How The State Department Under Hillary Clinton Undercut Haitian Workers
Specifically, women in Haiti’s apparel manufacturing industry…
This post was removed during the 2016 election because it is not a tool for the right. It is meant to be used in cleaning up the left and reactionaries shouldn’t be allowed to claim a stake in it.
Here in the United States we’re fighting for a $15/hr minimum wage. Various factors (not the least of which being inflation) make it the lowest wage that could properly be called “livable” in today’s economic climate. We’re not outrageous for making this demand, either. The current one ($7.25/hr) is, quite literally, a starvation wage. People can barely live on that, let alone families. That amounts to $58/day — which, unless you forgo food at times, is impossible to live on with rent, bills, food, and transportation. But can you imagine living on just $3 a day? A few years ago, the US State Department — with the aid of corporate interests — determined that’s enough for the people of Haiti.
Back in 2011, leaked cables showed us that the US Embassy aided apparel giants Levi’s and Hanes in their fight against an increase in Haiti’s minimum wage. Now, in case you’re not aware, US Embassies are an arm of the State Department, which is led by the Secretary of State.
In this case, the Department of State’s intervention regarding the minimum wage caused it to land at only $0.31/hr instead of the $0.65/hr workers were fighting for. This is less than $3/day, instead of a target of around $5/day.
Who was the Secretary of State that presided over this? Well, let’s just say this person is pretty deeply involved in The Clinton Foundation. 93% of their charitable contributions during the year 2014 actually went into The Clinton Foundation — $3m of $3.2m specifically. Good thing, too, because the Clinton Foundation has done a lot of “engagement” in Haiti. Most specifically to what we are talking about today is a focus on “sustainable growth” in “apparel/manufacturing:”
So, the US embassy is working with corporate interests to keep the minimum wage in Haiti low. All US embassies, again, are arms of The Department of State and answer to the Secretary of State — who, if you haven’t figured by now, was Hillary Clinton. Clinton has a “charitable organization” (independent, nonpartisan watchdog group Sunlight Foundation referred to it as a “slush fund”) involved in advocating “sustainable business practices” in the same place branches of government under her supervision are advocating low minimum wages in?
Does anyone see the massive conflict of interest there? And that’s assuming neither Hanes, Levi’s, their partners or any similar companies (clothing companies that manufacture in Haiti either directly or through partners) have ever donated (either as corporate entities or as individuals) nothing to the Clinton Foundation. It’s a conflict of interest before we ask that question.
The Clinton Foundation’s donor list is publicly available, but extremely unfriendly to use. It’s not searchable, and you must pick the tier of donor first, then sort through multiple pages. I didn’t immediately see the “next page” button, myself. After a short peruse, “Gap, inc.” is one of the donors — a company who manufactured in Haiti in the years Clinton was Secretary of State. Aside from many names like “Exxonmobil” and “Barclays Capital,” we also find “Walmart,” “The Walmart Foundation,” and “The Walton Family Foundation” are not only three different entities, but are all donors. Also, they happen to be business partners with both Hanes and Levi’s
So do you think Walmart benefits from low minimum wages in Haiti, where Hanes and Levi’s (among other clothing) is manufactured? Well, regardless of what your answer is (I should hope you figured it out, though), the answer is yes — they do benefit. They actually buy Hanes from Hanes! The less Hanes cost to buy, the more margin of profit Walmart can make.
The amount of Hanes that is sold in Walmart would indicate that even pennies on the margin matter, as evidenced by this post entitled “You Won’t Believe Which Brands Dominated Black Friday at Walmart.”
This was a conflict of interest when we first approached the subject — the Secretary of State’s subordinates lobbying against the interests of the charitable organization that same Secretary of State is involved in. The Clinton Foundation was doing supposedly opposing work in the same country. Then, with publicly available information, one can bring up a few business partners and donors. This becomes a much larger conflict of interest — and without any FOIC requests or contacting individuals involved. I imagine a person of greater resources and attention span than myself could do a lot more than this.
Small potatoes, though, right? It’s just several companies that have involvement in HRC either by private donation or state collaboration — right? Big deal! It’s not like these companies all stand to profit from the minimum wage being lower in Haiti. But if these companies that benefit from the actions of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also donate to The Clinton Foundation and her campaign, it is more than fair to at very least make the assertion corporate interests want Clinton? So why?
At bare minimum, they want a President they can ask things of. Clinton has a track record of answering their requests — either by direct or indirect means. On top of that, Clinton’s record indicates she will fight for their interests — even at the expense of poor, marginalized groups. The expanded profits the Department of State, under authority of Hillary Clinton, fought for all comes at the expense of poor people in Haiti. Poor women, mostly.
The apparel industry, after agriculture, is the most important source of jobs for Haitian workers. Its exports amount to more than $800 million annually and account for more than 90 percent of export earnings, or 9 percent of GDP. The industry employs more than 30,000 workers, 63 percent of them women.
Why do people unaffiliated with corporate interests think Hillary Clinton puts them first? She truly doesn’t.
It’s provable. It’s doesn’t take, as I said earlier, any FOIC requests or the act of contacting people you don’t know. It doesn’t take Googling articles about Clinton in the New York Times or the Washington Post, as she suggests young people do to be informed. Data is what you need to look into so you can do your own research and draw your own conclusions. It’s exhausting to get deep into it, but you do not have to. What we have discussed today is barely under the surface.
To be frank, I stopped when I found Gap and Walmart. I think one could easily go down the same path of publicly-available information that I did and make a more extensive case than what’s presented here (Snopes can back me up on that). You don’t actually have to talk about business partners to show this as a conflict of interest. No one even has to have donated to each other for this to be a conflict of interest, though. The simple act of a Secretary of State presiding over a department acting in a manner that directly contradicts the charitable organization they also preside over — both in the same country and the same industry — is not only a really big conflict of interest — it’s exactly why people try to avoid conflicts of interest.
None of this shit matters, though, right? Clinton is an American and Haiti sure ain’t America! Never mind she proposes a minimum wage less than a living wage here, too — while taking credit for New York’s new $15 minimum wage law… However, what happens to poor women in Haiti doesn’t matter — as long as we get that great Hanes™ apparel out of it!
