U.S.-HAITI: Groups Target Disney’s Link to Haitian Firms

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Sep 19 1996 (IPS) - The same company that brought the world Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck also shares responsibility for dirt- poor wages and working conditions among Haitian garment workers, labour activists in New York argue.

A coalition of labour groups has started a campaign against the Walt Disney Company, arguing that subcontractors who make Disney clothing in Haiti pay hundreds of workers there only 28 cents an hour — far below what they need just to pay for food.

Haitian workers who make Disney clothing “have only one meal for each day, and live from debt to debt,” argues Ray Laforest, a New York union activist and leader of the Disney/Haiti Justice Committee. “They get paid every two weeks…and usually, three days after they pay (for their meals), they are in debt again.”

The workers also face a range of poor labour conditions at the factories, including a lack of inexpensive food and clean drinking water and tremendous heat at the factories, he adds.

Barbara Briggs of the National Labour Committee, a New York- based group which studies labour rights in the Americas, says that the average worker for a subcontractor making Disney clothes would be fortunate to earn 20 Haitian gourdes by the end of a day.

Yet that amount, she says, only pays for a packet of vermicelli, an onion, some spices and a little tea — hardly enough to feed a family.

Despite that, Laforest contends, at least 2,000 workers, mainly young women, work long hours to meet stiff production quotas to produce such items as pajamas bearing the images of Mickey Mouse and Pocahontas.

“Michael Eisner, the chief executive officer of Disney, earns 97,000 dollars an hour,” Laforest estimates. “At that rate, it would take a Haitian worker 1,117 years — she would really have to be immortal — to earn what Mr Eisner makes in one day.”

Some Haitian activists have asked for better working conditions at the factories, and a raise to at least 58 cents an hour — enough, they claim, to provide a “living wage.” But Worldtex, one of the factories Disney subcontracts for garment work, this summer fired five out of 10 worker-elected leaders who had demanded better pay and conditions at the plant.

Haiti’s labour laws allow employers to fire workers for any reason, as long as they give severance pay. But in some of the firings at the subcontractors, Laforest argues, severance packages have been as low as 30 dollars. Fear of being fired has prompted many workers to suffer in silence, Briggs adds.

“Disney places a strong emphasis on families, on children,” Laforest says. “We are just saying they should value Haitian families.” As one of the U.S. companies subcontracting a large amount of work in Haiti, Disney could raise Haiti’s working standards, he contends.

But Disney denies any wrongdoing in Haiti.

“Disney does not employ any workers in Haiti,” the company said in a recent statement. “Two U.S. licensees work regularly with three factories near Port-au-Prince.

“Our intensive and ongoing oversight of their operations, which included a recent on-site inspection of the factories, has found they are adhering to all applicable laws and policies.”

Disney adds that workers making Disney clothes earn on average 20 cents more per day than Haiti’s minimum wage (which is about 2.50 dollars a day), while the best-paid workers earn three times that minimum.

“They’re in total denial,” says Ellen Braune, a spokeswoman for the National Labour Committee. “They still do not pay a living wage.”

New York groups angry about Disney’s stance are taking the battle to the company’s stores this Saturday, with one major protest to be held outside the main Disney Store in New York.

Given Disney’s corporate image as a family-oriented business, the groups may be able to embarrass the home of Mickey Mouse into enforcing changes among its subcontractors.

One recent precedent is promising: Shortly after Disney bought the ABC-Capital Cities media conglomerate, it quickly fired Bob Grant, an ABC Radio host repeatedly accused of expressing racist views on the airwaves.

But several Disney officials contacted by IPS did not respond to questions about the protests. One employee at New York’s Disney Store, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the staff there has been instructed not to discuss the Haiti factories, or even to acknowledge that there have been protests conducted on the issue.