©️picture : Ayibo Post
Port-au-Prince, February 9, 2026.- While the United States has renewed for a single year the HOPE/HELP law, supposedly supporting the Haitian textile industry, the figures revealed by trade unionist Yannick Étienne, of Batay Ouvriye, paint an alarming picture: nearly 62,000 jobs lost, or about 62 per cent of the workforce in the sector, mostly women, often heads of single-parent families. A decision deemed insufficient in the face of a deep social and economic crisis.
In his speech on Magik 9, this Monday, February 9, 2025, Yannick Étienne highlighted the extent of the human damage caused by the collapse of the textile sector. The massive loss of jobs affects not only laid-off workers, but all families who depend on these incomes, in a context of insecurity, inflation and the cost of life. « If these women lose their jobs, it's whole families that switch « , she warned.
The trade union leader also denounces the structural precarisation of work in factories still in operation: repeated temporary suspensions, lack of job security and abuse of the mechanisms supposed to protect workers. To this is added the almost total domination of foreign investors, especially Koreans, known for their anti-union practices, while Haitian entrepreneurs remain largely absent from the sector.
For Batay Ouvriye, the one-year renewal of HOPE/HELP makes it impossible to attract sustainable investment or to plan a real recovery. Yannick Étienne calls for a paradigm shift, advocating for an immediate contingency plan, the diversification of the economy, industrialization, the development of local sectors with higher added value and the technical training of the workers in order to remove Haiti from the simple role of economic assembly.
W.A.
