Poverty wages and appalling working conditions face workers on orange plantations in Haiti. Development and anti-poverty charity, War on Want, is urging British trade unionists to support Haitian workers campaigning for better pay and conditions and union recognition. At the plantation that supplies Remy-Cointreau workers labour for long hours picking, peeling and grating bitter oranges for shipment to the company s distillery in France. They are also required to undertake unpaid overtime. Workers have no sick pay or holiday entitlement, they must provide their own tools, and there is no clean water to drink.
Work accidents are legion and health hazards enormous.
Conditions on the plantation, including the absence of any toilets or first aid facilities, contravene Haitian labour laws. The absence of washing facilities means that workers have no way of removing the acidic orange spray from their skin. It corrodes fingernails and aggravates cuts from the thorny orange trees. R my Cointreau chairwoman, Dominique H riard Dubreuil, is ranked fifth in the Fortune list of the 50 most powerful businesswomen in the world. Haiti s Labour Federation, Batay Ouvriye, or Workers Struggle, have been setting up unions on orange plantations in Haiti for several years, despite opposition from management.