May Day statement by Batay Ouvriye - Winning our rights is possible! - 1 May 2006

Today, 1st May 2006, we, Haitian workers, are in a special situation. Above all, we should never forget, we are under an OCCUPATION, where the imperialist countries, because of the treachery and corruption of politicians, have put in place a military domination, as well as political control over us, with all the attacks, humiliation and crimes that come with it.

This MAY DAY is special too because we’ve just emerged from the elections in which the ruling classes attempted to steal our mobilization on 7 February 2006 when we blocked the principal project of the bourgeoisie, together with the pseudo-democrats, in what we called the “Fascist Poll”. But, again, it is a special MAY DAY also because, as we have stated already, the Préval team is filled with very negative people, currents, and contradictions. Therefore, we should neither fall asleep nor rest on our laurels. MOBILIZATION TO DEMAND OUR ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL RIGHTS IS THE ONLY GUARANTEE OF VICTORY.

Indeed, in Cap-Haitien, as in many other places in the country, workers, peasants, and the toiling masses are standing up to SEIZE THEIR RIGHTS. In this way, the employees at the Beck Hotel stood up and challenged a sadistic individual who had decided to fire all the workers without severance pay. Also, at the Marnier-Lapostolle company (Grand Marnier), the orange fruit workers have negotiated a basic daily wage of 315 gourdes. At Ouanaminthe, following a monumental battle, the Free Trade Zone workers forced the bosses to rehire all the fired workers, and at the same time won a collective bargaining agreement and other improvements in wages, working conditions and labour relations. And more important, thanks in part to this struggle, these conditions will become mandatory wherever the World Bank’s IFC is lending money for a particular project.

Furthermore, in some rural areas, the peasants have won their campaign for the application of the ‘three-share’ system in sharecropping. (Sharecropping is a system of agricultural production where a landowner allows a sharecropper to use the land in return for a share of the crop produced on the land. The ‘three-share’ system involves the division of the harvest – or profit - from a plot of land into three: one share for the workers, one for the land owner, and a last for the land itself, namely to purchase seeds and insecticides, maintain irrigation, etc. and sometimes even the expense of repairing tools, if necessary. Usually the big landholders refuse to apply the three-share system, even if though it is the law, and instead they say, “One share for the land owner, and one for the worker” and then the worker has to take care of the land using his half share. This is what they call “demwatye” or ‘two halves’ system.) Others peasant farmers are occupying land so that they can work it: an agrarian reform is taking place! We have effectively blocked the illegal formation of a rural police by the landowners, in complicity with the local judges. In the same vein, again, the mobilization for the elections must help us to understand that we have to have our own independent impact at the political level too, and not only on the electoral front. If we are organized with this in mind. If our organization is built on that basis, our owns interests will be the only compass.

All this illustrates that, on the basis of our mobilizations and struggles, winning our rights is possible!

Today’s MAY DAY is special for us because, this time, we workers are not alone in commemorating it. Joining us are the peasant associations, and workers’ associations in neighborhoods. Therefore, with the mobilization of the workers as the motor, the popular masses are standing up.

So, in unison, we say:

Down with the occupation!

Bring members of the interim government before the judicial process!
Those who have committed crimes must not be allowed to leave the country!
Down with all illegal Treaties, Contracts, and Agreements that they secretly signed!

Justice for all workers!
The bourgeoisie must respect the law!
The minimum daily wage must be US $3.00 - at the very minimum!
Unions must be able to set up in all factories!
Down with the boss-friendly Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor!
The Ministry’s regional offices must have the means to function!
Down with the boss-friendly judiciary!
The Ministry of Justice must be cleaned up!
The Labor Code must Change!
The Rural Code must be eliminated!
Peasants must have land to work!
Down with the 'two halves' sharecropping system!

The Decree on free birth certificates must be implemented!
We must have drinking water and electricity in the neighborhoods so that we can live there!
We must all have free health and education!
Down with the rise in the cost of living!
The cost of gasoline must come down, together with the cost of basic products!
Down with deportations from the Dominican Republic! Respect the rights of all immigrant workers!

Long live the struggles of the popular masses with the workers as the backbone!

( Originally: PREMYE ME nou a rive!, Premye Me 2006 - Batay Ouvriye, translated from Creole by Charles Arthur)

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'Ideas and Action - Projecting the voices of Haiti's progressive civil society organisations' is a Haiti Support Group project funded by the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund (SCIAF).

Open letter to Préval from the Collective to Mobilise against the High Cost of Living - Vol. 1, No. 2, 4th May, 2006
SOS Journalistes: New press freedom organisation in action - Vol. 1, No. 3, 5th May 2006
Launch of peasant organisation network - Vol. 1, No. 4, 9th May 2006
The Collective to Mobilise against the High Cost of Living: Press release on neo-liberal policies and the people's demands - Vol, 1, No. 5, 15th May 2006

The Haiti Support Group is a British organisation working in solidarity with the Haitian people's struggle for human rights, participatory democracy and equitable development, since 1992.

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