WikiLeaks: U.S. Companies Tried to Stop Increase in Wages in Haiti

Recent WikiLeaks documents reveal negotiations between Americans and Haitian diplomats for a raise in wages to the Haitian population. Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with 85 percent unemployment as of 2009. That year its parliament decided to raise wages in an aim to stimulate the growth of the country’s economy.

The almost 2,000 documents shared between embassies revealed dissatisfaction, mainly among a few American textile companies, such as Levi’s, at the possibility of raising wages for workers in Haiti.

As Argentine newspaper Pagina 12 stated, a new series of approximately 1,918 documents released by WikiLeaks and published by local Haitian papers such as The Nation and Haiti Liberte reveals that raising the miserable salaries of Haitians has provoked a debate between foreign companies and American diplomacy. Every case demonstrates the power that these multinational companies have over poor countries.

In June 2009, a little over six months before the earthquake that devastated the whole country, the Haitian parliament unanimously passed a minimum wage increase from $1.75 to $5.00 per eight-hour work day, which means less than $10 for eight hours — less than $300 a month even if the employee does not have a single day of rest.

After the raises, the documents published by WikiLeaks revealed that the proposal caused a chain reaction. A few CEOs of well-known multinational textile companies, such as Fruit of the Loom, Hanes and Levi’s, opposed the 62-cents-per-hour raise. The documents also reported the U.S. Agency for International Development and the American embassy’s supporting the companies’ resistance.

A telegram from Ambassador Janet Sanderson, sent in June of 2009, warned that a more visible and proactive intervention from Haitian president Mr. Preval could be a major factor in the minimum wage issue. Two months after the telegram, the Haitian president negotiated with the parliament for two levels of higher wages: $3.13 for workers in the textile industries and $5.00 for the industrial and commercial sectors.

After protests by students and workers, the factory owners and Washington only achieved a partial victory in the minimum wage issue, delaying for about a year the establishing of the $5.00 daily minimum wage for the textile sector at a level inferior to all other sectors. In October of 2010, the minimum wage for textile workers went to 250 gourdes, equivalent to $6.25.

The Haitian Platform for Development Alternatives stated in a June 2009 press release, “Every time the minimum wage has been discussed, ADIH has cried wolf to scare the government against its passage: that raising minimum wage would mean the certain and immediate closure of industry in Haiti and the cause of a sudden loss of jobs. In every case, it was a lie.”