SLAVE LABOR IN THE CANE FIELDS
Mulligan, Joseph
Slave labor in the cane fields The threat of deportation keeps the workers quiet Joseph Mulligan The windowless van bounced along a back road, carrying its 130 passengers, packed like cattle,...
...He was not in the least docile, was quite capable of speaking up for himself, and did so vigorously...
...This sweet deal is even sweeter than most people realize because some of that cheap imported sugar against which G&W gets Government protection is being imported by none other than G&W...
...Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Gulf & Western with manipulating Dominican Republic sugar in futures speculation and withholding $38 million from the host country...
...now we rent them...
...Workers also are deported if they cannot cut the required eight tons a day—and deportation means that the workers must pay for passage to and from Jamaica...
...troops helped crush a revolt in 1965...
...workers often do not have enough water for showers...
...Working under the hot sun, amidst the dust, soot, and smell of burned plants, canecutters wield razor-sharp machetes...
...Anything we do the supervisor don't like, we get sent home...
...Working conditions are even less attractive than the pay: Many call cane-cutting the worst of agricultural jobs...
...The personnel chief for U.S...
...In an out-of-court settlement...
...Union officials charge that the growers make only token efforts to recruit Americans for the work and that they maintain unacceptable wages and working conditions in order to avoid having to deal with domestic workers, who might be able to organize...
...In recent years, Gulf & Western has been challenged by shareholder resolutions submitted by various religious groups, and Florida Legal Services has filed suits against the sugar companies, charging violations of worker contract terms...
...Despite the well-entrenched power of the sugar companies, efforts are being made to curb their abuses...
...The Palm Beach Post reported in August 1979 that the company was "receiving $50 million in low-interest, taxpayer-subsidized loans from the U.S...
...The next day, when the Reverend Franklin P. Smith of the Florida Christian Migrant Ministry visited the hospital to which the injured had been taken, he and two associates—another Joseph Mulligan, a Jesuit priest in Detroit, works with the Michigan Farm Worker Ministry Coalition and the Latin America Task Force...
...Gulf & Western simply shipped the injured canecutters back to Jamaica...
...ambassador to Jamaica, made the case even more bluntly: "Jamaica, the island to which the program is most important, lies only ninety miles from Cuba...
...The distraught doctor also happened to be a medical officer for Gulf & Western, employer of the injured workers...
...Better known for its ownership of such other assorted properties as Paramount Pictures, Simmons beds, Madison Square Garden, and the New York Knicks basketball team, Gulf & Western also raises sugar in the Dominican Republic, where it imports Haitians to cut two tons a day at $1.70 a ton...
...This series of incidents happened seven years ago, but they are not atypical of the circumstances in which many immigrant laborers—most of them from Jamaica and other impoverished islands of the Caribbean—work and sometimes die in the sugar cane fields of the United States...
...They are always trying to get the most out of a poor fellow, whatever diplomatic means and nice words they use...
...Government to help it compete against cheap imported sugar...
...Attempts to organize foreign workers have led to deportation of the workers...
...Instead of filing an accident report...
...They are U.S...
...sugar subsidy, in which domestic sugar producers, unable to compete in the world market, "borrow" Government money at low interest, using their sugar as collateral...
...So the workers live on the edge of deportation, silent but aware...
...But these growers want excessive profit and won't share it with the worker...
...I guess, after all," said one Jamaican, "the world of business belongs to the white folks...
...Labor has had a difficult time making an impact in the cane fields...
...The workers live in huge, bleak dormitories in labor camps, some enclosed by barbed-wire fences bearing "no trespassing" signs...
...Three weeks earlier, thirty-nine Jamaican workers had been injured when the truck in which they were riding overturned...
...Sugar, which farms 148,000 acres near the Florida Everglades, and Gulf & Western, which grows cane on 83,000 of its 138,000 Florida acres...
...Sugar once told a reporter on leave from the St...
...Gulf & Western has since reaped vast profits from these holdings...
...A vice president of the Florida AFL-CIO offered this analysis: "The offshore program has been advantageous to the Carribbean islands involved and may have helped prevent the rise of communism and other radical elements there...
...Some labor camps change bed sheets only once during the seven-month season...
...Slave labor in the cane fields The threat of deportation keeps the workers quiet Joseph Mulligan The windowless van bounced along a back road, carrying its 130 passengers, packed like cattle, bound for work in the sugar fields of southern Florida...
...The prospect of being sent home to Jamaica, which is plagued by massive unemployment, serves to silence complaints about conditions that few American workers would tolerate...
...Federal 'loans' sweeten sugar industry profits The Federal Government is an active partner in this oppression...
...On other fronts, the U.S...
...Lopped-off fingers and toes are common...
...Gulf & Western is one of many recipients of the U.S...
...We complain about the food here, we get sent home...
...The sugar industry, says one labor organizer, is "a classic example of the poor people of one country being used against the poor of another...
...As one Florida cane-grower explained to The Miami News, "We used to own our slaves...
...While the company sells thousands of tons of sugar to the Government through the loan program, it is shipping more than 350,000 tons to the United States from its operations in the Dominican Republic, where it bought up one-third of the sugar industry two years after U.S...
...The company's explanation for the higher domestic output is that in Florida the workers don't have to haul the cane, all the fields are burned clear, and the canecutters are government-tested for productivity...
...In the Dominican Republic and in Florida, the interests of the sugar companies go hand in hand with those of the Caribbean ruling elites and the counterrevolutionary strategy of the State Department: Temporary work opportunities in the United States provide a safety valve for Caribbean governments threatened by masses of unemployed workers...
...That's not right...
...Until a few years ago, canecutters rode to and from the fields in vans with no seats, though now the employers provide buses...
...sugar industry, importing more than 4,000 laborers a year...
...eardrums are often pierced by flying shards of cane...
...Where are the men that are disturbing our patients?' " The visitors were ordered to leave...
...The United States cannot afford to allow another Cuba to develop off its shores...
...So we should phase the program out gradually...
...The threat of deportation keeps the wages and working conditions miserable—and the workers silent...
...Then the sugar is "forfeited" to the Government, while the company keeps the fifteen cents per pound it "borrowed...
...member of the clergy and a United Farm Workers representative— received a strange welcome...
...Petersburg Times why the company had stopped usingTrinidadian workers: "The Trini-dadian was a mistake for the program...
...A very distraught man burst into the lobby," Smith recalled, "asking, 'Where are the agitators...
...But while the pay is higher in Florida than in the Dominican Republic, it is still not enough to attract domestic labor...
...The threat of deportation will suffice to keep most of the workers in line, so long as conditions at home are even more miserable than conditions in the cane fields...
...William C. Doherty Sr., former U.S...
...He has written for The Nation, Commonweal, and The Christian Century...
...Gulf & Western agreed to put the money in a special fund for development projects...
...We say we want more money for the cane, we get sent home...
...Florida law requires that a company file a workers' compensation report within ten days of an accident, but authorities received no word of the first accident until after the second...
...Florida canecutters are accustomed to callous treatment, harsh working conditions., low pay, and—for those who complain—deportation...
...The State Department realizes, and I hope the Labor Department does too, that Jamaica's economy must remain stable...
...Two large corporations dominate the U.S...
...In Florida, Gulf & Western pays an average wage of $4.09 an hour but gets at least eight tons a day from its Jamaican workers...
...Sugar company executives freely acknowledge such tactics...
...The vehicle flipped over, killing one man and injuring eighty-six...
...A cane-cutter once told The New York Times: "If the supervisor sees us talking to a white man, we get sent home sure...
Vol. 45 • May 1981 • No. 5
