SOTA-BO Celebrates 5 Years!

SOTA 5 Year

If you’ve participated in RRN campaigns, you know we’ve organized several of solidarity efforts in support textile workers who are members of SOTA-BO, aka Sendika Ouvriye Takstil ak Abiman.

Most recently the RRN rallied solidarity for Telemarque Pierre & Felixone Clerger, who were fired from Premium Apparel for organizing a strike for a higher minimum wage, plus H&H Textile workers who were unjustly fired for being SOTA organizers – Lucitha Julessaint , Jean Louis Marie Ederse, Olga Miallard, & Ruth Joseph.

For those of you just finding the RRN, SOTA is a trade union of textile workers from different factories in Port Au Prince, Haiti, affiliated with Batay Ouvriye. Batay Ouvriye (Workers Fight) is an autonomous workers’ movement in Haiti.

It’s important to the RRN that we support workers who are able to set the terms of their own struggles and campaigns. We aim to coordinate solidarity efforts with workers and organizations that are autonomous. This means rank and file workers are the ones who make decisions, and that their efforts are not controlled or dictated by some other entity or organization’s interests, such as political parties, politicians, imperialist interests, or NGO’s.

This September, SOTA celebrates its five year anniversary as an autonomous union! We send our solidarity for their ongoing struggles, and are happy to celebrate their growth, and all they have accomplished in just five years.

Below is a statement from SOTA about the anniversary and a call to continue our solidarity.

Happy Anniversary SOTA!

From SOTA:

SOTA-BO is commemorating its 5th Anniversary representing five years of struggles and large mobilizations in 2014, 2015, and now in 2016, on the issue of the minimum wage. These mobilizations confronted all the political tools of the capitalist-imperialist class, the National Police, SWAT teams, and MINUSTAH soldiers. Management retaliated against workers who were part of the mobilizations by imposing brutal repression and firing workers illegally and arbitrarily. However, as a result of these mobilizations, we were able to negotiate the price of the quotas and union recognition in many factories in the textile sector. We are celebrating the work that we’ve been able to accomplish within these five years (September 2011 – September 2016). So, for the commemoration of the 5th Anniversary of SOTA-BO, we are calling on all our friends, comrades, progressives and militants to support our work in whatever way they can!

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