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O 102114Z MAY 07
FM AMEMBASSY SANTO DOMINGO
TO RUEHRC/USDA FAS WASHDC IMMEDIATE 1584
RUCPDOC/USDOC WASHDC IMMEDIATE 1651
RUEHC/DEPT OF LABOR WASHDC IMMEDIATE
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INFO RUEHZA/WHA CENTRAL AMERICAN COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
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UNCLAS SANTO DOMINGO 001119 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
USDOL FOR ILAB JOHN MONDEJAR, CRISPIN RIGBY, CATHRYN HELM, 
LAURA BUFFO 
DEPARTMENT FOR EEB, WHA, WHA/CAR DAVID SEARBY, DRL 
GABRIELLA RIGG 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: EAGR ELAB ETRD PHUM SMIG KWMN DR HA
SUBJECT: EVALUATING THE ENFORCEMENT OF DOMINICAN LABOR LAW 
IN THE AGRICULTURAL SECTOR 
 
 
¶1. (U) SUMMARY: Many employers in the Dominican agricultural 
sector regularly violate the Dominican labor code, according 
to several Dominican non-governmental organizations and other 
entities. Many of the workers in this sector are involved in 
the production of commodities that are exported to the United 
States. Others work in industries competing with U.S. 
imports, such as rice. These workers are predominately 
Haitian or of Haitian descent, both the undocumented ones and 
those with work permits. The most commonly reported 
violations include hiring non-Dominicans in violation of the 
law; denying written work contracts to employees who request 
them; paying salaries that are below the legal minimum; 
employing children in violation of the law; making salary 
deductions that are not authorized under the law; denying 
employees the monetary benefits to which they are legally 
entitled; failing to submit social security deductions to the 
relevant government offices; shorting workers in the 
assessment of their production; discriminating against 
workers based on national origin and gender; and preventing 
employees from unionizing. There is some evidence of a 
willingness on the part of labor inspectors to enforce labor 
law for the benefit of rural workers, but the Ministry of 
Labor's inspectorate division lacks the vehicles and other 
resources it needs to conduct rural inspections. The labor 
court system is perceived to be slow, inefficient, and 
unfairly weighted towards the employers.  END SUMMARY. 
 
 
¶2. (U) This cable examines the performance of the Dominican 
government over the past several years in enforcing its labor 
laws for the benefit of rural agricultural laborers (who tend 
to be undocumented persons of Haitian descent) involved in 
the production of sugar, fruits and vegetables, tobacco and 
tobacco products, and rice.  Looking to the future, under the 
Dominican Republic - Central America Free Trade Agreement 
(DR-CAFTA), which entered into force on March 1, 2007, each 
member country agreed to enforce fully its own labor laws. 
 
¶3. (U) Last year, according to the U.S. Department of 
Commerce, the Dominican Republic exported USD 588.2 million 
in agricultural products to the United States. This figure 
represented approximately 13 percent of total Dominican 
exports to the United States. Sugar, fruit and vegetables, 
and tobacco (including tobacco products) were selected for 
this report because they represent 75 percent of Dominican 
agricultural exports to the United States. Last year the 
country exported USD 122.4 million in sugar and sugar 
confectionary products, USD 269.5 million in tobacco products 
and manufactured tobacco substitutes (an amount somewhat 
offset by the country's importation of USD 94.2 million in 
tobacco products from the United States that same year), and 
USD 48.2 million in edible vegetables, fruit, and nuts. The 
Dominican Republic benefits from the highest U.S. tariff rate 
quota (TRQ) for sugar and continues to receive the highest 
single-country allocation. Rice was selected for this report 
because of its status as a significant U.S. export to the 
Dominican Republic, expected to grow under DR-CAFTA. The U.S. 
Foreign Agricultural Service estimated the volume of U.S. 
rice exports to the Dominican Republic at USD 13.8 million in 
¶2006. 
 
¶4. (U) The Dominican Board of Agro Businesses (JAD) says that 
80 percent of all Dominican agricultural output is generated 
by "very small" producers. For example, according to popular 
journalist Huchi Lora, seventy percent of Dominican tobacco 
producers cultivate their product on parcels of 20 tareas 
(approximately three acres) or less. One notable exception to 
this tendency can be found in the sugar industry, where 
approximately 90 percent of all production is generated by 
two private companies: Central Romana, owned by the Fanjul 
family, and the smaller Compania Anonima de Explotaciones 
Industriales (CAEI), owned by the Vicini family. 
 
 
--------------------------------------------- -------- 
CONTEXT: THE GROWING "HAITIAN-IZATION" OF AGRICULTURE 
--------------------------------------------- -------- 
 
¶5. (U) Over time, Dominican agriculture has come to rely 
predominately on the labor provided by undocumented persons 
of Haitian descent. Although these workers are commonly 
characterized by journalists and politicians as "illegal 
 
immigrants," it is important to note that this classification 
is often incorrect. Although many of these workers did in 
fact migrate "illegally" from Haiti, others came legally with 
work permits or other forms of de facto government consent. 
Many others were born in the Dominican Republic. 
 
 
-- Big Sugar's Historical Addiction to Haitians 
 
¶6. (U) For nearly a century, Dominican sugar producers have 
relied heavily on the cheap labor provided by Haitians. In 
sugar worker communities, known as "bateyes," services were 
rudimentary and living and working conditions were extremely 
harsh. After surpassing 1.2 million tons during the golden 
years of the 1970s, Dominican sugar production gradually fell 
to an all-time low of 371,000 metric tons in 1999 due 
primarily to the collapse of organized harvesting on 
state-owned land. The Haitian workers and their families who 
had resided on bateyes associated with the State Sugar 
Council (Consejo Estatal del Azucar or CEA) were left with 
few prospects as their jobs vanished. Last year total 
Dominican production was estimated at 520,000 metric tons. 
 
 
-- Migrant Workers Seek Prospects Outside the Bateyes 
 
¶7. (U) The reduced demand for workers in the sugar industry 
and continuing economic instability in Haiti have driven 
migrant workers to seek employment in other sectors of the 
Dominican economy. A survey conducted in 2002 by the Latin 
American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO) in coordination 
with the International Organization of Migration (IOM) found 
that of the migrant population of Haitian descent in the 
Dominican Republic, only 15.7 percent worked in the sugar 
industry, whereas 18.6 percent worked in other areas of 
agriculture, 38.9 percent worked in construction, and the 
remaining 26.8 percent worked elsewhere. 
 
¶8. (U) Employing Haitian laborers in agricultural tasks is 
appealing to rural landowners because Haitians work for less. 
An article from 2005 in popular newspaper Diario Libre 
documented that it costs an employer in the coffee sector 
about twice as much to employ a Dominican as it does to 
employ a Haitian. Last year the Dominican Board of Agro 
Businesses (JAD) estimated the participation of "Haitians" 
throughout Dominican agriculture as comprising approximately 
90 percent of the work force. The JAD Executive Vice 
President stated to poloff in May that this proportion had 
fallen to 80-85 percent in recent months. 
 
 
-- Their Legal Status 
 
¶9. (U) For many years migrant workers in the sugar industry 
were able to obtain valid work permits granting them de facto 
legal status in the country. Decree 417-90, implemented in 
October 1990, instructed the Immigration Directorate to 
proceed "with the greatest speed" to "normalize" the 
immigration status of undocumented workers. Many cane workers 
and other batey residents say that during that "registration 
drive," immigration inspectors took from them any 
identification documents they possessed, promising that the 
documents would be replaced with official immigration papers. 
Few of those living in the bateyes ever received the promised 
immigration papers. Most remain undocumented today. 
 
¶10. (SBU) A new mechanism appears to have replaced the old 
system of "fichas." Employers can pay a fee to the 
Directorate of Migration in order to obtain a six-month 
permit to hire a foreign worker. This mechanism does not 
appear to be well-defined or well-enforced. Some 
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have asserted that the 
process does not convey legal status to workers or their 
families and does not protect them from repatriation; the 
process instead appears oriented towards protecting 
employers. A survey of Haitian laborers involved in the 
production of bananas, plantains, rice, melons, and tomatoes 
in the provinces of Montecristi and Valverde Mao 
(northeastern Dominican Republic) conducted by the Jesuit 
Refugee Service (JRS) estimated that around 65 percent of 
workers held these six-month work documents. However, in a 
meeting with poloff, JAD Executive Vice President Osmar 
 
Benitez acknowledged that most agricultural employers do not 
go through the process of soliciting permission to hire 
Haitian workers. 
 
 
-- Their Vulnerability to Exploitation 
 
¶11. (U) Lacking valid documentation of their legal status in 
the Dominican Republic, migrant workers and their 
Dominican-born descendents, whom the government generally 
refuses to document, are not eligible to participate in many 
aspects of Dominican society and the economy. Undocumented 
adults are ineligible to apply for jobs in the formal sector. 
Undocumented children have limited and inconsistent access to 
public schools. Undocumented persons of Haitian descent face 
the risk of being "repatriated" to Haiti; last year the 
Dominican government repatriated more than 26,000. Depending 
on which estimates you use of the size of the Haitian 
community, this was anywhere from two to ten percent of those 
who could have been targeted. 
 
¶12. (U) Principle IV of the Dominican Labor Code states that 
"employment laws govern on a territorial basis and make no 
distinction between Dominicans and foreigners."  This 
provision and others have been broadly interpreted to cover 
foreigners who are also undocumented workers.  However, 
migrant workers' precarious legal situation and lack of real 
employment alternatives make them far more vulnerable to 
unscrupulous employers. 
 
¶13. (U) Other organizations have studied the problems and 
reached slightly different conclusions. The Latin American 
Social Sciences Faculty (FLACSO) reports that high labor 
mobility and excellent networks of contacts among rural 
laborers allow workers greater flexibility to negotiate 
better working conditions than one would expect. Yet workers 
are hindered in these efforts by a broad lack of 
understanding of their rights under the Dominican Labor Code. 
 
 
-------------------------------------------- 
SOME ALLEGED LABOR VIOLATIONS IN AGRICULTURE 
-------------------------------------------- 
 
¶14. (U) Following are some of the major labor violations that 
NGOs and others have documented in the sugar, tobacco, and 
fruit and vegetable sectors of Dominican agriculture. 
 
The Embassy is not in a position to verify all of these 
alleged violations, but we have no reason to suspect that the 
reports are not accurate. 
 
 
-- Limits on Hiring Non-Dominicans 
 
¶15. (U) Article 135 of the Dominican Labor Code requires that 
at least 80 percent of the workers in any private business be 
Dominican citizens. Article 144 further states that the 
"superintendents, overseers, supervisors and any other 
workers who toil in agricultural tasks must be of Dominican 
nationality." 
 
¶16. (U) Despite these stipulations, Dominican agriculture 
today relies almost exclusively on undocumented laborers of 
Haitian descent. As mentioned previously, even the Dominican 
Board of Agro Businesses acknowledges that 80-90 percent of 
the country's agricultural laborers are "Haitian." The JRS 
study documented similar results in the provinces of 
Montecristi and Valverde Mao. It estimated the prevalence of 
Haitian labor at 90 percent of workers in the banana 
industry, 90 percent of workers in the rice sector, and 
"virtually all" of the workers involved in the production of 
tomatoes. The sugar industry's historic reliance on 
undocumented workers of Haitian descent continues today. 
 
 
-- Work Contracts 
 
¶17. (U) The Dominican Labor Code requires a work contract 
between the employer and employee to govern all types of 
employment. The law allows for both written and oral 
contracts. However, Article 19 of the Labor Code states that 
 
"either party (to a contract) can demand of the other party 
that a verbal work contract be formally put into writing." 
 
¶18. (U) In the agricultural sector of the Dominican economy, 
it appears that few employers provide written work contracts 
to their employees, even when asked to do so. The JRS study 
of agricultural workers in Montecristi and Valverde Mao 
estimated that just three percent of those workers held 
written work contracts. NGOs allege that the lack of written 
work contracts makes workers more vulnerable to exploitation 
-- for example, being paid less than the wages they are 
promised when they accept their jobs; being classified as 
"day laborers," which allows employers to pocket their social 
security deductions (see section on Social Security), 
disqualifying them for their legally-mandated benefits; and 
being paid less than the minimum wage. 
 
¶19. (SBU) An ongoing case involving sugar corporation CAEI 
illustrates the perceived pitfalls that workers associate 
with strident efforts to demand written contracts. For more 
than two years NGOs have been demanding that CAEI provide its 
workers with written work contracts; the company currently 
still does not do so. In August 2006, a local NGO obtained 
pages of names and signatures from CAEI workers petitioning 
for written work contracts. In accordance with Dominican law, 
the NGO notified CAEI in September of the request. CAEI 
declined to respond. The Dominican Labor Code requires that 
claimants allow a "reasonable period of time" to elapse 
before notifying the Ministry of Labor that a party has 
failed to respond to a request for a written contract. The 
NGO notified the Ministry of Labor of the case in January 
2007, but the Ministry misplaced their file.  The NGO 
submitted a new notification in April. Labor inspectors 
summoned attorneys from both sides to attend a preliminary 
meeting on May 4, but CAEI attorneys failed to appear. The 
meeting was rescheduled for May 8. However, in a letter to 
the NGO representing the workers, CAEI stated that all of the 
workers listed in the case had been discharged for reasons 
allegedly unassociated with their complaint. Many of those 
workers had 20 to 30 years of experience at CAEI. 
 
 
-- Minimum Wage 
 
¶20. (U) With respect to agricultural laborers, the Dominican 
Labor Code sets the daily minimum wage at 80 pesos (USD 2.50) 
per day for workers in the sugar industry and at 130 pesos 
(USD 4.00) per day for workers in all other agricultural 
sectors. The lower level for sugar laborers may be associated 
with that industry's historic reliance on Haitians. 
 
¶21. (U) Most agricultural laborers tend to be hired as 
"obreros," workers who are paid per unit of production. For 
example: cane cutters are paid by the ton of sugar cane they 
cut; planters are paid per row of seeds they sow; tomato 
pickers are paid by the number of sacks they fill. However, 
minimum wage regulations stipulate that no matter how much 
these workers accomplish in a day, their employers are 
required to pay them at least the minimum daily wage. 
 
¶22. (U) During the six-month harvesting season, most sugar 
cane workers appear to be able to earn the minimum wage over 
the course of a full day's work. For example, CAEI pays 
laborers 86 pesos (USD 2.70) (according to a long-resident 
non-Dominican observer) to 105 pesos (USD 3.30) (according to 
CAEI Public Relations Manager Campos de Moya) for every ton 
of sugar they cut. Generally, the strongest workers can cut 
around two tons in a 10-hour workday (the maximum envisioned 
in the Labor Code). However, many older laborers have little 
choice but to work the fields as well. Human rights NGOs 
report that many of these workers are not able to cut a full 
ton of cane in a day. When pay day arrives, company officials 
allegedly pay these workers only for the amount of cane that 
they actually cut -- even if this amounts to less than the 80 
pesos a day that is the minimum wage for workers in the sugar 
industry. 
 
¶23. (U) During the six-month off-season, CAEI (like other 
sugar producers) offers some small jobs, such as clearing 
land, to workers who remain in their communities. However, 
workers are not generally able to earn the legally mandated 
minimum wage with these jobs. During a visit to sugar worker 
 
communities on CAEI property last summer, poloff observed 
workers and their children who had eaten nothing over the 
course of the day because they could not afford food. Workers 
choose to remain in their communities despite these 
difficulties for a number of reasons -- to remain with their 
families, for example, or because they are fearful of being 
repatriated if they venture outside the relative safety of 
CAEI property, or because they are staying until the start of 
the next season in order to collect the portion of wages that 
CAEI has withheld from their paychecks (see section on 
"Salary Deductions"). 
 
¶24. (U) Since January 2006 the minimum wage for agricultural 
workers outside the sugar industry has been 130 pesos per 
day.  In 2005 the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) conducted a 
study on the Haitian workers at agricultural plantations in 
the Dominican provinces of Montecristi and Valverde Mao, 
located in the northwest of the Dominican Republic. That 
study found that 25 percent of the workers received salaries 
of less than 120 pesos per day. Similarly, last year an 
investigation by newspaper Diario Libre concluded that 
Haitian workers in coffee plantations received salaries of 
between 80 and 120 pesos per day. 
 
¶25. (SBU) In a May 1 meeting with poloff, Executive Vice 
President of the JAD Osmar Benitez asserted that all workers 
in Dominican agriculture are paid "well above" the minimum 
regardless of their legal status. Though some organizations 
have disputed this characterization, others have supported 
it. More research is needed to determine whether wage levels 
for agricultural laborers have increased to match adjustments 
in the minimum wage. 
 
 
-- Child Labor 
 
¶26. (U) Dominican law prohibits employment of children 
younger than 14 years of age and places restrictions on the 
employment of children under the age of 16. Nonetheless, 
child labor remains a serious and continuing problem, though 
there is some evidence it has improved in recent years. 
 
¶27. (U) Between 2000 and 2003 the International Program for 
the Elimination of Child Labor (IPEC) of the International 
Labor Organization (ILO) in the Dominican Republic conducted 
a series of detailed baseline studies analyzing the 
preponderance of child labor in various agricultural sectors. 
Those surveys estimated the proportion of children (ages 
5-17) who had worked in agriculture within the past year at: 
88 percent in the tomato-producing communities near Azua; 83 
percent in the fertile garlic, potato, fruit and flower 
producing region of Constanza; and "significant proportions" 
(not estimated) in the tobacco-growing regions near Santiago. 
ILO-IPEC estimated that "practically all" of the children in 
the rice-growing communities of the northeastern Dominican 
Republic had worked in the production of rice at some point 
in their lives, but only around half were working five or 
more days per week at the time the study was conducted. Sixty 
percent of the women surveyed in 2005 by the Movement of 
Dominican-Haitian Women (MUDHA) in the agricultural 
communities of Mao Valverde stated that their children worked 
the fields instead of attending school; the most common 
reason cited for this was an inability to gain school 
admittance because their children lacked Dominican birth 
certificates. 
 
¶28. (U) The sugar industry in the Dominican Republic has 
traditionally insulated itself from outside contacts, and the 
two major companies (Central Romana and CAEI) declined to 
permit ILO-IPEC to conduct a baseline survey on their 
property. Nonetheless, a non-Dominican observer documented 
widespread evidence of child labor over a period of several 
years. 
 
¶29. (SBU) CAEI appears to have taken a decision to improve 
conditions for workers and to improve its image.  The company 
recently stressed that it has a "zero tolerance" policy with 
respect to child labor. A non-Dominican activist resident in 
the area stated in September 2006 that the company had made 
some progress towards this goal. Today CAEI officials 
unequivocally deny the existence of child labor on their 
property. Some NGOs dispute this characterization, saying 
 
that although the company's record has improved, children can 
still be found planting rows in CAEI fields. A non-Dominican 
observer whom Embassy has reason to consider a reliable 
source told poloff in April that child labor can still be 
found in its facilities. 
 
¶30. (U) Children make appealing workers in tasks such as 
planting because they accept lower pay. According to the JRS 
study, "Some employers stated that in industrial tomato 
production, child labor can produce yields similar to those 
of adult labor; sometimes children can exhibit even more 
skill due to the size of their hands. In spite of this, child 
laborers receive wages that sometimes represent only 50 
percent of what is received by adults." According to ILO-IPEC 
(Dominican Republic) Chief Technical Advisor Laetitia Dumas, 
children are typically paid only 75 to 125 pesos (USD 2.30 - 
3.90) for a full day's work -- an amount that is also below 
the minimum wage. 
 
¶31. (U) Dumas stated that problems with child labor have 
lessened somewhat in recent years (thanks in large part to 
her organization's efforts). However, the problems are far 
from resolved; in the absence of another detailed series of 
follow-up studies it is impossible to estimate improvements. 
 
 
-- Salary Deductions 
 
¶32. (U) Salary deductions have long been a major source of 
complaint for workers. The Dominican Labor Code allows 
employers to make only the following types of salary 
deductions: "1) those authorized by law; 2) those related to 
union quotas; 3) payroll advances given by the employer; 4) 
those related to credits granted by banking institutions with 
the recommendation and guarantee of the employer (...); and 
5) those related to worker contributions to private pension 
plans." 
 
¶33. (U) The two major sugar corporations withhold a portion 
of every laborer's salary as an incentive for laborers to 
work to the end of the year's harvest and return for the 
following year's. According to human rights NGOs, CAEI makes 
the largest such deductions (approximately 10 percent) from 
its workers' salaries. Those workers who fail to return 
effectively forfeit this portion of their earnings. However, 
even those workers who do return sometimes report that their 
deductions are lost, their ID numbers inaccurate, or the 
amounts awaiting them are far less than expected. 
 
¶34. (U) JRS documented extensive pay discounts from workers 
in other agricultural sectors as well. They noted in their 
study of agricultural laborers in of Montecristi and Valverde 
Mao that workers' paychecks were being docked for "social 
security (which migrant workers almost never receive), 
reimbursement for migration expenses, savings, consumed 
merchandise, check exchange," and other similar discounts. 
 
 
-- Additional Monetary Compensation 
 
¶35. (U) The Dominican Labor Code establishes a number of 
entitlements to monetary compensation that are calculated 
according to the length of time a worker has been employed. 
These include: the right to a Christmas bonus of a full 
month's extra salary in December (or, for employees who lack 
a full year's experience at their place of employment, a 
prorated payment that correlates with the number of months 
the worker has been employed); the right to "economic 
assistance" for certain categories of workers (for example, 
those who are badly injured) whose work contracts are 
terminated due to extraordinary circumstances after at least 
four months of service; compensation in lieu of the 
employee's right to have advance notice of the termination of 
his or her employment (the mandatory length of that advance 
notice is determined by length of employment); and the right 
to severance pay, the amount of which correlates with the 
worker's length of employment. 
 
¶36. (U) JRS documented that of the agricultural laborers they 
studied, 40 percent worked on a seasonal basis (averaging 
around four months at their places of employment), whereas 
the remaining 60 percent worked on a "permanent" basis at 
 
their current places of employment (of these, around 47 
percent had more than six years of continuous experience at 
their current places of employment). Because most workers in 
the agricultural sector lack written work contracts and are 
usually paid in cash, they have little evidence to document 
their length of employment. NGOs allege that agricultural 
employers regularly take advantage of this lack by 
classifying even "permanent" employees as "day laborers," 
regardless of their length of employment. "Day laborers" are 
not generally entitled to the benefits outlined in the 
previous paragraph. 
 
¶37. (U) NGOs report that because agricultural laborers are 
not aware of their rights to compensation based on length of 
employment, and because employees are typically classified as 
"day laborers," virtually all laborers in the agricultural 
sector are denied Christmas bonuses, economic assistance, 
severance pay and other such benefits. Central Romana, the 
largest producer of sugar, appears to be unique in that it 
documents length of employment and pays its employees the 
corresponding benefits to which they are due. 
 
 
-- Social Security and Medical Benefits 
 
¶38. (U) Dominican law requires that a percentage of most 
workers' salaries be deducted and submitted to the national 
social security office. Although the salaries of agricultural 
laborers are generally docked for social security purposes, 
those workers rarely receive social security compensation. 
This forces older workers to continue working the fields for 
reduced wages well into their 80s, if they live so long. 
 
¶39. (U) In its survey of agricultural laborers, the JRS 
reported that the banana and plantain industries, despite 
taking the full amount of social security deductions from 
workers' paychecks, commonly classified their employees as 
"day laborers" when reporting to the relevant government 
social security offices. This reduced the amount they were 
required to submit and allegedly allowed the employer to 
pocket the difference. Many of the employees classified as 
"day laborers" had months or years of experience at the same 
business. 
 
¶40. (SBU) JRS associates said that according to records in 
the social security office in Valverde Mao, the banana and 
plantain industries were the only ones that reported any sort 
of social security payments at all for their workers. If so, 
this means that laborers in the rice, melon, tobacco and 
tomato industries, even those who believe they are paying 
social security, would have grossly inaccurate or missing 
records in the government's social security office. They 
would be eligible for no benefits. 
 
¶41. (U) Similar problems exist in the sugar industry. The 
Dominican Center for Consultancy and Legal Services, or 
CEDAIL, is an NGO affiliated with the Catholic Church that 
advocates on behalf of workers in the sugar industry.  It 
studied 55 randomly selected residents of bateyes on CAEI 
property who were over 60 years of age and had submitted 
applications for pension payments between 2003 and 2004.  The 
organization found that although most of those surveyed had 
more than 20 years of experience working at CAEI, none had 
been able to obtain the pension payments that they said were 
due to them. CEDAIL associates said those workers had been 
turned away by social security officers who stated their 
records were faulty, and CAEI representatives were unwilling 
to help them resolve the problems. CEDAIL stated that similar 
problems could be found with respect to workers at Central 
Romana. 
 
¶42. (U) Employers in the agricultural sector cannot be blamed 
for all of the problems associated with their workers' 
inability to obtain social security. As in other social 
services, in recent years Dominican government officials have 
typically taken individual initiative to prevent "Haitians" 
from gaining access to benefits. In some cases these involved 
simple non-action by the officials. 
 
 
-- Discrimination 
 
¶43. (U) Numerous organizations have documented what appear to 
be widespread patterns of discrimination against persons of 
Haitian descent in the agricultural sector. For example, a 
2004 study conducted by FLACSO found that throughout the 
agriculture and construction industries, Haitian workers are 
generally given the lowest-paid jobs and hardest labor, and 
they are not given opportunities to advance. As an example, 
the FLACSO survey mentioned a cocoa plantation where Haitian 
workers were limited to jobs cleaning and weeding underneath 
the bushes of cocoa plants. When asked why this was so, the 
plantation overseer explained to the investigators that the 
more specialized tasks required "people he could trust." A 
non-Dominican familiar with the situation stated that CAEI 
gave its Dominican workers considerably better housing than 
that assigned to similarly employed Haitian workers. 
 
¶44. (U) Among these workers, Haitian women face even tougher 
challenges in agricultural work. In its study of female 
workers of Haitian descent in the agricultural communities of 
Mao Valverde, MUDHA found that 58 percent of the women in 
those communities worked in agriculture. According to that 
study, "females of that zone asserted during focal groups 
that they were mistreated in the plantations; they said they 
were given no life or health insurance and that their rights 
as workers were constantly violated. (...) (They said) they 
were paid less than the men and less than Dominican women who 
performed the same jobs." The JRS study concluded that 
because women were paid lower wages than men, employers 
almost never requested immigration cards for female employees 
because they considered that they were not worth the 
investment. That study also documented widespread complaints 
among female employees that they were sexually harassed by 
male overseers, who sometimes offered better working 
conditions in exchange for sex. 
 
 
-- Fraudulent Assessment of Production 
 
¶45. (U) A common complaint among agricultural laborers who 
are paid based on units of production (obreros) is that they 
are shorted in the assessment of their production. In the 
sugar industry, for example, NGOs have long documented 
complaints among workers that the scales used to weigh the 
sugar cane are unfairly set to under-assess the tonnage of 
their production. NGOs have on various occasions requested 
assistance from the Ministry of Labor's inspectorate division 
to verify the accuracy of CAEI's scales; to date this 
assistance has not been provided. The JRS survey documented 
the complaints of female tomato pickers who alleged that 
overseers commonly paid them for fewer sacks of tomatoes than 
they actually picked. 
 
 
-- Freedom of Association 
 
¶46. (U) The Dominican Labor Code establishes workers' rights 
to organize, including in unions.  Union membership is 
relatively low across the economy, but few agricultural 
laborers belong to any sort of organized, nationwide labor 
union. The JRS study estimated that 82 percent of the workers 
in the provinces they studied did not belong to any sort of 
organization that advocated for employees on labor issues. 
Many NGOs say that traditional Dominican labor unions are 
unwilling to recruit as members workers of Haitian descent; 
this, they say, is the primary obstacle obstructing the 
unionization of Haitian employees. Among the 18 percent of 
workers who were organized, the JRS study concluded that most 
had made de facto efforts to facilitate dialogue with their 
employers, and that these were generally specific to a 
particular place of employment. However, these efforts were 
hindered by a broad lack of understanding on the part of 
workers of their rights under the Labor Code. NGOs have also 
alleged that many agricultural employers refuse to permit 
their employees to unionize. The Embassy cannot cite any 
specific cases of this. 
 
 
--------------------------------------------- ---------- 
THE STATE'S CAPACITY AND WILLINGNESS TO ENFORCE THE LAW 
--------------------------------------------- ---------- 
 
-- The Labor Inspectorate 
 
 
¶47. (U) The Inspectorate division of the Dominican Ministry 
of Labor is responsible for verifying compliance with 
Dominican labor law throughout the country.  The Ministry has 
38 offices located throughout the country and employs more 
than 200 labor inspectors. 
 
¶48. (U) Labor inspectors, particularly those in Ministry's 
central office, tend to be regarded as capable and impartial, 
though inspectors in some isolated, rural offices have been 
accused of incompetence and pro-employer bias, especially in 
cases that involve workers of Haitian descent. One attorney 
submitted to poloff an example of a labor inspection in 2004 
where regional inspectors concluded that the employer was not 
at fault. The attorney, who worked for an NGO that represents 
persons of Haitian descent, challenged the inspection and 
requested a new inspector from the Ministry's central 
headquarters in Santo Domingo. The Ministry complied and sent 
a new inspector, who apparently nullified the regional 
inspector's report and concluded the employer was at fault. 
That case, which involves the non-payment of severance pay at 
a palm oil plantation, has worked its way up to the Supreme 
Court. 
 
¶49. (SBU) The example above suggests that the Ministry of 
Labor is willing to enforce key labor law provisions, even 
for the benefit of workers of Haitian descent. However, the 
Director General of the Inspectorate Division says his staff 
are held back by a lack of crucial resources -- particularly 
vehicles. The Ministry's inspectorate division has only two 
trucks available for use throughout the country for 
inspections; both are usually committed for free-trade zone 
(FTZ) inspections and for managerial use. 
 
¶50. (U) The lack of vehicles means the Inspectorate is 
essentially unable to carry out "spot investigations" or 
respond to worker complaints in the agricultural sector in 
the fashion that it does in the major metropolitan zones. As 
a result, fewer than four percent of the inspections carried 
out by the Ministry last year related to the agricultural 
sector. 
 
¶51. (U) The inspectorate's targeted inspection and compliance 
initiative in the sugar sector, launched in January 2005, is 
illustrative of the problems inspectors have in agricultural 
areas. Like other agricultural zones, sugar communities are 
notoriously difficult to reach; during the Ministry's last 
inspection trip to one such community last summer, the 
inspectors' truck became stuck in the mud and was not towed 
out until the next day. Since that incident, no further 
inspections have been conducted in sugar communities. The 
sense of isolation and separation from central authorities, 
reinforced by the failure of labor inspectors to visit rural 
areas, makes laborers less likely to seek relief. 
 
¶52. (U) Even in cases where inspectors do investigate, the 
problems may remain unresolved. Inspectors first attempt to 
resolve such cases through binding conciliation, which is 
often effective, but not always. The major sugar 
corporations, for example, rarely work to reach agreement 
with complainants during this phase. An example of this can 
be found in the CAEI case mentioned in para 19, where CAEI 
attorneys declined to attend conciliation meetings and 
discharged all of the complaining workers. 
 
 
-- The Labor Courts 
 
¶53. (U) Those cases where the parties fail to reach agreement 
during the conciliation phase must be submitted to the labor 
courts. In the administration of labor justice, as in other 
sectors of Dominican law, the labor courts are widely 
perceived as slow, inefficient, and non-transparent.  Undue 
influence can be a problem.  These criticisms were cited in 
the Department's 2006 Human Rights Report and have been 
documented by other observers. The case mentioned in para 48, 
for example, dates from February 2004 and still has not been 
resolved. 
 
¶54. (U) A study of case load conducted by the Foundation for 
Institutionalism and Justice (FINJUS), a local NGO, in labor 
jurisdictions from 2000 documented the facts that most of the 
 
cases involved claims of wrongful separation from employment 
(86 percent).  Second in number were those dealing with 
salary issues (8 percent). The average case resolution time 
was 15.3 months in courts of first instance and 16.4 months 
in appeals court.  Major sources of delay in case resolution 
were identified in the trial phase (average 8.6 months 
between final case presentation and emission of the sentence) 
and initial case preparation (average 6.3 months). Only 4.5 
percent of cases were conciliated after reaching the court 
system (others may have been conciliated at the level of the 
Labor Ministry, but no statistics are available to document 
the volume), whereas 83 percent were resolved by judicial 
decision. 
 
¶55. (SBU) The study reported significant inequity in access 
to justice, with far better access for the well-off, a 
grossly inadequate number of labor jurisdiction public 
defenders, and generally negative impressions of the efficacy 
of the system from the perspective of the user and the 
average citizen who had never had contact with the labor 
justice system.  Generally speaking, workers are not aware of 
their rights under the law, or of procedures for registering 
a claim; these problems are particularly pronounced in the 
agricultural sector.  Significant levels of corruption and 
influence peddling were reported, particularly involving 
cases of alleged collusion between private lawyers, 
prosecutors, and judges to lower claims and "buy" cases from 
workers who could not afford to wait months for a final 
settlement. 
 
------------------------ 
APPROACHING THE PROBLEMS 
------------------------ 
 
¶56. (U) Embassy has recommended that supplemental DR-CAFTA 
funds related to labor be used to fund a project educating 
migrant workers about their rights under the Labor Code, 
including the right to unionize. That project could also 
include a component to support and encourage existing and 
start-up unions to expand recruitment and advocacy efforts in 
these communities. As stated previously, migrant workers have 
shown remarkable initiative for using to their advantage 
their high labor mobility and networks of contacts, making 
their own de facto efforts to demand better working 
conditions. If migrant workers were educated on their rights 
under the Labor Code and encouraged to network with workers 
in other plantations, these nascent efforts to organize and 
advocate could be given a significant boost. Embassy also 
recommended a project to increase training for regional labor 
inspectors and provide the Labor Inspectorate with vehicles 
to enable them to conduct more inspections. 
 
¶57. (U) Drafted by Alexander T. Bryan. 
 
¶58. (U) This and other extensive material can be found on our 
SIPRNET site, http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/wha/santodomingo/ . 
BULLEN