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Dominican Republic LABOR
Formal Sector
According to official statistics, the Dominican labor
force
had grown to 2.8 million by 1988. The labor force equaled
about
74 percent of the nation's 3.8 million economically active
citizens, a group that included all those between the ages
of 15
and 64. Official unemployment stood at 26 percent, but
like many
of the country's labor statistics, this measure was only
an
approximation. More than 80,000 workers entered the job
market
annually in the 1980s. Unemployment declined slightly in
the late
1980s, and it was expected to continue to drop because of
the
explosive growth of free-zone manufacturing jobs. The
seasonal
nature of jobs in agriculture and tourism, however,
created
patterns of structural underemployment that affected a
quarter of
the labor force. Half of the economically active
population
suffered from either unemployment or underemployment.
The structure of the labor force had changed
significantly
during the post-Trujillo era as agriculture's share of
output
diminished. In 1950 agriculture had employed 73 percent of
Dominican labor, but by the end of the 1980s it accounted
for as
little as 35 percent. Industry and services had
incorporated
approximately 20 percent and 45 percent, respectively, of
displaced agricultural labor. As a consequence of gaps in
the
labor statistics, official estimates of the female segment
of the
economically active population varied widely, from 15 to
30
percent of the labor force. Whatever the total figures,
the role
of women, particularly in the urban economy, was growing
by the
late 1980s. Seventy percent of the employees in free zones
were
women; as greater numbers of free zones opened in the late
1980s,
the rate of employment for females more than doubled the
rate of
employment for males. This shift represented a major
transformation in the labor force; previously, the
percentage of
women in the Dominican work force had been lower than that
for
any other Latin American country. Men continued to
dominate
agricultural jobs in the late 1980s. These were among the
lowestpaid jobs in the country. The highest salaries were earned
in
mining, private utilities, financial services, and
commerce. The
distribution of income among workers was highly skewed;
the top
10 percent earned 39 percent of national income, while the
bottom
50 percent garnered only 19 percent.
Dominican labor laws dated back to the Labor Code of
1951.
Among the many matters on which the code ruled were the
maximum
number of foreigners that could be employed in a
workplace,
guidelines for labor unions, child labor practices, the
minimum
wage, the length of the workweek, vacations, holiday pay,
Christmas bonuses, overtime, social security, and other
benefits.
No government agency enforced labor legislation, however,
which
reduced the actual power of most workers vis-à-vis
management.
In the 1980s, the most controversial labor law was the
one
governing the national minimum wage. Although the Congress
of the
Republic increased minimum wages on several occasions
throughout
the decade, unusually high inflation usually outpaced
these
increases, which reduced the real wages of workers.
General
strikes or other confrontations between labor and
government
frequently resulted. Government officials were reluctant
to grant
frequent raises in the minimum wage, in part, because they
felt
the need to keep Dominican wages competitive with those of
other
developing countries. Dominican wages did indeed remain
lower
than those in other Caribbean Basin countries, with the
exception
of impoverished Haiti.
Organized labor represented between 12 percent and 15
percent
of the labor force in the late 1980s. The number of active
union
members ranged somewhere between the government's estimate
of
250,000 and labor's figure of more than 500,000. Thousands
of
unions were syndicated into eight major labor
confederations;
nearly 100,000 Dominicans also belonged to independent
unions.
Scores of peasant-based movements and organizations were
also
active. Thirty-two percent of the eight labor
confederations'
member unions were affiliated with the International
Confederation of Free Trade Unions, 16 percent with the
World
Confederation of Labor, and slightly more than half with
international communist unions. Unions appeared only after
the
Trujillo era, and in the 1980s they were still young,
weak,
poorly financed, and politically divided. The issues most
important to Dominican labor included rising prices, the
declining real minimum wage, and collective bargaining.
Industrial disputes increased noticeably in the late
1980s. In
particular, these took the form of general strikes and
intensified activism among professionals. Organized labor
had
begun to establish a foothold in the free zones, and
disputes
over unionization in these areas loomed as the fundamental
labor
issue of the future.
Data as of December 1989
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