1946 to 1949 · Haitianspan
Estime builds a labour federation to outflank Fignole and loses it
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Trade unions were legal for the first time under Estime, and the Ministry of Labour was one of his showpieces. The movement went almost immediately to Daniel Fignole, who organised at the HASCO sugar mill. Estime built a rival central federation, the Federation des Travailleurs Haitiens, to take the ground back. It fell under communist control, and its leader Edris Saint-Amand was a principal signatory of the Haitian Communist Party manifesto of March 1947. Estime used known leftists as ministers and advisers, banned the Communist Party in 1948 and left the Cuban backed Popular Socialist Party alone. A new union of drivers and guides became a government prop, and Francois Duvalier, still secretary general of Fignole's party, was Estime's Minister of Labour and was building his own ties to it. By 1949 the president was in trouble. American loans went to his own Artibonite, banana revenue had gone, and in March the government required every worker to put fifteen percent of his pay into bonds maturing in 1959. Peasants stopped working and ate mangoes. Estime kept the country under a state of siege for the rest of the year.
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