[R-G] Confédération des travailleurs haitiens: Launches Website and New Campaigns

[Anthony Fenton]

November 24th, 2007
Confédération des travailleurs haitiens: Launches Website and New Campaigns

By: Nazaire St Fort and Jeb Sprague - HaitiAnalysis.com

The
Confederation of Haitian Workers (CTH), which is made up of eleven
labor federations and three national commissions, has officially
launched a website according to its General Secretary Paul Chery.
Haiti, just south-east of Cuba and bordering the Dominican Republic, is
host to a long thriving labor movement.


With offices in all of Haiti's ten departments, the CTH - with
both leftist and christian leanings - is one of the largest labor
confederations in the country.

In mid-2007 members of CTH
carried out a well-received countrywide solidarity tour in Canada,
speaking to hundreds of trade unionists and student activists. The year
prior CTH organizers visited New York, Florida and California.


CTH delegates have also traveled frequently to South America
and last year CTH was present at the founding congress of the
International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) in Vienna, Austria. CTH
is today the official member-representative of ITUC , the world's
largest labor federation, in Haiti.


Chery observes that one of CTH's main campaigns currently is
in organizing port workers across Haiti into one large federation under
its national structure. He hopes their recently launched website will
provide information to Haitian trade unionists in the diaspora as well
as help friends abroad find out about their campaigns.


A second ongoing campaign, he notes, is organizing workers in
Haiti's large garment sector which is present mostly in Port-au-Prince
and the Ouanaminthe Free Trade Zone along the northern border with the
Dominican Republic. Most of CTH's once active garment unions folded
under severe repression during the dictatorship of General Raul Cedras
(1991-1994).


However, besides CTH's significant presence on port docks, it
is also widely present in the transportation sector, the public school
sector and in poor church communities. Teachers, who attended the CTH
annual conference in August of this year in Port-au-Prince, spoke
movingly of their ongoing organizing.


According to agronomist and CTH member Jude Bonhomme, from
Haiti's Sud department, the confederation is also actively engaged in
rural areas of Haiti as well.