Here’s a good one that came via the Dominion. Apparently Gildan Activewear, one of the world’s leading T-shirt manufacturers, is closing its high-cost Honduras operation and moving the production to — Haiti! Why? The Honduran workers have been trying to unionize. After Gildan’s entry in Haiti and Nicaragua, Honduras became high-cost! Lucky for Haiti, its new police force (suspiciously like the old police force) and international occupation forces somehow seem to help it stay a low-cost place to make shirts.
You can read a little more about our friends at Gildan in this article by Stephen Kerr about Canada’s role in the Haitian coup.
MONTREAL — T-shirt maker Gildan Activewear Inc. is closing a major facility in Honduras that has been at the centre of a controversy over allegations of poor treatment of workers.
Company officials said yesterday the decision to shut the El Progreso plant, which employs about 1,800, is not connected to allegations regarding labour practices and is being made solely because of cost considerations.
“It’s purely an economically driven decision in light of our commitment to constantly driving down our cost structure,” chief financial officer Laurence Sellyn said.
“It became our highest-cost facility as we added sewing capacity in Haiti and Nicaragua,” he said.
But an official with a workers’ rights group yesterday questioned the logic of Gildan’s decision to shut the factory, saying it’s hard to believe the move isn’t related to the fact that workers have been trying to organize a union at El Progreso.
“What kind of message does this send to the workers? You try to organize a union, you try to exercise your internationally recognized rights and what happens? The plant is shut down,” said Lynda Yanz, a co-ordinator at the Toronto-based Maquila Solidarity Network.
Montreal-based Gildan employs about 5,000 people in Honduras, a favoured location for the garment trade because of its low-cost labour. Total worldwide employment at Gildan is about 9,500.
Gildan recently joined the Fair Labor Association, a U.S.-based labour rights organization that has prepared a report based on an independent audit of company practices in Honduras.
A second report, based on an audit that was done without the company’s collaboration, has also been prepared by another group, the Worker Rights Consortium.
Mr. Sellyn said Gildan has addressed several of the concerns raised in the FLA report, but he would not disclose what they are, saying only that they weren’t major.
However, the Quebec Federation of Labour’s Solidarity Fund, the province’s biggest labour fund, conducted its own investigation last year and concluded that Gildan fired about 40 workers involved in union organizing at the El Progreso facility.
The fund is selling its 11.2-per-cent stake in Gildan in protest.
