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WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would Stay C

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TheDemSocialist

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A Wikileaks post published on The Nation shows that the Obama Administration fought to keep Haitian wages at 31 cents an hour.(This article was taken down by The Nation due to an embargo, but it was excerpted at Columbia Journalism Review.)
It started when Haiti passed a law two years ago raising its minimum wage to 61 cents an hour. According to an embassy cable:
This infuriated American corporations like Hanes and Levi Strauss that pay Haitians slave wages to sew their clothes. They said they would only fork over a seven-cent-an-hour increase, and they got the State Department involved. The U.S. ambassador put pressure on Haiti’s president, who duly carved out a $3 a day minimum wage for textile companies (the U.S. minimum wage, which itself is very low, works out to $58 a day).
Haiti has about 25,000 garment workers. If you paid each of them $2 a day more, it would cost their employers $50,000 per working day, or about $12.5 million a year ... As of last year Hanes had 3,200 Haitians making t-shirts for it. Paying each of them two bucks a day more would cost it about $1.6 million a year. Hanesbrands Incorporated made $211 million on $4.3 billion in sales last year.
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Read more: WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would Stay Cheap - Business Insider

Whose says we arent ran by corporations? This is more proof that corporations dominate our politics not only at home but overseas. Welcome to America
minyg2.jpg
 
Re: WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would St

If you ask the Haitians what they would prefer...a job that only pays 31 cents an hour....or no job at all....which do you think they would chose?
 
Re: WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would St

Moot said:
If you ask the Haitians what they would prefer...a job that only pays 31 cents an hour....or no job at all....which do you think they would chose?
Click to expand...

Does that somehow justify us pressuring Haiti and other countries from pressuring the Haitian state to keep wages lower?
 
Re: WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would St

As long as the Haitians can do a better job at stitching Levis than the Mexicans, go for it.

The stitching on todays Levis are a disgrace.

Americans were better at stitching, especially the Piute Indians who use to work at the Levi plant in Henderson, Nevada. They were the best. That's where the Orange Label Levis were produced.
 
Re: WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would St

TheDemSocialist said:
Does that somehow justify us pressuring Haiti and other countries from pressuring the Haitian state to keep wages lower?
Click to expand...

I bet it didn't take much pressure to get to agree. What would the Haitian government prefer, a company that paid low wages, or no company, nor wages at all?
 
Re: WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would St

What does the employer choose?

A head or no head?

GuillotineWallStreet.jpg
 
Re: WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would St

Why shouldn't corporations pay a simpler, general tax for unemployment compensation, in any at-will employment State if they are obtaining any benefit of lower labor costs.
 
Re: WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would St

TheDemSocialist said:
Read more: WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would Stay Cheap - Business Insider

Whose says we arent ran by corporations? This is more proof that corporations dominate our politics not only at home but overseas. Welcome to America [/FONT][/COLOR]
minyg2.jpg
Click to expand...

The U.S. government making the rest of the world safe for American businesses has a LONG history.
 
Re: WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would St

Should we merely petition for a Better Religions Bureau?
 
Re: WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would St

TheDemSocialist said:
Does that somehow justify us pressuring Haiti and other countries from pressuring the Haitian state to keep wages lower?
Click to expand...

Without jobs, there is no economic growth. Haiti desperately needs jobs and if it is the choice between low paying jobs or no jobs at all, I think they would prefer the low wage jobs. Almost every emerging country starts out with low paying jobs to attract business. Today many of those same emerging countries economies are now enjoying ecomonic growth that is outpacing the US....so much so they are buying US debt. One could say the US works for them now.
 
Re: WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would St

Clearly the US government knows what's better for Haiti than the Haitian government does.:roll:
 
Re: WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would St

spud_meister said:
Clearly the US government knows what's better for Haiti than the Haitian government does.:roll:
Click to expand...


I think it does.....

“We had learned that supporting long-term prosperity in Haiti meant more than providing aid,” Secretary Clinton told a group of investors at a luncheon following the event, the Associated Press reported.

“It required investments in infrastructure and the economy that would help the Haitian people achieve their own dreams. So we shifted our assistance to investments to address some of the biggest challenges facing this country: creating jobs and sustainable economic growth.”

The Caracol Industrial Park is expected to create around 40,000 jobs in an area where subsistence farming and fishing are the only economic options available aside from migrating to more developed parts of the country, though many of those areas in the south were damaged by the 2010 earthquake.

The capital of Port-au-Prince was hit the hardest by the magnitude 7.0 quake, and more than 350,000 people are still living in tents and temporary shelters on the outskirts of the city. Furthermore, a cholera epidemic claimed over 7,000 lives in the aftermath of that disaster.

Indeed, the jobs are sorely needed in a country where unemployment was last recorded at more than 40 percent in 2010 and where a vast majority of the people live below the poverty line......
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Low-Wage Factory Jobs In Haiti Not 'Perfect' But A Start For Recovery, Clinton Says

About Haiti | Haiti Health Ministries

40% unemployment suggests that Haitians desperately need jobs. With 50% illiteracy rate, they're not going attract businesses that need skilled labor. When the average income is a $100 to $400 a year....a $5 a day job could make all the difference in the world. Now they can afford to send to their kids to school and those kids can grow up to get a better job than their parents.
 
Re: WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would St

Moot said:
If you ask the Haitians what they would prefer...a job that only pays 31 cents an hour....or no job at all....which do you think they would chose?
Click to expand...

This statement, and the situation that is the thread topic, reminds me of the observation of Thomas Aquinas: "If you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral".

That the US government enforces a grossly unjust situation in Haiti is no surprise to me, but disgusting nonetheless. By way of corporate influence, this country has reached a level of fascism.

Thanks to Wikileaks for yet another sobering insight.
 
Re: WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would St

What's good for Levi's is good for the world.
 
Re: WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would St

Look at it this way. If the US minimum wage wasnt so high they would be making Levi's back in the good ol' US of A once again instead of outsourcing it.
 
Re: WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would St

TheDemSocialist said:
Read more: WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would Stay Cheap - Business Insider

Whose says we arent ran by corporations? This is more proof that corporations dominate our politics not only at home but overseas. Welcome to America [/FONT][/COLOR]
minyg2.jpg
Click to expand...

No doubt you'd regard it as a victory if all those people lost their jobs. Was the US acting for the benefit of the companies or of the Haitian people? Levis et al. can always turn to China or some other poor country.
 
Re: WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would St

TheDemSocialist said:
Does that somehow justify us pressuring Haiti and other countries from pressuring the Haitian state to keep wages lower?
Click to expand...

Moot said:
Without jobs, there is no economic growth. Haiti desperately needs jobs and if it is the choice between low paying jobs or no jobs at all, I think they would prefer the low wage jobs. Almost every emerging country starts out with low paying jobs to attract business. Today many of those same emerging countries economies are now enjoying ecomonic growth that is outpacing the US....so much so they are buying US debt. One could say the US works for them now.
Click to expand...

Which rather neatly (if obviously) sidesteps the actual question: is it right for the U.S. to pressure Haiti into keeping wages lower?
 
Re: WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would St

Why not levy a general tax for unemployment compensation on any Firm which may have operations external to the US?
 
Re: WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would St

Moot said:
If you ask the Haitians what they would prefer...a job that only pays 31 cents an hour....or no job at all....which do you think they would chose?
Click to expand...

That is not the point.
 
Re: WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would St

One can only imagine the ****storm that would ensue if the U.N. pressured the U.S. into lowering its minimum wage.
 
Re: WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would St

PoS said:
Look at it this way. If the US minimum wage wasnt so high they would be making Levi's back in the good ol' US of A once again instead of outsourcing it.
Click to expand...

If corporations won't even pay 62-cents a day, why on earth would you think they'd pay $7.25 an hour??

Those kinds of jobs are never-never-ever-ever come back to the U.S.
 
Re: WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would St

LowDown said:
No doubt you'd regard it as a victory if all those people lost their jobs. Was the US acting for the benefit of the companies or of the Haitian people? Levis et al. can always turn to China or some other poor country.
Click to expand...
I wouldnt call China poor, they have the #2 economy in the world now.
 
Re: WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would St

I believe in fiscal forms of responsibility.
 
Re: WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would St

Moot said:
If you ask the Haitians what they would prefer...a job that only pays 31 cents an hour....or no job at all....which do you think they would chose?
Click to expand...

Where else are the corporations going to go for cheaper labor than Haitian labor?
 
Re: WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would St

TheDemSocialist said:
Does that somehow justify us pressuring Haiti and other countries from pressuring the Haitian state to keep wages lower?
Click to expand...

Exactly. The US govt should have no business getting involved with Haiti's domestic affairs.
 
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