Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies

Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies
than ten employees. Organized labor made significant gains in
the early 1960s during the short-lived Juan Bosch Gaviho government
(1962) and until the 1965 civil war. However, these
gains were erased and severe restrictions were imposed upon
workers when Balaguer took office in 1966. These restrictions
and a frozen minimum wage—it was raised only once—were
maintained by Balaguer until his electoral defeat in 1978. Once
the PRD returned to office in 1978 under Silvestre Antonio
Guzman Fernandez, labor conditions improved. For example,
one of his first acts was to double the long-frozen minimum
wage. However, despite the pro-labor position of both PRD
presidents, Guzman and Salvador Jorge Blanco (1982-86), the
serious economic situation and the restrictive labor code kept
organized labor ineffective and weak. For example, by the mid-
1980s a scant 12 percent of the labor force was unionized, and
no more than 15 percent were union affiliated in the mid-
1990s (see Labor, ch. 3).
When Balaguer returned to power in 1986, he kept organized
labor fragmented by enforcing the restrictions of the
labor code and by fostering the formation of rival unions. Until
the 1990s, the legal code prohibited nearly half of all workers
(public employees and utility workers) from strikes and job
actions. Nonetheless, the economic crises of the 1980s resulted
in mobilizations and strikes against the Balaguer government,
and a Popular Movement was formed. However, the urban
poor, like workers in general, could not sustain an organized
opposition because of Balaguer's willingness to use force
against strikers, his massive public works projects, and a lack of
effective leadership. The strikes, the growing activism of workers,
Balaguer's interest in running for reelection in 1990, the
formation in 1991 of the United Confederation of Workers,
and pressure from the United States in the form of threatened
trade sanctions, all led to a revision of the 1951 Labor Code.
The new code, enacted in 1992, expanded the rights of workers
to organize and established new courts for resolving labor disputes.
Although many labor unions had been recognized
between 1991 and 1993, fifty-five were recognized in the year
after the new code's enactment. Union activity had been
banned in the industrial free zones, but in 1994 the first union
contract was signed.
Another factor affecting the life of the urban poor related to
the role of women. A survey of urban households in the mid-
1970s revealed that roughly one-quarter were headed by
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