WASHINGTON — The full trade embargo slapped on Haiti last Friday by the United Nations Security Council has left some assembly operations for innerwear and other apparel in the beseiged country scrambling to meet a May 21 effective date.
“We’re trying to get our contractors to do whatever is necessary to get it back to us before May 21,” said Sam Bentsen, vice president of Elsie Undergarment Corp., Miami, who wrote to President Clinton before the embargo urging him to support continuation of trade. Clinton spearheaded the drive for a full trade embargo.
“I told him that the poor working stiffs are the only ones suffering in Haiti and who would be affected by the embargo. The wealthy and the military are getting whatever they need,” said Bentsen, whose company produces nylon and Lycra spandex underwear and bikinis. His Haitian contractors still must fill an order of 12,000 dozen panties.
At the center of debate over how to restore democracy in Haiti is whether trade is a humanitarian effort intended to maintain a semblance of an economy, or whether it indirectly supports the island’s military dictatorship.
More than half of Haitian exports to the U.S. is in assembled apparel, which enters this country under special duty and quota breaks. Despite turmoil in the island nation following a September 1991 coup when its democratically elected president was ousted, Haiti has remained a small but growing supplier of assembled apparel. Last year, Haiti shipped $98.7 million in apparel to the U.S., up 46 percent from 1991’s $67.7 million.
Henry Kandel, manager of Ocean Blue Designs Ltd., New York, said his company has been a steady employer of 380 people in Haiti, where it has owned a factory for 20 years. Now they are quickly phasing out production of women’s underwear and boys’ swimwear, sold at U.S. discounters. Although the factory is still producing, it will be shuttered by May 21 and its 270 sewing machines packed off to a new factory in the bordering Dominican Republic.
“Our whole operation was in Haiti,” Kandel said.
Charles Kernaghan, executive director of the National Labor Committee, a coalition of 24 unions, said Haitian unions support the full trade embargo as the only remaining means to pressure the dictatorship.
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“Their rationale is that they are willing to undergo complete hardship as long as they can have their president back,” Kernaghan said. “Haiti can be rebuilt and the companies will come back because Haiti has the lowest wages. In fact, the Dominican Republic expects to lose jobs once things settle back down in Haiti.”
The Kellwood Co., St. Louis, which has had a women’s lingerie factory in the capital of Port-au-Prince for nine years, shuttered the facility the first week in April, citing the continued turmoil. A spokeswoman said the factory’s future is dependent on what happens with the political situation.