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

Business Insider ^ | June 3, 2011 | Robert Johnson

[Pinkbell]

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.

[Spartan79]

“stuff” not “sturr”. Oops. Thought I’d invented a word, but it turns out Sturr is the name of a really great polka musician.

[Calvin Locke]

If this happened under Bush, ...

I can't remember if Pelosi's raising the minimum wage was under
Bush or Obama, but she didn't she try to exclude the increase
from US territories in the Pacific? That is, protect her campaign
donors that have canneries there?

[ken21]

the democrat plantation.

[scooby321]

It did happen under GW Bush, his USTR Robert Zoellick set all this up.

Troll.

[Moonman62]

My package of Hanes socks bought at Walmart say they are made in the USA.

Having said that, slavery didn't end with the Civil War.

[Will88]

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.

Express that $1.6 million on a per t-shirt, or per garment produced basis and it will be miniscule, very few pennies per garment.

[Young Werther]

Once again the Obombast Organization decided to go “shorts”!

[Made In The USA]

So ‘da peeps are being held down by the Man... but the Man is a brutha. No wait, maybe Obama thinks $.31/hour is a ‘living wage’ because he plans to re-distribute more of our wealth there.

Like Richie ‘Gerbil’ Gere says, he’s our best president ever...

[Joe 6-pack]

"They don't say 'Hanes' until I say they say 'Hanes.'"

[Young Werther]

Once again the Obombast Organization decided to go “shorts”!

[slowhandluke]

And when the minimum wage did go up for these Polynesian islands, the canning factories left as it was no longer profitable to stay there.

The leftist hypocrites know that minimum wage is a job killer. The goal is to move jobs out of the USA, per the Franklin School of Marxism. Make it miserable enough here, and folks will clamor for socialism.

The Dems aren't for the little guy, or they would not be behind the minimum wage - as that dries up the labor market for the littlest of the little guys.

[Tolsti2]

It’s still plenty ‘profitable’ but just not quite as much when the wages go up. So off to a worse hellhole for the companies.

And these are the guys we are supposed to be for?

[AmusedBystander]

Paging Sean Penn.

[EvasiveManuever]

And then everybody starts getting up in arms when the Haitians get turned around in the middle of the ocean, but the Cubans get one foot on land and they’ve got it made.

And then nothing changes. And nothing gets better. The one constant is that it always gets worse for the Haitians.

While I strongly agree with the sentiment of posters who say the government should not be doing the bidding of corporations...

WAIT JUST A COTTON PICKIN' MINUTE HERE.

Since when is it the job of Americans to secure a future for Haitians?

The fact that they have our companies as employers is a BONUS not some form of entitlement. Perhaps they should get off their butts and make their own companies and their own jobs and their own economy?

[EvasiveManuever]

Obama can’t help selling out the poor for the benefit of the Levis Corporation. Blame genetics. It’s in his mom jeans.

Fixed.

[EvasiveManuever]

But a cut of 6-7% of their net profit is not miniscule.

[blueunicorn6]

$3 a day starts putting their wages too close to the $100 a month the workers make in the socialist paradise of Vietnam. Lose a war to us and you get high-paying factory jobs. Fight us to the end and your people earn $100 a month. Iraq? Afghanistan? Libya? Do you see the message here?

[OnlyTurkeysHaveLeftWings]

Since when is it the job of Americans to secure a future for Haitians?

...Never said it was. What I'm saying is that it's not the job of Americans to actively screw over people who already have nothing, especially considering all that will do is drive them to leave their country... and try and come to ours... where we also don't have enough jobs.

Perhaps they should get off their butts and make their own companies and their own jobs and their own economy?

Not sure how feasible that is, considering you can't abracadabra start-up capital out of thin air with a workforce making thirty cents a day:
Already the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere with 80% of the population living under the poverty line and 54% in abject poverty, the damage to Port-au-Prince caused the country's GDP to contract an estimated 5.1% in 2010. (CIA World Factbook)

GDP (per capita) $1,200 per year
Unemployment rate: 40.6%

Does this sound like the next great industrial power in the making to you?

[Tucker39]

Just out of curiosity, I wonder what MLB pays the Haitians to stitch their baseballs together?

[americanophile]

Think this will be covered by the MSM? Outrageous.