Speech #1010184363

Not Florida sugarcane. They import more than 90 percent of their cane cutters each year. avoiding the free market in a manner unprecedented in other industries. H2A workers who complain about violations of labor laws or their employment agreement are flown home and are blacklisted from working in the U.S. canefields again. In 1986. workers upset with labor conditions organized a work stoppage at Okeelanta Corp.. and were immediately rounded up by the county sheriff. taken to Miami. and flown home. With these powerful tools. the Florida sugar industry has at its disposal an extraordinarily exploitable work force. H2A employers are suppose to pay a premium wagethe adverse effect wage ratein order to offset the impact of imported labor on American wages. Yet U.S. Department of Labor investigations in 198789 disclosed that one of the largest growers failed to pay even the Federal minimum wage. Shorting workers on the number of hours they worked is rampant. with the result that even at depressed wages. workers are paid far less than they earned. The losers in this arrangement are clearly American workers. the imported guestworkers. and American taxpayers and consumers. About 10.000 workers continue to be brought in from Caribbean nations each year to harvest cane. even though there are thousands of potentiai domestic workers in the immediate vicinity of the Florida canefieldsmany of them refugees who have sugar harvesting experience in their Caribbean homelands. Unemployment in the Florida counties surrounding the canefields range from 10 tc 15 percent. Besides doing nothing to alleviate domestic unemployment. the use of H2A labor depresses wages and working conditions for American farmworkers who are employed. since growers hang over them the threat that they will be replaced by foreign laborers who will work for low wages and poor working conditions. The nearslavery conditions the Caribbean guestworkers endure enrich the Florida sugarcane industry. Many workers are cheated out of wages.