www.haitisupport.gn.apc.org/whats_new_index.html

EMERGENCY APPEAL issued by the Haiti Support Group:

An international campaign has been launched to lobby the Dominican company, Grupo M, which runs the Codevi FTZ at Ouanaminthe, to re-instate the 34 Sokowa union members fired on 1 March 2004. Thousand of individuals, union members and union branches across the world have sent protest emails to Grupo M and its main contractor, the jeans company, Levi Strauss. As a result, the Grupo M management was obliged to begin negotiations with representatives of the Haitian First of May-Batay Ouvriye Union Federation.

However, although the Levi Strauss company has hailed these negotiations as evidence of Grupo M's willingness to find a settlement, the union federation representatives tell a completely different story. Rather than establishing a dialogue and opening up a collaborative process to bring about a resolution, Grupo M representatives have instead conducted themselves in an aggressive and dismissive manner. Grupo M CEO, Fernando Capellan, even stormed out of a meeting in Santiago, Dominican Republic, on Monday, 8 March, before it had concluded.

Since then, far from resolving the situation, Grupo M has prevaricated and reneged on a promise to issue a final decision on the status of the dismissed workers. This cynical tactic is clearly designed to pressure the dismissed workers to accept their severance pay, thereby accepting their status as fired workers, and, in so doing, ruin a planned legal action against the company for unfair dismissal. Without pay for five weeks, the living situation of the fired workers and their dependents is critical.

In order to help those workers carry on the fight for re-instatement and for recognition of their right to form a trade union, the British solidarity organisation, the Haiti Support Group, is appealing for donations to help keep the struggle going. Please help the fired Sokowa union members continue with their fight to get their jobs back. It is not only their livelihoods at stake – if the Sokowa union is broken, it will be a massive setback for all Haitian workers across the country.

Please make an online donation to help the Sokowa workers' union:

www.haitisupport.gn.apc.org/whats_new_index.html

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This email is forwarded as a service of the Haiti Support Group.

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. ____________________________________________