In this issue, the ICFTU focuses on the Ouanaminthe export processing zone, with its poverty wages, exhausting working hours and sexual violence. The interview below features Joseph Salnave (25), a former EPZ garment worker who condemns the conditions in which the jeans, to be sold in the West, are made.

Q. For two and a half months, you worked on a sewing machine together with 240 Haitian workers. Did you have any idea of what kind of wages were paid in the Ouanaminthe EPZ before you got a job there?

A. To be honest, when I first found out that the wage was just 432 gourdes (around USD 10) per week, I didn’t want to sign the contract (Editor’s note: the wage level is now 575 gourdes). But then the EPZ management convinced us when they told us: “After six weeks you’ll earn a bit more, and once you’re working at full speed - i.e. 900 units a day - you’ll earn a ’professional skilled worker’s wage’ of 800 gourdes. But right now you’re still in your apprenticeship.“

I believed it. I started working in the EPZ on 19 May 2003 in the ’beltloops’ and ’hems’ section, two things I had specialised in. Promises of earning higher wages were never kept.

Q. Can you describe a working day in the EPZ? What’s it like?

A. The day would begin at 6.45 A.m. and end at 7 p.m., nearly 11 hours with just one 45-minute break to eat lunch, have a wash and go to the toilet. Then back to work. We could go to the toilet once or twice a day. If we asked to go a third time, then the Dominican ’supervisors’ called us ’undisciplined’.

We worked under constant pressure from the ’supervisors’, who forced us to keep up a production rate of 900 units per day, in other words we had to sew, say, 900 flies. The Wrangler and Levi’s jeans we made were then sold in the United States. Anyone who did not complete his or her work had to work more the next day to make up for it.

Q. Did you work a lot of overtime?

A. Of course. The ’supervisors’ demanded that we arrive on time, but they didn’t give a damn about letting us leave the plant on time. And since we showed our ID when we entered the EPZ - but not when we left it - none of the overtime was ever counted or paid. So, while we were supposed to be working 48 hours per week, in actual fact we worked 55 hours per week. I told them I didn’t think that was fair, but they didn’t like my attitude. They called my ideas ’revolutionary’, and that was one of the reasons I got kicked out.

Q. What other reasons did they give for firing you? What were the circumstances surrounding your dismissal?

A. I wasn’t the one who decided to leave my job. Management suspected me of being part of the Pitobert defence committee, which actively opposed the EPZ. I didn’t do anything wrong. I only told them about the poor treatment that we got inside the EPZ and about the repressive system established by management.

Management often misused its power. For instance, several dismissed workers refused to hand in their identity papers until they received their compensation. The ’supervisors’ got the documents back by threatening the workers with their guns. I was forced to hand mine in under physical coercion too. I was insulted and threatened.

I received just 212 of the 432 gourdes I was owed for the final week I worked. We had signed a contract that was renewable annually, but management kept the original and never gave us a copy.

Q. What is your main criticism of EPZ management today?

A. The sexual violence. It was different from feeling up the women at work. For instance, if the Haitian women working on the machines wanted a promotion then they had to sleep with the Dominican ’supervisors’. There was no getting around it. If they refused, then they couldn’t work.

Q. Despite these working conditions, the poverty is such that many young people in Ouanaminthe apply for jobs in the EPZ. Would you discourage them from doing so?

A. I feel like I’ve been exploited by the EPZ. I would not encourage anyone to work there. I would tell them: “If you really want to work there, then you’ll have to do it without me.“ There are too many bad memories etched in my mind. Even though I earned more, the abuse, violence and exploitation continue. I could no longer allow my integrity as a person not to be respected. I found another job and I decided to resume my law studies.

Q. Why did you choose law?

A. So I could do more to raise workers’ awareness and fight the evil represented by the EPZs. I would like to become a skilled professional who could be of use to society. If all goes well, then after two years of study I can become a lawyer, learn what my rights are, and have the hope of never having to go back to work in an EPZ or put up with bad treatment.

Q. You wanted to talk openly - not anonymously. Don’t you fear reprisals from the powerful industrial group that runs the EPZ?

A. What I would like most of all, is for the whole world to know what goes on inside the EPZs. I would like the people who wear the jeans to know how they were made. I’m not afraid to talk about what I experienced if by doing so I can help others avoid the same fate.

See the Haiti Support Group web site: www.haitisupport.gn.apc.org

Solidarity with the Haitian people’s struggle for justice, participatory democracy and equitable development, since 1992.