In new blow to Haiti, big textile mill to cut 3,500 jobs

• A textile mill in Haiti announced in a letter that it will fire 3,500 workers.
• S&H Global counts Gap, Target, and Walmart among its clients.
• The company cited gang control of the Port-au-Prince oil terminal.

A textile mill in Haiti, among some of the largest, announced in a letter that it will fire 3,500 workers, or half of its employees, due to adverse economic conditions and record-high gang violence.

A local affiliate of the South Korean textile company Sae-A, S&H Worldwide, claimed on Tuesday that multiple “turbulences” in Haiti and the global economic downturn prompted them to make the job layoffs.

The company cited gang control of the Port-au-Prince oil terminal that led to a “two-month forced closure at the end of the year (2022) when the local power plant had to shut down due to a fuel shortage.”

Several customs strikes and unexpected border closures with the Dominican Republic, both of which hampered exports, were also cited as reasons for S&H Global’s decision.

The company stated that client orders have been “redirected elsewhere in the Caribbean and Central America, to other reliable suppliers and factories,” due to shipping and production delays in Haiti.

Also Read

Walmart, CVS adjust operating hours despite tight labor market

Pharmacies were included in the company's 9,900 retail outlets. Walmart pharmacies will...

The Caracol Industrial Park at Cap-Haitien, a sizable city on the north coast, opened in 2012, marking the start of operations in Haiti for S&H Global, which counts Gap, Target, and Walmart among its clients.

Employment at S&H Global’s textile plants kept many of the company’s employees out of the ranks of the half of the population that experiences food insecurity.

A US slowdown forced S&H Global to start laying off employees at its Haitian factory in the summer of 2022, despite the fact that all textiles produced in Haiti enter US markets duty-free.

Foreign textile manufacturers choose Haiti because of its cheap minimum wage, which works out to $4.83 per day, but the country is increasingly afflicted by armed gangs that kidnap people for ransom and steal commercial cargo with impunity.

Also Read

Haiti’s capital city taken hostage by violent gangs

Residents of this bustling city have a mental map that divides it...