Seven Oaks Magazine.

Haitian union and women's rights leaders make speaking tour across Canada
May 22, 2007
Roger Annis

Vancouver,BC -- Three trade union and political rights leaders from Haiti will visit eleven cities across Canada in a speaking tour set to begin in three days. The Canada-Haiti Labour and Women's Rights Solidarity Tour is the most ambitious project to date of the Canada Haiti Action Network (CHAN), and it has gathered widespread interest and support from trade unions and other social/political organizations.

"Union members and political rights activists in Canada need to know more about what is taking place in Haiti in our name," explains Kevin Skerrett, a speaking tour organizer in Ottawa. "The Canadian government was part of the international gang-up on Haiti's working people that culminated in the February, 2004 coup against the government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The situation in Haiti has gone from bad to worse since 2004. Canada must be held accountable."

The three speakers from Haiti are Paul Chéry, General Secretary of the Confédération des travailleurs haitiens (CTH), Ginette Apollon, leader of the CTH Women's Commission, and women's rights activist Euvonie Georges-Auguste.

The tour has received endorsement and financial support from many national unions, including the Public Service Alliance of Canada, the National Union of Public and General Employees, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, the Canadian Labour Congress, and the Canadian office of the United Steelworkers of America. Health care union support includes the Hospital Employees Union in British Columbia and the Health Sciences Association of Alberta. Regional and local bodies of the Canadian Union of Public Employees and other unions are supporting the tour, as are labour councils in Halifax, Ottawa, Calgary, Vancouver and Victoria. The Nova Scotia Federation of Labour and the BC Government Employees Union are supporting.

Confédération des travailleurs haitiens

The CTH consists of eleven affiliated unions. Prior to the 2004 coup, its membership numbered 110,000. Those numbers have declined in the chaotic post-coup period as government services and the economy ground to a halt. Privatizations of government-owned enterprises have also led many unionized workers to lose their jobs. The majority of Haitian workers have no union representation. The majority of the population is unemployed, and the average daily wage is US$3.

Haiti's agricultural economy has been especially devastated by foreign-imposed policy that goes back decades. Agencies such as the Canadian International Development Agency, USAID, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have long demanded as a condition of providing "aid" or financing that Haiti open its markets to cheap, subsidized food imports. Small farmers find little or no support, such as affordable financing or construction of badly-needed roads to get products to market.

"It is a crisis without precedent," reported Chéry in late 2005 during a previous visit to Canada. "Our population has not known a situation this grave since the founding of the country. There is the appearance of life, but in reality, there is no life."

The union works to create economic development and health care programs, but funding from international agencies for this work was recently cut.

The CTH maintains two offices in Port-au-Prince and other offices in all ten of Haiti's departments. It is affiliated to the newly-formed International Trade Union Confederation and the Latin America Workers Central (CLAT). A recent visit to one of the Port au Prince offices by a correspondent of haitianalysis.com saw hundreds of young people engaging in language courses.

Euvonie Georges-Auguste is a women's rights activist who coordinates literacy and other life skills programs for poor women. She lived in exile for much of the time between the 2004 coup and the February, 2006 presidential election.

"One of the goals of the speaking tour," reports Skerrett, "is to help raise much-needed funds for the work of our invited guests. We want to strengthen ties of solidarity between the organizations that our speakers represent and their counterparts in Canada."

Currently, there are 9,000 foreign troops occupying Haiti under a United Nations-approved mandate. There are also countless police and political advisors that play a dominant role in Haiti's government and daily life.

The foreign occupation has done nothing to improve the lives of ordinary Haitians. Canada, for example, has poured more than $200 million into Haiti since the coup, but much of that money has gone into training police or propping up Haiti's prison and judicial system. Little or no foreign funding goes to desperately-needed health care and education services, or to create a modern transport and communication infrastructure.

The police and military occupation force has targeted supporters of the ousted government of President Aristide in a deadly campaign that has cost thousands of lives. Last year, a study published in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet estimated that in the capital city Port au Prince alone, eight thousand people died violent deaths in the two years following the coup. Half of those died at the hands of foreign-trained and armed police, or death squads composed of members of the disbanded Haitian armed forces.

"They are creating a situation of terror," said Chéry in 2005, "a situation of fear, of systematic repression. This repression has resulted in the killing of thousands of people since the execution of the coup."

Election in 2006

In February 2006 a presidential election was organized by the occupation powers and the post-coup de facto government. Their intention was to elect a compliant figure that would continue the policies of the de facto government. But in a stormy election campaign, the Haitian masses fought off attempts to subvert the vote and steal the results. They elected their popular choice, René Préval.

Préval's term has been a disappointment for the popular movements. The legislative assembly that was elected two months after the presidential election has not cooperated with him. His own powers are limited by the foreign funding and foreign-funded agencies upon which much of what passes for government services in Haiti depend.

Préval's administration has released many of the political prisoners jailed following the coup, but many more remain in jail without charge or under specious legal grounds.

It is supporting new legislation in Washington D.C., the "Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement Act,” dubbed HOPE, that aims to expand foreign investment in the garment industry in Haiti. But as Tom Ricker, Latin America specialist with the Washington, DC-based Quixote Center, is reported in www.haitianalysis.com, "The HOPE act…may create a few low-paying and precarious sweatshop jobs, but it will also reinforce a flawed model of development that has been failing Haitians for two decades.” He and others say that Haiti needs to revitalize Haiti’s rural economy while protecting and ensuring labor rights, and it needs to create a regime of political rights and freedoms.

Brian Concannon of the Institute for Justice and Democracy explains, "HOPE has some worker protection provisions, but they are toothless, and if past is prologue, they will do nothing to address the widespread exploitation of Haitian workers. It may be true that some workers make $4US per day, but more make closer to the minimum wage of $2."

Real international solidarity

By far the most substantial and meaningful support to the Haitian people and government has come from Venezuela and Cuba. Both countries are providing substantial aid in the areas of health care and education. Haiti has joined the Petrocaraibe initiative of the Venezuelan government that provides oil at discounted prices to poor countries.

Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez visited Port-au-Prince on March 12. He was welcomed by thousands of cheering Haitians as he traveled into the city from the airport and met with government figures. He and Préval announced a $1 billion fund to finance Cuba's ongoing medical mission to Haiti and to build new housing.

The following day, other cooperation agreements were announced between Haiti, Venezuela and Cuba, including the construction of four electricity generating stations.

Chavez also met with Foreign Minister Jean Rénald Clerisme. Clerisme praised the "Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas" economic pact launched by Venezuela and Cuba. He said, “For us, South-South collaboration is many times more important than North-South cooperation because with South-South collaboration we have a group of countries that have the same problems and treat each other as brothers. The cooperation between Venezuela and Haiti seems to me to be a manifestation of this friendship, of this fraternity between two countries that share the same problems.”

The speaking tour will visit the following cities across Canada: Ottawa, May 23, 24, Toronto-Hamilton, May 25-28, Halifax, May 25, 26, Winnipeg, May 27, 28, Calgary-Edmonton, May 29, Fredericton, May 30, 31, Vancouver, May 30, Victoria, May 31, and Montreal, June 2-4.

For details on local events, go to the website of the Canada Haiti Action Network. For ongoing news from Haiti, see haitianalysis.com or the website of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. See the new website of the CTH at http://www.haitilabor.org/.

Roger Annis is an organizer in Vancouver, Canada of the upcoming Canada-Haiti Labour and Women's Rights Solidarity Tour.