Three Factoids

[bcholmes]

First: recently, Paul Collier (author of The Bottom Billion) wrote an article for The Globe suggesting that what Haiti needs is more sweatshops. ("Industrial zones"... y'know, the ones that pay no taxes, 'cause they're in special "free trade zones"). For my part, I agree more with Mohammad Yunis who asserts that low-wage factory jobs do not provide a way out of poverty.

Second, this tidbit from the CIA Factbook:

US economic engagement under the Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement (HOPE) Act, passed in December 2006, has boosted apparel exports and investment by providing tariff-free access to the US. HOPE II, passed in October 2008, has further improved the export environment for the apparel sector by extending preferences to 2018; the apparel sector accounts for two-thirds of Haitian exports and nearly one-tenth of GDP. Remittances are the primary source of foreign exchange, equaling nearly a quarter of GDP and more than twice the earnings from exports.

I'm one of those people who believes that much of the last two decades of international policy toward Haiti has been primarily concerned with access to cheap labour, especially in the apparel sector. Anyone who does any reading about the 2004 coup, for example, will encounter these names: André Apaid, Apaid's company, Alpha Industries, and Canada's Gildan Activewear.

Gildan (which is currently running a series of billboard ads in Toronto) is the largest producer of blank T-shirts, was criticized in Honduras for unjustly firing workers with union sympathies, and laid off all its Quebec workers to move operations to the Caribbean and Latin America.

This section of Canada in Haiti seems topical:

Montreal-based Gildan Activewear announced plans to move part of its controversial Honduran El Progresso plant to Haiti to escape accountability for workers' rights violations. With a massive warehouse in North Carolina and as owner of 40 percent of the U.S. T-shirt market, Gildan would benefit from the [HOPE] act were it implemented. Gildan employs up to 5,000 people in Port-au-Prince's assembly sector, including work subcontracted to Andy Apaid, the leader of the [Group of 184, an opposition coalition in Haiti].

So what's Gildan's response to the Haitian earthquake?

TORONTO, Jan 13 (Reuters) - Gildan Activewear a Canadian T-shirt maker, said on Wednesday it would move some of its manufacturing operations to Central America after a powerful earthquake in Haiti damaged one of its subcontractor's factories.

The Montreal-based company, which manufactures T-shirts, socks and underwear, said one of three factories that sews fabric for Gildan in the small Caribbean country, suffered substantial damage during Tuesday's quake.

Gildan said it would shift production of the shirts, destined for the U.S. screenprint market to the Dominican Republic, Honduras and Nicaragua. The company said its U.S. retail customers were not affected.

Thanks, Gildan. Nice to know you're in it for the long haul.