Workers at H.H. Cutler—VF Corporation's Gillenex factory in Port-au-Prince

Hartford Web Publishing is not the author of the documents in World History Archives and does not presume to validate their accuracy or authenticity nor to release their copyright.

Disney and Cutler want to cut and run
By Ray Laforest, This Week in Haiti, Haiti Progres, 13–19 August 1997. The limits of Washington's cheap-labor assembly sweatshops as the engine of Haitian economic development became brutally clear last month with the announcement that the largest manufacturer of Disney products in Haiti plans to close down its Port-au-Prince operations to find cheaper labor in the Far East.
NPR attacks National Labor Committee!!! Part of a larger corporate counter-attack?
Labor Alerts/Labor News, 8 July 1997. A story this morning on National Public Radio's Morning Edition portrayed the National Labor Committee as scaring Disney and other U.S. manufacturers out of Haiti. The National Labor Committee has stated clearly from the very outset of its campaign that Disney should not pull out of Haiti. Disney has exploited these workers and now it has a responsibility to do right by them.
Disney/Nike Contractor Leaves Haiti for China
Labor Alerts/Labor News, [9 August 1997]. H.H. Cutler (a division of VF Corporation, one of the world's largest apparel companies) has sewn clothing in Haiti for the last several years under contract with the Walt Disney Company and Nike. H.H. Cutler now says that it will pull production out of Haiti and relocate most of the work to Asia.
National Public Radio Report Seriously Distorts Struggle for Worker Rights in Haiti
Labor Alert, 8 August 1997. On July 8, National Public Radio (NPR) broadcast a story that said it was the misguided efforts of human rights advocates in the US that were driving Disney and H.H. Cutler to pull out of Haiti; the largest multinationals in the world—companies like Disney, Wal-Mart, Kmart, H.H. Cutler/VF—have no other choice but to flee Haiti and move to China in the face of pressure to respect worker rights and to pay a wage that comes close to meeting basic subsistence needs.
Haitian worker solidarity
From Ellen Starbird, 8 September 1997. Disney Corp. produces clothing through H.H. Cutler. In 1995 Cutler laid off 2,500 UNITE in the US because of a down turn in sales, but it almost immediately subcontracted in Haiti. Last year those Haitian workers, with no safety net or strike fund (strikes are illegal) took on Cutler and forced the newly returned Aristide government to begin enforcing the legal minimum wage. Now that the workers have organized and demanded union recognition, H.H. Cutler has declared another downturn in their sales.