[NOISE] >> So that incredible energy is from
Haiti's garment workers who are taking the streets to protest corporate corruption.
And a bunch of wage theft that has been going on for decades and
given everything that's going on in Haiti with the political instability.
Now seems like just a good time as any more details on that workers
employed in factories that produce textiles.
And other goods, say they make 500 gourds, that's $5 a day for
nine hours of work and are seeking a minimum of 1500 gourds or $15 a day.
Imagine, yes, Haiti $15 a day.
Here, we're trying to fight for $15 an hour.
Their demands come as Haiti has seen a sharp rise also in inflation.
One factory worker Telemark Pierre says salaries have
not been adjusted in three years.
He says that workers spend 200 gourds $2 a day on transportation alone and
that their salary does not cover basic needs.
So imagine that you're making five a day,
you spend two on transportation three left for what?
Just for some, what's going on, who like, what factories are these?
Well, there are companies like Walmart, companies like Haines,
Gildan, and for some context, a t shirt at Walmart costs let's say
$7 minimum wage in Haiti is 300 gourds a day, 6 to $7 a day.
But of course some workers are paid as little as $3.50 a day and this guy,
for example, says he makes $5 a day, it's been a week of strikes by the way,
this is I believe day five, but it's been going on for quite a while.
For those of you who don't know garment industry in Haiti is huge.
It's a big employer and
a lot of corporations make bank exploiting Haitian workers.
So Haiti's garment industry is focused on low end apparel and clothing,
cranking out plain t shirts for
north American companies such as Gildan Haynes and Walmart.
According to the inter American Development Bank,
the industry makes up 80 to 90% of the country's exports.
And thanks to free trade deals agreed by the US congress,
most Haitian governments are able to enter the US duty-free.
,And that article is actually even from a few years ago.
So you can only imagine how things have worsened given the 2010 earthquake,
given the assassination of the president of Haiti Jovenel Moïse last year,
we covered that.
I there's a political angle to all this and who are some of the backers of that.
But maybe Cenk you want to chime in with some of your thoughts on on this uprising.
>> Yeah, so I I love it.
That video gives me life.
We should do likewise here.
And by the way, truckers in Canada that's a real cause.
Okay, I'd like to endanger my fellow citizens by
spreading disease to them is not the world's
greatest cause for workers to unite around.
That's why no one else in Canada supports you.
Hey, we can't live on these wages.
My kids are starving.
That's a real cause.
And that's what a real worker power looks like and they should not do that more and
more and more so now am I in favor of restriction all instances?
No, so that you always have to look at the facts, okay.
So are these companies like poor Walmart losing money and well, look,
there's no margins, there's nothing they can do.
They're about to go bankrupt.
So that's all they could afford to pay their workers.
[LAUGH] how this is gonna know they make billions upon billions,
not in revenue in profits, in profits.
So whether it's raising and, and get a load of this too, by the way,
they're raising the prices in Haiti on their goods, but
not raising the wages of the workers in Haiti who are then doubly screwed.
Okay, so you can't go around claiming,
I had to raise prices because I didn't have a choice and I had to pay awful,
unlivable wages if you're making billions in profits.
No, that means you're choosing to pay terrible wages and
power never concedes without a demand.
So that was the Haitian workers right there demanding as
a lot of the workers in America should do as well.
And of course this gets into corporate power as almost all of these stories do.
Including the free trade deals that America signed.
The corporations rule our government.
They're the ones who wrote those deals.
They're the ones who signed those deals.
And so, and guys understand this isn't just about the workers in Haiti,
this is also about the workers here because when you pay
somebody in Haiti four bucks or five bucks a day,
that means you don't have to pay an American $15 an hour to do that same job.
You just outsourced the job and
the pain of foreign workers are almost never covered by American corporate media.
So hey, see no evil and you think there's no evil, but trust me, it's right there.
>> Yeah and I do want to give some background to the ways that the political
instability in Haiti again, the assassination of the president.
And some of the, the foreign-backed free trade agreements and
deals that give us exploited garment workers who are getting paid $5 a day.
How those are very deeply linked and just go back to memory lane here.
So, in January 2011, Hillary Clinton in her role as Obama's Secretary of state
flew to Port-au-Prince to demand that this was a party preval's candidate
be taken out of the race didn't like that candidate.
And replaced by a third place finisher a right wing populist pop singer named
Michel Sweet, Micky Martelly.
Martelly appealed to the most powerful international actors in Haiti, including
Bill Clinton because of his enthusiastic support for foreign investment schemes.
Including a push to reinvigorate Haiti's garment assembly sector,
in which Haitian people would be used as cheap labor to make clothes.
Now, Haiti's government sector had already been going and trucking, but
the Martelly years, so this guy wins the Martelly years end up being some
of the most corrupt in Haiti in a generation.
A Haiti anti corruption watchdog reported in 2017 that much of the $2
billion Venezuelan, PetroCaribe, oil loans,
that the country got money freed up to be spent on infrastructure, public health and
other needs had been embezzled during the Martelly presidency.
By then, Martelly had left office handing power to his handpicked successor.
A largely unknown businessman from Haiti's rural north called Jovenel Moise,
the guy who was assassinated last year.
And there's all kinds of shake up in terms of what's going on now,
investigations into his assassination, who is behind it.
It seems like the prime minister,
the current acting president might actually be involved.
And that's a whole other angle on this.
But just to show you that what's good for
corporations is goes first.
It doesn't matter what Haitians want.
It doesn't matter the promise of funds.
It doesn't matter that that the United States and
the UN have dumped billions of dollars into Haiti, right billions.
So we're always being told to donate to Haiti, you gotta have money for Haiti.
Meanwhile, we're against raising wages.
The Clintons have not only advocated, put their thumb on the scale politically, but
they've also advocated for maintaining garment wages,
workers wages at that level.
Again, this is a perfect Haiti is a perfect example of the ways that
democrats absolutely pushed neoliberal economics around the world,
in the same ways that republicans do.
>> Yeah, so one last culprit here, as usual, corporate media.
So in America construction workers go on strike, no one covers it.
Truckers go on strike, but
they're right wingers in Canada, the press is all over it.
How often have you seen this Haitian story in corporate media?
Almost never, of course, right?
But I get it, it's a different country and they're not blocking a bridge to America.
Okay, I'm gonna give them every benefit of the doubt.
Okay, but Francesca, you remember when in 2016,
during the primaries, American media held Hillary Clinton to account for
putting in someone who was verifiably corrupt.
Even if she didn't intend intend, to at a bare minimum,
it was a horrible outcome and deep incompetence that they
Hillary Clinton ruined Haiti by putting that corrupt person in charge.
That was good.
And corporate media was all over that, right?
They challenge your endlessly on that, right?
>> Yeah, I mean, that's the thing, It's like, no, they're focused on her emails,
go after her for something real.
>> Exactly.
>> What I mean?
Bernie was the only one who said remember Bernie said something like I wouldn't
brag if Henry Kissinger were my friend was the only mention and everyone got so
mad at him.
How dare you talk about her foreign policy record.
>> Yeah, no they're media is disgusting.
They browbeat burning in the Brooklyn debate like are you saying that
the money she took from the bankers affected anything?
She did, they asked with a scowl.
Yeah her donors affected almost everything she did.
And guess who, companies choose on the board of by the way Walmart.
Walmart is one of the biggest employers in Haiti hiring those people at $4 a day.
And look at that Hillary Clinton put somebody could corrupt in charge of Haiti
to make that happen.
But hey media in America.
You wouldn't want to cover that.
No no instead you should bash progressives all day long.
They're the worst.
>> Yeah, no I mean heart goes out to Haiti and also it's just great to see it's
great to see them standing up but like the United States has failed them.
I mean we need to really just no more.
[LAUGH] We've screwed them royally.