Week 5- Field Trip 2

La Loma and Edison

Hanes Clinic

Talking to Isabel and Ana from La Altagracia

With Isabel Genao

2/20/12

We were on the road at 8:00 this morning and were very excited that Louis was assigned as our bus driver again, we all loved him last trip. We headed to La Romana, the name of the city and the sugar processing plant we were visiting. We are taking Sociology of Labor and all last week we talked about globalization’s effects on labor conditions, especially in third world countries. After studying working conditions in sweatshops, watching documentaries such as The Price of Sugar, and looking at how many corporations take advantage of poor workers, I was expecting the worst going to the processing plant. Ben has tried to get the past groups here over the last 3 years, and this was the first time they were letting anyone in. We were there to study “Industrial Systems”- not labor conditions and Ben warned us that we could not ask any question about worker rights or salaries or Haitian immigrant workers or take any pictures of employees. The VP of the plant, Miguel, gave us a tour, and  to my surprise, he was a very hospitable and down to earth guy. He was dressed in jeans and a tshirt like all the other workers there and had a lot of friendly conversations with them as we walked through. He gave us a very, very extensive tour of the place, I know more about how sugar is made than I ever wanted to. The workers that I saw were mostly sitting doing maintenance type work- stationed by machines and testing the sugar, flipping switches or whatever needed doing. All of them had proper shoes, hard hats, and some wore goggles. I asked if any women worked here and Miguel actually laughed, saying it was far too hot for any women to work there. We also learned that the sugar industry employs 25,000 people, 12,000 of them being Haitian cane cutters. The factory runs 24/7 December-July and most of the employees leave their families for those 8 months and live in the barracks behind the factory. I can’t imagine that kind of life, but after seeing the working conditions of the cane cutters last Friday, I felt that a factory job was a much better alternative.

2/21/12

I’ve been in this country for one month today! This morning we went to a Macadamia nut plant in Santo Domingo. I was pretty pumped because I was all about getting some chocolate covered macadamia nuts. I did not get any, but the tour ended up being one of my favorite things we did all week. The plant, La Loma, is run by this hilarious guy Edison, and he is only in his late 20’s. He studied and Costa Rica and saw how well macadamia nut farms were doing there and their role in reforestation. He decided to bring the idea back to the DR. The DR has deforested thousands of acres of their mountains and small farmers are put out of business by large industrial farms. His company employs small, organic farmers to plant macadamia nut trees, which reforest the mountains and hold soil together to prevent erosion and runoff into the oceans. The nuts come to the plant to be packaged, certified fair trade and organic, and sold in local stores. He is doing so well that his company was selected to be in the UN’s Millennium Goals book for embodying a sustainable business model, and he spoke at the UN conference to heads of companies such as Coca-Cola and McDonald’s about sustainable business. I was so impressed with him, and he could not have been any nicer to us. His next project is to study how the macadamia nut shells could be used as an alternative energy source, as there is currently one plant in Australia using macadamia nut shells. He is traveling there next week to do some research. Afterwards, we headed to a Hanes factory. Ben told us to be very sensitive about the types of questions we asked and that we were not allowed to take any pictures. I think the Hanes board thought our visit was a bigger deal than it was- all the top executives were there to greet us with a huge spread and this elaborate power point presentation of their business goals and set up. Again, all of them were very gracious, kind and funny and I found myself really liking all of them. The DR Hanes plant is in Bonao, and was recently awarded for being the most environmentally friendly plant for the entire corporation due to their investment in a 50 million dollar hydroelectric power plant that reuses all of the water that comes in and out of the factory. Hanes works cooperatively with the Union, and because of this, workers work 4 days for 12 hours straight and then get 4 days off. While this is good, I think that would be incredibly difficult for mothers, and there were a lot of women working in the factory. The factory itself was very clean, again the executives had a lot of friendly conversations with workers as we toured through, and the workers were very friendly to us, something we did not experience in the sugar plant. Last, we met the President of Hanes Corporate Social Outreach, who is from Winston Salem. I loved him and would like his job. Hanes funds a medical clinic and orphanage down the street, and we took a tour of the hospital. Students from Wake Forest come down and work there to keep the clinic running. They also had a Hanes clinic truck/trailer that travels around to rural towns. They were doing amazing work and it made me feel pretty good about buying Hanes from now on.

2/22/12

I got sick. Really sick. As in I’ve never been that sick in my life. We woke up and I was miserable, I didn’t bother changing out of my mens XXL tshirt they’d given us and my basketball shorts. Jenna put my hair in a do-rag to pull the entire look together, I was a mess. The pictures from that day are pretty great. We went to a cacao plant and farm, which was similar to the macadamia nut plant in that it was an organic/fair trade operation designed to benefit small farmers and the environment. It was interesting, but so hot and naturally fermented cacao is one of the worst smelling things in the world. Not the ideal setting for a sick person. I ended up staying on the bus for the second half of the tour because I felt so awful and Louis sat with me and chatted while I half slept. He is the nicest man and went out and picked guayaba from a tree outside and brought it back for me, saying that they were the best medicine for stomach sickness. I bit into one since I hadn’t eaten anything yet and forced a smile, it tasted like men’s shaving cream smells. We drove back to Santo Domingo and it was the 3 hour bus ride from hell- the first half was on non-existent roads- we drove through a river and were getting thrown around everywhere from the rocks. The second half was in ridiculous traffic and driving in the city is insane stop and go with people merging everywhere, lots of honking and slamming of brakes. Most miserable I have ever been, I started crying when we got to the hotel because I was so happy to be off the bus and so sick at the same time. It was not one of my finest moments, but a girl can only take so much. Needless to say, I stayed in the rest of the night while the group had dinner with Union leaders from around the country.

2/23/12

I woke up feeling great. We left Santo Domingo for La Altagracia, a very rural community of 12,000 people, 72% are unemployed and living under the extreme poverty line. La Altagracia, named for the town, is a living wage factory. The union works cooperatively with the company, and because of this workers receive benefits that are unheard of elsewhere. Women are paid equal to men. The minimum age to work there is 18 instead of 14 and the cut off age to work there is 100 instead of 28. They are paid 1,432 pesos a week instead of 1,100. They receive health care and financial advisors to help them with savings plans. They can use the bathroom or get water whenever they need to and have an hour-long lunch break. They work 9 hours a day Monday through Friday and get weekends off. And they were happy and friendly and thankful for their jobs and I absolutely loved it there. We could ask whatever questions we wanted and could take pictures of anything and anyone we wanted. The freedom to do that said a lot about the kind of place it was- they weren’t hiding anything because it was all good. But its only good for the 133 people who work there out of the 12,000 in the community. They bought the plant from another factory, so they have a whole extra building to fill with more employees, but they don’t have the orders to employ them. Isabel, one of the of the union leaders, said that when the factory reopened, people camped out overnight and by the morning there were miles of people lined up with their applications. Everyone we talked to asked us to tell our schools and businesses about the factory, that they needed more customers to do what they were doing and give other people the same benefits. We all want to get the VT bookstore to start selling tshirts and gear made there, they were working on an order from University of Florida during our visit. Afterwards we headed back towards Santo Domingo and met Louisa Genao, a labor lawyer. She was an incredible woman. As a female lawyer, she faces a lot of prejudice and since she represents mostly Haitian workers, she faces even more. She said the oppression she faces in the work place encourages her to represent the oppressed. She told us of her cases, from organ to child trafficking- it was horrifying to hear and realize they were true stories. Her most recent case was these two Haitian construction workers who fell off the building they were working on and were paralyzed from the neck down. Because they were illegal immigrants, the company refused to cover their medical bills or pay them that months salary. She won the case and got their medical bills paid as well as a small pension, but the final result was the two men being sent back to Haiti. She said that she did not feel like that was winning anything. The president of the construction company is the brother of a Senator, and Louisa received many threats that caused her to be laid off from the WRC labor rights firm she worked for. She now has her own firm, but her clients cannot pay her and she has to pull from her own resources to represent them. She started a yoga studio to help pay these costs, as she does not want money to get in the way of her work but she can no longer take on many cases. When it was time to go I just wanted to stay and help out!

Overall, it was another wonderful field trip. I learned about social issues that I didn’t know existed during Dale’s class and it was inspiring to meet people who are making change in this country.