The United States would be a lot more popular around the world if we didn’t do things like demand that Haiti not raise its minimum wage from 24 to 61 cents an hour. Our Deputy Chief of Mission down there, David Lindwall, has a funny sense of humor.
However, the Columbia Journalism Review has written up a summary of the Nation piece, recounting how American clothing makers with factories in Haiti were displeased after the government raised the minimum wage more than two and a half times the previous minimum 24 cents an hour.
The U.S. State Department subsequently brought pressure to bear on Haiti’s president, “who duly carved out a $3 a day minimum wage for textile companies.”
But the US Embassy still wasn’t pleased. According to the Wikileaks report excerpted by the CJr: “A deputy chief of mission, David E. Lindwall, said the $5 per day minimum “did not take economic reality into account” but was a populist measure aimed at appealing to “the unemployed and underpaid masses.”
David Lindwall is the son of missionary workers. I wonder if they brought the Gospel of Low Wages along with the Gospel According to John on their visits with the savages. Maybe Mr. Lindwall should consider the fact that we can’t make shirts in this country because of factories in Haiti that pay $3 for a full day’s work. I love how he complains about a measure to give more pay to the “underpaid masses.” What reckless populism!
But, hey, we also tried to tell the president of Haiti that he couldn’t take advantage of an arrangement with Venezuela that would save the poor island country a hundred million dollars a year.
The U.S. embassy at the time noted that Haiti would save a hundred million U.S. dollars a year under the terms of the PetroCaribe deal; the saved dollars would then earmarked for development in schools, health care, and infrastructure. Yet, under the charge of ambassador Janet Sanderson, the embassy immediately set out to sabotage the deal.
In a classified cable, Sanderson noted that the embassy started to “pressure” Haitian leader Rene Preval from joining PetroCaribe, saying that it would “cause problems with [the United States.]” Major oil companies — such as ExxonMobil and Chevron — began threatening to cut off ties with Haiti, and Sanderson repeatedly met with the energy firms to assure them that she would pressure Haiti at the “highest levels of government.” The U.S. embassy also continually warned Preval against traveling to Venezuela and collaborate with other left-wing governments in the region.
Despite this intimidation campaign, Haiti successfully completed its deal with PetroCaribe, rebuking both its superpower neighbor and the combined threats of the world’s most powerful oil corporations.
As, yes, Ambassador Janet Sanderson. What a treasure.
But, of course, this is not the fault of mid-to high level members of the State Department. This is just how America rolls. We can be a good friend when you’ve suffered a catastrophe or your neighbor is picking on you, but a lot of the time we’re just trying to keep the poor people down and our profits up. And that’s why a lot of people resent us.
You won’t see this on CNN.
and we wonder why folks have issues with us. this is not right.
As David Byrne said, “Same as it ever was.”
US imperialism in another rotting form; nothing new, still disgusting. It could be reckless populism, though, but I don’t know the details of Haiti’s economy. It’s probably more likely that our vested interests just got pissed off at a drop of loss in profits.
Still, I do find myself on the same aisle as some right wingers when it comes to sweat shops. I share Kristof’s opinion:
Right.
That’s how it works. The president of a poor country, like Haiti, raises the minimum wage. The industries call up the State Department and start crying about it. The Ambassador starts making threats about how relations will be damaged and the factories will leave. The president of the poor country carves out an exception for those industries.
Sometimes the threats are empty and sometimes they are not.
As for sweatshops, there are the wages and then there are the conditions. I’m more concerned about the conditions than the wages. If you have to pay people less to improve conditions, I’m fine with that trade. But the race to the bottom on wages is a problem we have with a total free trade system. Yes, it leads to lower prices. But it stratefies economies into manufacturing and service rather than having a healthy mix.
Funny how Obama treats our own workers better than the Haitians. We have the vestiges of a left-wing domestically, but not in international affairs.
Taiwan and South Korea may have started out with sweatshops, but they were also military dictatorships with cohesive populations, leaders with enough vision to set up a multi-decade plan of industrialization, and the backing of the US as front lines in the Cold War. Simply allowing sweatshops in Haiti won’t come close to replicating the conditions present in Taiwan or South Korea 50 or 60 years ago.
I forgot to add “had” in there twice. Bleh.
Oh, of course not. I’m just saying that sweat shops are better than other work, and that in a globalized economy they’re a reality on the ground until the respective countries have their own labor revolts.
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."I’m not sure this is a solution (it’s just other words for imposing fair trade, which most empiricism posits is not effective for either side of the equation):
Because then the corporations might as well just move their businesses elsewhere. That’s Kristof’s argument (and mine). Globalization is going to happen whether liberals want it to or not. I’m not arguing in favor of exploitation, but I am arguing that it’s a reality on the ground. Just the same as we cannot impose our own values of democracy onto the people, they are in charge of their own economic destiny. Their people must rise up together and demand fair wages and working conditions through unionization the same as America did during the Gilded Age.
I think one way we COULD help them is to target the IMF and World Bank, two organizations bent on economic imperialism, exploitation, and shoving “free markets” down developing countries’ throats (ignoring the fact that America isn’t free market at all); not to mention entrapping them in debt that they will never be able to pay.
Has America ever helped any place south our border? I can’t think of an example.
Having lived in a “3rd-world country”, it certainly comes as no surprise to see a missionary standing foursquare against anything attempting the lighten the load on “the unemployed and underpaid masses.”
One of the most politically useful aspects of missionaries is their message that things will get better – in the next life.
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Works at the State Department as Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. Has knowledge of Libyan oil and evacuation of workers from US companies.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Didn’t someone here suggest making Haiti a temporary protectorate at some point?
No.
I went back and found the passage. It wasn’t a suggestion just a speculation.
” It’s probable that Haiti will need to become a protectorate of some sort, if not in letter then in fact. ”