Wikileaks flashback: cable reveals U.S. State Dept. opposed wage increas in Haiti

the next time any of us hears someone raving about the Dinesh DSouza movie where he says Obama is an anticolonialist, ask them why an anticolonialist would be intervening in the minimum wage of a supposedly sovereign country?

http://www.thenation.com/article/161057/wikileaks-haiti-let-them-live-3-day#

Contractors for Fruit of the Loom, Hanes and Levi’s worked in close concert with the US Embassy when they aggressively moved to block a minimum wage increase for Haitian assembly zone workers, the lowest-paid in the hemisphere, according to secret State Department cables.

The factory owners told the Haitian Parliament that they were willing to give workers a 9-cents-per-hour pay increase to 31 cents per hour to make T-shirts, bras and underwear for US clothing giants like Dockers and Nautica.

But the factory owners refused to pay 62 cents per hour, or $5 per day, as a measure unanimously passed by the Haitian Parliament in June 2009 would have mandated. And they had the vigorous backing of the US Agency for International Development and the US Embassy when they took that stand.

To resolve the impasse between the factory owners and Parliament, the State Department urged quick intervention by then Haitian President René Préval.

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