Re: Where Are David Ickes T-Shirts Made...

Sod-Haus...!!! Tue Sep 13, 2011 6:43 am

Where Are David Ickes T-Shirts Made... - Page 2 Davidickecalender

And Other Tat...

http://www.cafepress.com/dees2shop/6116904

lmao

Sod-Haus...!!! Sun Sep 18, 2011 1:49 am

Where Are David Ickes T-Shirts Made... - Page 2 Johnpetersicke

John Peters said...

Hi All,

For the record. David is not into promoting tshirts, aprons and thongs etc. It's not his style.

http://forum.davidicke.com/showthread.php?t=23766&page=2

Where Are David Ickes T-Shirts Made... - Page 2 Davidicketshirts

rodin Sun Sep 18, 2011 3:02 am

Ciggy wrote:Frankists planned the Holocaust in order to bribe yahweh via human sacrifice to give them Israel. Six million was the magic number required, so when the German hirelings weren't doing it fast enough they stepped in to accelerate the killing by outsourcing some of the carnage to Stalin. The joke is on both sides of the debate: yes they probably did kill their required 6,000,000, but no, not in German occupied territory. People have been looking in the wrong places for the other 4,000,000 bodies.

Frankists may well have been behind the set-up to get Israel going for all I know (Was Herzl a Frankist, Was Churchill?) but really I cannot let some of the statements on this thread go unchallenged. Over at DIF there has been fiesty debate (somehow not requiring the use of large fonts to block post views) about what really happened WW2. The revisionists won hands down. No need to re-invent the wheel here, but for anyone REALLY interested in truth, there are several power threads on this.

In fact I have looked at how the subject is handled on the net and it seems to me that is is Jews and their supporters who are in denial. Denial of perfectly good forensic evidence that there was no mass extermination program per se, no gas chambers, that confessions so called were extracted using torture and that witnesses for the defence produced ridiculous forged stories, Plus there are the faked artifacts like shrunken heads, and the fact that the prophecy-fulfilling 6 million trick was tried during WW1.

All the extermination camps were in what became towards the end of the war Soviet-controlled territory. The Soviet project has Jew stamped right trough it, even Churchill the ardent Zionists admitted as much. So there you have the motive for grand fraud.

The impartial reader of this thread (you never know there might be one someday) will be hard pushed to find this post. In 24 hours it will be vilified, ridiculed and superseded by a dozen large-font half-page entries festooned with pictures of Hitler (it's called product placement). Plus both hands will not contain enough fingers to count the entries of 'Nazi' 'Hater' and 'Antisemite'/. Probably I will be accused of being a closet gay and who knows what else....

rodin Sun Sep 18, 2011 3:10 am

Funny how you people pilliory Icke for the non-crime selling T-shirts, and ignore/deny the gross crimes of Jews?

Is there a cogent person willing to set aside preconceptions and study this EVIDENCE...

http://theinfounderground.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5367

Or is it going to be the usual cry of 'Hater' etc?

Back to the T shirt industry

For a start what is child slave labour? The kids in the pic do not look particularly oppressed. Girl has a smile on her face you'd be hard-pushed to find in a contemporary classroom in the UK. Not everything is as it seems...

Of course personally I would not be seen dead in one of these...

Sod-Haus...!!! Sun Sep 18, 2011 3:38 am

rodin wrote:

Back to the T shirt industry

For a start what is child slave labour? The kids in the pic do not look particularly oppressed. Girl has a smile on her face you'd be hard-pushed to find in a contemporary classroom in the UK. Not everything is as it seems...

Of course personally I would not be seen dead in one of these...

One in six children 5 to 14 years old — about 16 percent of all children in this age group — is involved in child labor in developing countries.
In the least developed countries, 30 percent of all children are engaged in child labor.
Worldwide, 126 million children work in hazardous conditions, often enduring beatings, humiliation and sexual violence by their employers.
An estimated 1.2 million children — both boys and girls — are trafficked each year into exploitative work in agriculture, mining, factories, armed conflict or commercial sex work.

This is today’s world of nine year old coal miners and eight year old prostitutes, and of little girls who work 12 hour shifts in sweatshops.

In most of these sweatshops, they are forced to eat, sleep and work in the same stuffy, overcrowded room.
Girls rescued recently from one Bangkok sweatshop were forced to work in strict silence from 6 am to midnight.
They were mercilessly flogged for breaking the rules.

These children are robbed of their childhood, they have to toil up to 18 hours a day, seven days a week.

http://www.anti-slaverysociety.addr.com/clab.htm

rolling pin

rodin Sun Sep 18, 2011 5:05 am

We must distinguish child 'labour' from overt exploitation. I do not support enforced anything. Voluntary labour by a child is character building. UK is riddled with the Shirk Ethic today

Sod-Haus...!!! Sun Sep 18, 2011 6:30 am

rodin wrote:We must distinguish child 'labour' from overt exploitation. I do not support enforced anything. Voluntary labour by a child is character building. UK is riddled with the Shirk Ethic today

- The Fraser Institute’s Michael Walker, excerpt from the critically-acclaimed documentaryThe Corporation

On July 14th, “North America’s largest t-shirt maker” Gildan Activewear announced that they will be closing their El Progresso assembly plant in Honduras, when the lease expires on September 30th.
1800 workers will be laid off, in addition to the approximately 100 workers who were fired for attempting to unionize in 2002-03 (1). Several organizations are shocked by Gildan’s decision to shutdown and relocate - like a “godsend” - to Haiti and Nicaragua, especially since reports are about to be released by the Fair Labor Association (FLA) and the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC) that detail the findings of their extensive audits into factory conditions, wage and worker- related issues.

The WRC’s Scott Nova said “the evidence is overwhelming” regarding “serious violations”, part of a broader “systematic problem” in the realm of women’s and workers rights.
Nova described how Gildan even conducted their own internal investigation concerning the violation of women’s rights reaching the “exact same” conclusion as the WRC.
The WRC’s case, similar to the forthcoming FLA report, is “cut and dried”.
Being an unaccountable corporation has its advantages, however, as Gildan has consistently denied any wrongdoing and appear to be operating with ‘corporate impunity’.

Although Gildan spokesperson Stephane Lemay has attempted to preemptively discredit the WRC audit, pointing out that Gildan refused the WRC access to the El Progresso plant, Nova counters that physical access to the plant “was not important” anyway, given that they conducted extensive interviews with “just under one hundred” expelled workers, as well as with Honduras government officials, off premises.
In other words, the WRC didn’t need access to the plant to prove that Gildan was committing these crimes.
The allegations that
1. Gildan illegally fired substantial numbers of workers for exercising their right to organize over a period of roughly two years, which “succeeded in preventing workers from forming a union” and
2. That Gildan violated Honduran law requiring workers to be paid for overtime, yielded conclusions that determined “substantial workers rights violations.”

According to Nova, there is “no debate over the facts”, and very similar conclusions were reached by the FLA, who, should Gildan refuse to honor the findings of their report or refuse to reverse the decision to cut and run from the El Progresso plant, will likely revoke Gildan’s membership.
Lemay has stated that Gildan will adhere to the “corrective actions” recommended by the FLA, whom they are “bound contractually” to.
The Maquila Solidarity Network’s Bob Jeffcot, and the WRC’s Nova, think it will be hard to enforce these corrective actions if Gildan cut and runs from its El Progresso plant.
Says Jeffcot, “to close it down now is incredibly suspicious”, especially in light of the fact that approximately 100 workers are owed back pay “who deserve something irrespective of the decision to move.”

It is doubtful that Gildan will care whether or not they remain members

http://www.zcommunications.org/gildan-activewear-by-anthony-fenton

noway

Sod-Haus...!!! Sun Sep 18, 2011 6:42 am

Where Are David Ickes T-Shirts Made... - Page 2 Declarationofhumanright

Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:

"(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.

(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests."

Article 24 states:

"Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

http://www.globallabourrights.org/

noway

Sod-Haus...!!! Sun Sep 18, 2011 8:33 am

Where Are David Ickes T-Shirts Made... - Page 2 Gildanlogo

Gildan claims to be a good corporate citizen and has been awarded one of this year's Canadian Awards for International Cooperation—the Award for Excellence in Corporate Social and Ethical Responsibility announced by The Honourable Susan Whelan, Minister for International Cooperation:
“Gildan Activewear's management of its three plants in Honduras is a prime example of how a company can combine business success with corporate social responsibility,” said Minister Whelan.
“Gildan's employees and business partners benefit from a code of ethics and behaviour that values diversity, dignity, fairness and equal opportunity for all.”

BUT— the reality?

Gildan, based in Montreal and with several plants in the area has:
A dyeing facility on Louvin Street that is unionized by Teamsters because it was so when Gildan purchased it from a bankrupt company called ComDye that closed 5 years ago.
Another knitting facility at Montee de Liesse where unionization attempts were unsuccessful after workers, particularly South Asians workers who initiated the union, were terminated.
A sewing facility on Clark Street that was recently closed and production moved to Honduras when a unionization attempt was blocked by the company.
Tactics included the laying-off of the night shift and then closing the plant.

Gildan has resisted unionization and like many others moved production rather than improve the conditions of workers in Montreal.

When it recently closed its Montreal sewing plant, it added the production to the factory in Rio Nance, Honduras.
This is partly because workers tried to unionize and bargain collectively with the company.

Gildan has enlarged its production in Honduran factories as a way to exploit cheaper labour and less regulated conditions than in Montreal.

In its factory in Honduras:

People work 11 hour days for an average take home of $16 a day (standard for a Honduran Garment worker) and only if you meet the often high and unattainable quota

Women are forced to take pregnancy tests

There are supervised bathroom breaks and rationed use of toilet paper

The lint and dust from production is continually circulated throughout the factory, completely covering a person's skin and hair after only a short while

The temperature inside can reach over 30 degrees Celsius

A person is fired for exercising their right to organize a union

In January 2002, Gildan was investigated for these complaints and much more after 38 Honduran workers were fired for trying to unionize their workplace.

And yet it received the Award for Excellence in Corporate Social and Ethical Responsibility!
And Gildan Claims on its website to be “extremely pleased with the progress of the Rio Nance ramp up and with the manufacturing cost reductions being achieved at this facility.”

How does a company that has all these charges against it come to be recognized as “socially responsible”???

“WRAP (Worldwide Responsible Apparel Production Certification Program, which monitors Gildan) has the lowest labour standards of all the major code-of-conduct initiatives,” said Lynda Yanz, co-ordinator of the Maquil= a Solidarity Network, an international network of organizations based in Toronto fighting to improve working conditions in off-shore factories.
“Owners love WRAP because of its bottom-of-the-barrel standards and because almost no information on their performance is available to the public.”

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/44/197.html

noway

ninny Sun Sep 18, 2011 3:37 pm

shut up and accept the slaves of today:

http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/actions/guerrilla-art-bomb.html

study

Sod-Haus...!!! Sun Sep 18, 2011 3:51 pm

ninny wrote:shut up and accept the slaves of today:

http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/actions/guerrilla-art-bomb.html

That's Got A Banksy Feel To It...

Where Are David Ickes T-Shirts Made... - Page 2 Warisfun

As art patrons filled Steve Lazarides' gallery last night for the opening of the dinosaur-themed "When Superstars Ruled the World," another piece of art arrived outside on the street.
Shortly before 10 p.m., two men pulled up in an art car of sorts.
On the hood was a mushroom cloud and the words "art bomb!" Images of war donned the car throughout.

They two men stepped out of the car, which was parked just short of the valet area, opened the trunk revealing a sign that said...

"War is Big Fun, Consume,"

walked to the corner and began running, according to police.
Inside was fake money and a pile of white-painted grenades, also presumably fake.

One officer said they were not concerned about a real bomb because the trunk was already open, showing nothing inside except for t-shirts.
Additionally, if the grenades were real -- they never confirmed if they were or not -- all the pins were in place.
The car was eventually towed and the show went on.
Gallery representatives said the car was not part of the show and so far, no one has identified the artist.

http://laist.com/2010/08/13/beverly_hills_police_tow_guerilla_a.php#photo-6

Where Are David Ickes T-Shirts Made... - Page 2 Banksybang300300x400

Where Are David Ickes T-Shirts Made... - Page 2 Banksybang300300x400

rodin Sun Sep 18, 2011 5:07 pm

Sod-Haus...!!! wrote:

Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:

"(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.

(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests."

Article 24 states:

"Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

http://www.globallabourrights.org/

What it doesn't say is everyone has a right to their own little bit of planet Earth.

Fucking trash and trinkets are all that is offered - the real goods are in the hands of the so called 'elite'.

Meanwhile in the UK the Pakis are driving taxis, claiming housing benefit and working tax credit, the eastern Europeans are getting interpreters to negotiate their benefits, and Land Lords are making a killing, all paid for by the enemy - the hated bourgeoise

Its a Marxist Jewish scam against the whites.

Sod-Haus...!!! Sun Sep 18, 2011 5:32 pm

rodin wrote: paid for by the enemy - the hated bourgeoise

Its a Marxist Jewish scam against the whites.

Make Your Fucking Mind Up...

One Minute It's A Bourgeoise Capitalist Scam Where The Few Own Everything....

The Next Minute It's A Marxist Hence Communist Scam Where The State Has The Power...

Me Thinks You Do Not Have A Clue What You Are Talking About...!!!

rolling pin

Sod-Haus...!!! Sun Sep 18, 2011 6:22 pm

Have You Ever Read Any Political Treatises Of The 20th Century...

Marx's, Das Kapitol,
Engels, The Communist Manifesto,
Hitlers, Mein Kamph,
Fords, The International Jew,
Mao's, Cultural Revolution...???

They Are The Most Dryest Books On The Planet...

But If You Take A Degree In Sociology, They Are A Must Read...

Well Basically They Break Down Into A Class Struggle...

But In The 21st Century,

A Class Struggle Becomes Irrevalent...

And Fords Stuff Rises Like The Cream To The Surface,

Or The Turd In The Punchbowl...

Capitalism Has Triumphed Over Communism...

The Global Village Has Become The Consumer Society...

The Truth Seekers Have Become A Capitalist Commodity...

Think Icke T-Shirts Being Made In Sweatshops...!!!

The People Being Payed To Do Their Jobs...

Soldiers, Firemen, Policemen...

Have Become The Symbols Of The So Called NWO...

Where Are David Ickes T-Shirts Made... - Page 2 Firefightersn

Where Are David Ickes T-Shirts Made... - Page 2 Firefightersn

Battle of Iwo Jima

Where Are David Ickes T-Shirts Made... - Page 2 Iwojimav

The battle was immortalized by Joe Rosenthal's photograph of the raising of the U.S. flag on top of the 166 m (545 ft) Mount Suribachi by five Marines and one Navy Corpsman

George Santayana said...

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

rodin Mon Sep 19, 2011 12:46 am

Sod-Haus...!!! wrote:
rodin wrote: paid for by the enemy - the hated bourgeoise

Its a Marxist Jewish scam against the whites.

Make Your Fucking Mind Up...

One Minute It's A Bourgeoise Capitalist Scam Where The Few Own Everything....

The Next Minute It's A Marxist Hence Communist Scam Where The State Has The Power...

Me Thinks You Do Not Have A Clue What You Are Talking About...!!!

Puh-leeze

You really think there is a difference between state-owned business and business-owned state? Same thing, different veneer. Communism achieves its ends from the bottom up, Capitalism by the top down. Its the same pyramid though

Go look up the REAL definition of bourgeoise.....

until the 19th century was mostly synonymous with the middle class (persons in the broad socioeconomic spectrum between nobility and peasants or proletarians).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourgeoisie

The middle classes. The white brains

Jews run communism and capitalism

Also the music industry media hollywood and they are the LAND LORDS of Earth

true lilly Sat Dec 24, 2011 4:40 pm

Sod-Haus...!!! wrote:
rodin wrote: paid for by the enemy - the hated bourgeoise

Its a Marxist Jewish scam against the whites.

Make Your Fucking Mind Up...

One Minute It's A Bourgeoise Capitalist Scam Where The Few Own Everything....

The Next Minute It's A Marxist Hence Communist Scam Where The State Has The Power...

Me Thinks You Do Not Have A Clue What You Are Talking About...!!!

But wouldn't he need a functioning mind, before he could make it up?

McKallisti Of The Sods Tue Dec 27, 2011 8:10 pm

Sod-Haus...!!! wrote:Hagbard Celine Has A Human Race Get Of Your Knees T-Shirt...

Hagbard Celine said

David's Human Race- Get off Your Knees! The Lion Sleeps No More T-shirts are made,
In Haiti by a company called Gildan.

http://gildan.com/index.cfm

http://hpanwoforum.freeforums.org/what-next-icke-t1380-15.html

Sweatshop in Haiti.

Reconstructing Haiti: Time to break with foreign interference

Such talk of sweatshops might seem more than a little garish the morning after such a disaster, but this was hardly the first time Haiti had been targeted for such ‘sweatshop development’ and foreign players are obviously eager to turn the exponential increase in the bitterness of Haitian existence into profitable lemonade.

Haitian workers were “closely supervised and controlled by the government”, which kept “wage rates at very low levels” – “undoubtedly… the single most important factor influencing the location of assembly industries in Haiti”, according to economist Monique Garrity.
Even the World Bank admitted the “assembly industry is largely outside the Haitian economy” and made “no fiscal contribution.”

During this experiment in sweatshop development between the 1970s and 1980s, absolute poverty in Haiti is estimated to have increased 60 per cent – from 50 to 80 per cent of the population.

While sweatshop development had profited foreign corporations and further impoverished Haitians, those that had allied themselves with foreign investors to exploit Haitian labor rose to new heights.

In 1990, USAID described these “rapacious” new elites who’d “arisen to seize hold of the economy”:

These entrepreneurs have a 19th century approach to making money and have moved in to take advantage of the country’s massive and cheap labor pool.
They run sweatshops, pay starvation wages and oppose any effort to improve the lot of the average impoverished Haitian.

The maquiladora sector had been 50-70 per cent organized.
After the coup, the factories fired all the union-affiliated workers.
Now companies pay whatever they want.
It’s impossible to even talk about [improving] wages or working conditions.

…Following the September 1991 coup, peasant organizers were hunted down like animals by the military.

Within months of the coup, US corporations with business interests in Haiti asked for and received exemptions from the embargo designed to bring down the military junta controlling Haiti.
On 4 February 1992, President Bush I exempted American companies assembling goods in, or sourcing production in Haiti from the embargo.
The US Treasury Department even handed out these licenses to companies controlled by well-known coup organizers.

When the National Labor Committee asked one factory owner why he could not pay his workers enough to survive, he explained that, when the embargo was lifted, many US companies let it be known that they would continue contracting assembly work in Haiti only if their costs were lowered.

His factory was paying its Haitian workers 27 cents an hour, a starvation wage.

Other factories paid as little as nine.
“There was a union before the coup,” the same factory owner said, “but afterwards the repression was too great.
The military was hunting them.
They were afraid and fled Port-au-Prince. Now, we have no union.”

Not only had sweatshop development pushed Haiti’s poor majority further into poverty, but it also gave birth to vicious and rapacious new elite that oversaw the murder of thousands of members of Haiti’s pro-democracy movement in the years after the 1991 coup.

http://links.org.au/node/1497

The Gildan Logo Has A Triangle With An Eye In It...!!!

Gildan saves on labor - the average pay is 2-3 dollars a day in Haiti.
Labor laws in pale in comparison to those in Canada.
At the moment, Gildan is really only a Canadian company in name only.

Haiti is a special case, in regards to Gildan and international trade. Gildan is supposed to be a "vertically integrated company" and I'm sure you're aware of that term.
Thing is, in Haiti, the vast majority of the employees are subcontracted through criminals like Andy Apaid.
They are not Gildan's employees.
In fact, Gildan really only has about 44 employees there who are there to "monitor" the subcontracted employees.
When Gildan says they will take care of their employees they are referring to the 44 individuals, not the thousands of sweatshop employees.

Gildan can help Haiti, I agree - they can help by opening GILDAN factories instead of subcontracting and pay their employees FAIR wages instead the starvation wages they have allowed their subcontracted employees to be paid in the past.
They can also offer some benefits and put themselves at the FOREFRONT of progress in Haiti instead of taking advantage of the poorest people in the western hemisphere.

Less profit? Fine.

They made a BILLION dollars last year but they can't pay people more than 5-10 dollars A DAY?

Gildan should reorganize their priorities and include their employees, subcontracted or not, at the top of the list. I agree with you too in that Gildan could help some Haitians more than any charitable donation, but they would have to stop participating in the exploitation of the Haitian people and move towards empowering them through jobs with fair wages and benefits.

( Correction...
In May the minimum wage was raised to just under 5.00 a day.
In a twelve hour day that equals about 43 cents per day.)

Gildan should be congratulated for giving Haitians far inadequate pay - not even enough to cover their very BASIC NEEDS?
Gildan made over ONE BILLION dollars profit selling clothing last year.
The Haitians that broke their backs in sub-par conditions MAKING those clothes, they made no profit.
Never mind profit - they didn't even make enough to feed and care for their families.

Gildan CAN easily afford to pay Haitians the basic wage they need to live - they CHOOSE not to because they want to keep more money for themselves.

Very big difference there, the people high-up in Gildan have MORE than enough money of their own.

Human Race Get Off Your Knees...

Unless Your A Haitian Sweatshop Worker...

Droinkes A Follower, Not A Mover And Shaker...

Then He Goes On To Say He Exposed Ickes Sweatshop T-Shirts...

I Don't Think So...!!! Timestamp OK...!!!

cthulhu

John Drake Tue Dec 27, 2011 8:21 pm

Fuck off Julie lol. I raised the point in the form of a question on Handbags forum. You just gobbled up the scraps from the floor.

McKallisti Of The Sods Tue Dec 27, 2011 8:27 pm

John Drake wrote:Fuck off Julie lol. I raised the point in the form of a question on Handbags forum. You just gobbled up the scraps from the floor.

Archimedes Spilled The Bathwater...

Newton And Einstein Bathed In It...!!!

cthulhu

John Drake Tue Dec 27, 2011 8:36 pm

Newton And Einstein lol nah your more donkey.

McKallisti Of The Sods Tue Dec 27, 2011 8:43 pm

John Drake wrote:Newton And Einstein lol nah your more donkey.

Does Not Compute...

Donkey WTF...You Been Taking Shrek As A Jewish Commentary On Ba'allam...!!!

r eyes

John Drake Tue Dec 27, 2011 8:45 pm

I tossed out the insight and you did the donkey work. Get it this time Julie?

McKallisti Of The Sods Tue Dec 27, 2011 9:43 pm

John Drake wrote:I tossed out the insight and you did the donkey work. Get it this time Julie?

Scraps...LOL...!!!

Its that JD again!

I wonder where Tswas got GB from lol, not really she lies all the time. Then she comes back with "everyones a liar to you" but its plain to see she lies, lies and lies again.

Made in Haiti ay. Seems a long way for a few t-shirts. Infact i dont think ive ever seen made in Haiti on anything.

http://hpanwoforum.freeforums.org/haitigate-t2151.html

McKallisti Of The Sods Mon Jan 09, 2012 3:03 am

Hagbard Celine said

David's Human Race- Get off Your Knees! The Lion Sleeps No More T-shirts are made,
In Haiti by a company called Gildan.

http://gildan.com/index.cfm

http://hpanwoforum.freeforums.org/what-next-icke-t1380-15.html

Where Are David Ickes T-Shirts Made... - Page 2 Haitisweatshop

Sweatshop in Haiti.

Reconstructing Haiti: Time to break with foreign interference

Such talk of sweatshops might seem more than a little garish the morning after such a disaster, but this was hardly the first time Haiti had been targeted for such ‘sweatshop development’ and foreign players are obviously eager to turn the exponential increase in the bitterness of Haitian existence into profitable lemonade.

Haitian workers were “closely supervised and controlled by the government”, which kept “wage rates at very low levels” – “undoubtedly… the single most important factor influencing the location of assembly industries in Haiti”, according to economist Monique Garrity.
Even the World Bank admitted the “assembly industry is largely outside the Haitian economy” and made “no fiscal contribution.”

During this experiment in sweatshop development between the 1970s and 1980s, absolute poverty in Haiti is estimated to have increased 60 per cent – from 50 to 80 per cent of the population.

While sweatshop development had profited foreign corporations and further impoverished Haitians, those that had allied themselves with foreign investors to exploit Haitian labor rose to new heights.

In 1990, USAID described these “rapacious” new elites who’d “arisen to seize hold of the economy”:

These entrepreneurs have a 19th century approach to making money and have moved in to take advantage of the country’s massive and cheap labor pool.
They run sweatshops, pay starvation wages and oppose any effort to improve the lot of the average impoverished Haitian.

The maquiladora sector had been 50-70 per cent organized.
After the coup, the factories fired all the union-affiliated workers.
Now companies pay whatever they want.
It’s impossible to even talk about [improving] wages or working conditions.

…Following the September 1991 coup, peasant organizers were hunted down like animals by the military.

Within months of the coup, US corporations with business interests in Haiti asked for and received exemptions from the embargo designed to bring down the military junta controlling Haiti.
On 4 February 1992, President Bush I exempted American companies assembling goods in, or sourcing production in Haiti from the embargo.
The US Treasury Department even handed out these licenses to companies controlled by well-known coup organizers.

When the National Labor Committee asked one factory owner why he could not pay his workers enough to survive, he explained that, when the embargo was lifted, many US companies let it be known that they would continue contracting assembly work in Haiti only if their costs were lowered.

His factory was paying its Haitian workers 27 cents an hour, a starvation wage.

Other factories paid as little as nine.
“There was a union before the coup,” the same factory owner said, “but afterwards the repression was too great.
The military was hunting them.
They were afraid and fled Port-au-Prince. Now, we have no union.”

Not only had sweatshop development pushed Haiti’s poor majority further into poverty, but it also gave birth to vicious and rapacious new elite that oversaw the murder of thousands of members of Haiti’s pro-democracy movement in the years after the 1991 coup.

http://links.org.au/node/1497

Where Are David Ickes T-Shirts Made... - Page 2 Gildanlogo

The Gildan Logo Has A Triangle With An Eye In It...!!!

Gildan saves on labor - the average pay is 2-3 dollars a day in Haiti.
Labor laws in pale in comparison to those in Canada.
At the moment, Gildan is really only a Canadian company in name only.

Haiti is a special case, in regards to Gildan and international trade. Gildan is supposed to be a "vertically integrated company" and I'm sure you're aware of that term.
Thing is, in Haiti, the vast majority of the employees are subcontracted through criminals like Andy Apaid.
They are not Gildan's employees.
In fact, Gildan really only has about 44 employees there who are there to "monitor" the subcontracted employees.
When Gildan says they will take care of their employees they are referring to the 44 individuals, not the thousands of sweatshop employees.

Gildan can help Haiti, I agree - they can help by opening GILDAN factories instead of subcontracting and pay their employees FAIR wages instead the starvation wages they have allowed their subcontracted employees to be paid in the past.
They can also offer some benefits and put themselves at the FOREFRONT of progress in Haiti instead of taking advantage of the poorest people in the western hemisphere.

Less profit? Fine.

They made a BILLION dollars last year but they can't pay people more than 5-10 dollars A DAY?

Gildan should reorganize their priorities and include their employees, subcontracted or not, at the top of the list. I agree with you too in that Gildan could help some Haitians more than any charitable donation, but they would have to stop participating in the exploitation of the Haitian people and move towards empowering them through jobs with fair wages and benefits.

( Correction...
In May the minimum wage was raised to just under 5.00 a day.
In a twelve hour day that equals about 43 cents per day.)

Gildan should be congratulated for giving Haitians far inadequate pay - not even enough to cover their very BASIC NEEDS?
Gildan made over ONE BILLION dollars profit selling clothing last year.
The Haitians that broke their backs in sub-par conditions MAKING those clothes, they made no profit.
Never mind profit - they didn't even make enough to feed and care for their families.

Gildan CAN easily afford to pay Haitians the basic wage they need to live - they CHOOSE not to because they want to keep more money for themselves.

Very big difference there, the people high-up in Gildan have MORE than enough money of their own.

Where Are David Ickes T-Shirts Made... - Page 2 Davidicketshirts

Human Race Get Off Your Knees...

Unless Your A Haitian Sweatshop Worker...

Where Are David Ickes T-Shirts Made... - Page 2 455573

"Sweatshop" wages by any standard

"I have a problem with my country, Haiti – I've been working in factories here for 25 years, and I still don't have my own house," Evelyne Pierre-Paul told HGW.

Pierre-Paul, 50, whose name was changed in order to protect her from reprisals at the hands of her boss, doesn't even rent a house.
Before the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake, she and her three children rented two rooms for 10,000 gourdes (about 250 dollars) a year.

But the building was destroyed in the earthquake and she hasn't been able to save up a year's rent yet.
Twenty-three months after the catastrophe that killed hundreds of thousands, she and her children are still living under a tent in one of the capital's hundreds of squalid refugee camps.

Pierre-Paul's average daily take-home wage is actually more than Haiti's minimum factory wage of 150 gourdes, or 3.75 dollars, a day.
She earns about 236 gourdes, or 5.90 dollars a day.
But that doesn't cover even one-quarter of what would be considered a family's most basic expenses.

A study by HGW of assembly workers' expenses in the capital and at the Haiti-Dominican Republic border revealed that on an average day, workers spend more than 50 percent of an average day's wages just getting to work and back and eating their midday meal.

A recent study by the U.S.-based Solidarity Center, which is linked to the AFL-CIO trade union federation, determined that a "living wage" for a worker with two children is 749 dollars a month – almost five times the average monthly wage.

Pierre-Paul's wage – about 150 dollars a month – is far from "living".
She can't afford to send all her children to school.
She can't even afford to move out of the squalid camp.

"When payday comes, you pay all the little debts you accumulated, and you don't have anything left," she said.

Indeed, in buying power, Pierre-Paul earns less than workers did during the assembly factory boom in the 1980s.
At that time, the daily wage was worth about three dollars.
Today, measured in 1982 dollars, the minimum factory wage is worth 1.61 dollars.
The average wage of 236 gourdes a day – as determined by the HGW study – is worth only 2.53 in 1982 dollars.

"The salary question is a veritable scandal," economist Camille Chalmers told HGW in an interview.
"The salary has gotten lower and lower.
(Workers) get paid in gourdes but in fact (because almost half of food eaten in Haiti is now imported), they consume in dollars."

"It's a big error to bet on the slave-wage labour, on breaking the backs of workers who are paid nothing while (foreign) companies get rich.
It's not only an error, it's a crime," he continued.

Pierre-Paul's boss, One World Apparel owner Charles Baker, admits that he doesn't pay his workers enough.

"If a person is honest, it's clear that it's not enough," Baker, a two-time presidential candidate, told HGW.
"If I could give a worker 1,000 gourdes a day, I'd pay that.
But the conditions in Haiti don't permit us to pay 1,000 gourdes."

Baker and other factory owners claim they can't pay more because of they did, their international clients
– like Gildan Activewear, Hanes, Levis, GAP, Banana Republic, K-Mart and Wal-Mart – would pick up and move out.
And so the Haitian government – with the full backing of the U.S. government, as recent Wikileaked cables revealed – remains the lowest wage in the hemisphere-wide "race to the bottom".

But Baker insists the assembly industry phase of Haiti's development is just a "step".

"Yes, it's a race to the bottom… if you count on it!" Baker said.

Baker claims that low-wage, low-skilled assembly industries are temporary, and that they will be a big part of the Haitian economy for only about "10 or 15 years".

"It's a step.
We're going up the stairs and it's one of the steps," he said.

Haiti has been on the same step for almost 30 years.

The "race to the bottom" pits Haitian workers against workers in the neighbouring Dominican Republic.

CODEVI, a free trade zone industrial park in Ouanaminthe, in the Northeast Department opened on the Dominican border about eight years ago, after salaries got "too high", CODEVI director Miguel Angel Torres told HGW.

"In the early 2000s, clients told Dominican companies that the salaries were too high.
They said they couldn't pay.
What happened? CODEVI appeared," Torres said, proudly.
"The benefits in Haiti are better than in other countries…
We can compete with any company in the Dominican Republic!"

In the meantime, Baker and other Haitian factory owners remain vehemently anti-union, according to workers like Pierre-Paul and according to a recent study by the United Nations-affiliated International Labor Association/Better Work programme.

In an April 2011, report, the Haiti branch of the agency noted, "very significant challenges related to the rights of workers to freely form, join, and participate in independent trade unions in this industry in Haiti."

Indeed, five months later, about a week after textile workers in the capital registered a union, all five union leaders suddenly lost their jobs.
Better Work recently ruled the factories should reinstate all union officers but as of Dec. 12, most of the owners had not complied.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/12/21

rolling pin

McKallisti Of The Sods Thu Jan 26, 2012 9:02 pm

Sod-Haus...!!! wrote:

John Peters said...

Hi All,

For the record. David is not into promoting tshirts, aprons and thongs etc. It's not his style.

http://forum.davidicke.com/showthread.php?t=23766&page=2

Haiti and the shaming of the aid zealots: How donated billions have INCREASED poverty and corruption

The first thing that strikes you is the smell: a sweet, sickly stench that sticks to your skin.
It is worst in the morning, since women are terrified of risking a nocturnal trip to the handful of lavatories serving the thousands of people in the camp because of an epidemic of rape.
Even the youngest girls are in danger.

Earlier this month, on the quake’s second anniversary, aid agencies pumped out press releases proclaiming their successes. Add up all the people they claim to have helped and the number exceeds the population of Haiti.

The reality is rather different...

Haiti had huge problems even before the earthquake ripped it apart in 35 terrifying seconds. The poorest nation in the western hemisphere,

A study of nearly 1,500 contracts awarded by U.S. authorities found only 23 went to Haitian companies while contractors based in Washington received more than one-third of funds.

Where Are David Ickes T-Shirts Made... - Page 2 Haitiiy

Where Are David Ickes T-Shirts Made... - Page 2 Haitiiy

A child in one of the many makeshift camps for people whose home were either destroyed or badly damaged from last week's earthquake in Port-au-Prince, in January 2010

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2092425/Haiti-shaming-aid-zealots-How-donated-billions-INCREASED-poverty-corruption.html

Where Are David Ickes T-Shirts Made... - Page 2 Tshirtdicke

Where Are David Ickes T-Shirts Made... - Page 2 Tshirtdicke

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