Workers have been exploited everyday in the export processing zones of the Dominican Republic (DR) and Haiti, where workers produce clothing for leading international brands and are pioneering cross-border trade union action.
In the Dominican Republic, the end of textile quotas has led to thousands of redundancies and a worsening of the already dismal working conditions.
"They have to dash from one machine to the other. Sometimes they only give them one chair.
It's like a bottomless pit that they are never able to fill," explains Leonida Monegro, who sews Dockers, a brand developed by Levi Strauss.
In a bid to counter the ruthless competition on the international textile market, especially from China, Dominican industrialists are now looking to shift part of their production to Haiti for the simple reason that the labour there is even cheaper.
In spite of the crippling poverty, Haitian workers from the Ouanaminthe export processing zone have managed to wage any extraordinary battle against the anti-union practices of garment manufacturing giant Grupo M, with whom they are on the verge of signing their very first collective bargaining agreement.
They hope their example will spread to the factories of Port au Prince and the Dominican Republic.
Over recent months, the Dominican union SITRAFMIN, based in Santiago, and, SOKOWA, in Ouanaminthe, Haiti, have been working on forming a common front to tackle Grupo M, which, on the Dominican side of the border, is a using yellow union, built on intimidation and bribery, to undermine the legitimate trade union at a factory producing for Levi Strauss.
How can local action combined with international solidarity make all the difference in the fight against exploitation?
The ICFTU is a confederation of 215 national trade union centers.
It was set up in 1949 and has 233 affiliated organisations in 154 countries and territories on all five continents, with a membership of 145 million, 40 percent of who are women.
International Confederation of Free Trade Unions
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