, their plea ranges from desperation caused by hunger to anger caused by frustration. It is not easy to watch a country undergo the industrial revolution starting at its most basic, manual and rigorous level. Yet, it is more painful to think that people will always starve in Haiti and go without education with only the hope of getting out to console them. I ask that you pass this trade act. Let’s give Haitians of all economic levels a working chance by giving them a chance to work.
Humbly submitted,
Responses to undated “Open Letter” in support of the HERO act
12 October 2004
The author of this open letter is the director of a Haitian school, who works with the private sector to help his graduates find good jobs in Haiti. In this letter, he writes:
“Haiti needs a stronger, larger middle class to buoy its nascent democracy.” This is in fact a very telling statement, suggesting that Haitian peasants, factory workers, and urban “popular class” are somehow not capable of sustaining democracy. These people, composing over 80 percent of Haiti’s population, in fact hold strong values and practices of democracy. See Jennie Smith’s When the Hands Are Many (2001) for such an analysis. In addition to being patently ethnocentric, this is also imperialistic. This attitude is consistent with official U.S. government policy, consistently intervening against the democratically-elected government of Haiti, in part because the people chose a candidate who promised a different set of politics.
“Therefore, its people need jobs… while many of our students are employed in retail companies and others are studying medicine at the top universities in Haiti, a significant portion work in industrial settings as quality control managers, accountants and inventory managers.” Assuming that the long-term solution to Haiti’s democracy is the enlargement of the middle class, HERO would do next to nothing to create one. While it may be the experience of a single US-run private school that their graduates end up in management, or at the very least a couple rungs above minimum wage, that is not the experience of the rest of Haiti. For example, over 95 percent of the workers in the Sokowa union, in the Free Trade Zone, in Ouanaminthe at the Haiti/ Dominican Republic border, have a high school diploma. While there were over 1200 workers in the factory prior to June’s mass firings, there were only 12-20 supervisory jobs, and most of them went to Dominicans. In the export-processing zone by the international airport in Delmas, a significant number of near-minimum-wage employees have high school diplomas. In a shop floor with 250 workers, on average only 3-5 work in the office and another 5 as line supervisors.
Assuming that one can in fact lift oneself up by one’s bootstraps in such a minimum wage job, consider the cost of living. The minimum wage is 70 gourdes. People at this income bracket by large cannot afford to live in Delmas. Rather, they live in “popular neighborhoods” such as Cité Soleil, Martissant, Carrefour, Delmas 2, or Bel-Air. Even the relatively close neighborhoods, the security situation is such that people must take public transport. The people who live close have to take a taptap twice a day (10 gourdes). People who live farther, such as Martissant or Carrefour, have to take at least two taptaps each way (20 gourdes a day). A cheap plate of food in the industrial park costs 25 gourdes, making it too expensive for most. As a result, women factory workers get up at 4 to make lunch for themselves and their families, then get on a tap-tap, to get to work, and often do not get home until after 6 p.m. Since the political crisis, the price for staple goods like rice, milled corn, and beans, have gone way up, as much as 100 percent since the beginning of the year. A “mamit” of rice costs around 80 gourdes, which lasts a family of four a little less than 2 weeks. Corn is a little cheaper, 60-70 gourdes, and beans are around 80 gourdes. Taking into account the costs of school (200 gourdes per month is typical per child for tuition alone, plus a yearly inscription fee of 625-1125 gourdes, which does not count uniforms, books, or other materials), or health care (even an NGO-run neighborhood clinic can cost 75 gourdes per visit), that leaves very little left over for housing, which is why many workers live in poor neighborhoods, which are often, especially lately, the site of violence.
“This leads me to wonder if the negative descriptions, which have at times been very personal condemnations, used to describe the working conditions in Haiti are motivated more by politics than a true interest in helping the Haitian worker.” This is a rhetorical strategy to silence criticism by labor unions and other NGOs who are working in the best interests of the Haitian worker. In the industrial park in Delmas, several workers have described problems such as poor ventilation and lighting, poor quality restroom facilities, pregnant women not being given chairs to sit on, lock-ins, etc. For people who are truly concerned about the workers’ welfare, it is necessary to take into account how low wages affect workers’ lives, as just described above.
If the letter’s author would dismiss the reports of the workers themselves, and Haitian NGOs and labor unions, there have been several independent reports about the situation in the Free Trade Zone, which have described hostile working conditions and worker intimidation, including the illegal (even according to an inter-ministerial Haitian government observer team) firing of 370 workers in June, and serious allegations, as-yet-uninvestigated by the government, despite more than two months of asking, about vaccinations that have had severe adverse effects, possibly connected to the stillbirth of a worker’s child, and the unwanted termination of three other fetuses.
The author of the open letter wondered if HERO critics “would propose opening our borders to allow all the unemployed Haitians, over 60% of the country, to move here and compete for jobs” While this suggestion is admittedly unrealistic, exaggerated and sarcastic, many people do, in fact, consider the U.S.’s immigration policy towards Haitians as unfair and even racist. People who defend the rights and life of Haitians would not find this an inconsistency: support Haitian rights in Haiti, support Haitian rights in the United States.
“However, how will wages ever increase without competition? We are not counting on altruism in this country to improve laborer’s pay” While admittedly not an economist either, recent promotions of the Haitian Free Trade Zone brag about the low Haitian wages – “Minimum daily wage in Haiti: $1.62. Benefits also slightly lower… Your bottom line will thank you!” The end of the slideshow promises a “decisive cost advantage in a price-dominated market.” In such a price-dominated market, is not the logic to keep the wages low? This is exactly why Haiti has such a “comparative advantage.” This suggests that any gains that could be had by these jobs are short lived, far from the idea that HERO would enlarge the Haitian middle class. If wages for ALL Haitians – not just the individuals for whom a particular NGO is able to secure help – go up to middle class levels, in a “price-dominated market,” would not these jobs go somewhere else where the wages are temporarily lower?
“Increases in productivity provide laborers with the chance to organize into unions and demand more of the profits their work produces” A good example of the failure of this is the Free Trade Zone, where at least three times, Dominican company Grupo M has refused to meet with the democratically-constituted union, SOKOWA. At least twice, Dominican Army members were illegally invited into the factory to assist in intimidation of union members. The World Bank, which gave a $20 million loan to create the Free Trade Zone, at first resisted the clause promised by even the Caribbean Basin Initiative that workers need to be free to create and join a union of their choosing. And the World Bank has not negotiated with SOKOWA in good faith to resolve problems, rejecting even former government ministers while promoting their own employees as mediators to resolve the crisis.
“These requirements will encourage improvements in the treatment of labor in Haiti” First of all, ALL of the requirements in HERO are designed to benefit U.S. financial interests. Changes made to HERO by its sponsor, Mike DeWine, call for enforcement of customs laws and regulatory abilities, to clamp down on manufacturers who go over their quota. Secondly, more importantly, as evidenced by the events in the Free Trade Zone, this government lacks the will or the means to protect workers. In either case, this statement is unfounded, and dangerous. Concerns raised by many workers who feel that their government isn’t looking out for their interests need to be respected.
Haitian workers are indeed grateful for jobs that come to Haiti. It’s true that low-paying tax-exempt export-processing sector jobs have declined, from their height of 60,000 jobs in the days of Jean-Claude Duvalier, who promised to turn Haiti into the “Taiwan of the Caribbean.” Currently there are a scant 10,000 – 15,000 such jobs in Haiti.
Recently, Port-au-Prince’s slums, such as Cité Soleil, have been in the news as the site of violence and continued misery. Short-sighted economic policy encouraging the creation of low-wage jobs played a direct role in the creation of Cité Soleil, and indeed the general overcrowding of the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area. In the 1970s, Jean-Claude Duvalier presided over the World-Bank led development plan, which explicitly created a surplus of urban laborers, by driving Haitian peasants off their land, a result of an agricultural policy that favored big technology – agrobusiness – and large landowners at the expense of the poor Haitian peasantry. This population surplus fed both the 60,000 low-wage jobs and Port-au-Prince’s teeming slums. Cité Soleil, adjacent to the industrial park by the international airport, was created as this newly urban working class needed a place to live on the cheap.
Yes, it’s true that many Haitians are constantly looking for work. Factory workers endure long hours for low pay because they need the work. Some indeed are appreciative. And it’s also true that out-of-work Haitians would like to have a job. Many are too poor or too desperate to question what kind of work comes their way. They have no choice. We do. And with this choice comes the responsibility to question the supposed benefits, and the costs, of the proposed legislation.
An idea behind both HERO and the letter in support of it is that work, not charity, is the best long-term economic solution. That’s true in the United States as well as Haiti. Better long-term solutions would fix the roots of the problem, such as decentralization and serious land reform. HERO does nothing to stop the centralization of economic opportunities. It’s no accident that export-processing zones are on the Haiti/Dominican Republic border, and by the international airport and Haiti’s busiest seaport.
The majority of Haiti’s population still lives in rural areas, and half still work as farmers. The most effective strategy for a rural people like Haiti is equitable agricultural development, supporting production for national consumption. This requires a long-term strategy rooted in changing the vast inequalities in the world economy, and a serious commitment to land reform.
If a large middle class is the route to sustainable development and democracy, then a better strategy would be investing in education, and jobs that are not export-oriented textile processing, targeted by HERO, but more skilled, technology-oriented jobs, which require an educated working class. At least one manufacturer who came to Haiti to outsource technology jobs from the United States felt the long-term crush of this movement away from the United States. Subcontracting for parts manufacturing doesn’t work anymore since the U.S. lost its critical mass of high-tech mainframe assembly jobs. Short-term low-wage development – exactly the idea behind HERO – has been the driving force for this move of jobs out of the U.S. to China, where even lower-wage parts manufacturing jobs can be subcontracted to places like Singapore and Indonesia. This is yet another example of how short-term solutions end up destroying the economy – both in the United States as well as in Haiti – in the long run. Now as a result, according to one manufacturer, the textile industry, with a direct U.S. consumer market, is the only viable business. How many Haitian jobs were lost as the result of these losses of unionized assembly jobs in the U.S.?
Before passing a legislation that purports to solve a problem, it is important that it is fully diagnosed. Especially since the solution seems destined to do more of the same.
If the U.S. Congress wants to act to support the Haitian people there is a better way. There is another bill, which is called “Jubilee,” which offers solutions for one of the most serious problems in Haiti: the external debt. Maxine Waters proposed the Jubilee bill on June 7, 2004, which calls on the U.S. to do its part to annul the multilateral debt, which in Haiti is estimated at almost 1.4 billion (US) dollars. The United Kingdom has voted to pay off the external debt of the poorest countries in its sphere of influence, its former colonies in Africa. The U.S. government, declaring that it wishes to help the people of Haiti, our neighbors, needs to do its part.
DOSSIER ZONE FRANCHE CODEVI OUANAMINTHE |
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