Speaker 1: Each day, when a cutter is brought to a field,
Speaker 1: they're told in number, it's the amount they'll earn for
Speaker 1: cutting a row of sugarcane. Remember, sugarcane is planted in rows.
Speaker 1: Some days it's one hundred dollars per row, some days
Speaker 1: it's one hundred and fifty dollars, some days it's eighty dollars.
Speaker 1: And a single row can take days to cut. But
Speaker 1: I want to zero in on one day and one field.
Speaker 2: In this particular field, the workers, after cutting for a
Speaker 2: couple hours, figured out, we're not going to make any
Speaker 2: money because the price is too low. That the price
Speaker 2: you're paying, we'll be lucky to make ten dollars today,
Speaker 2: and so they stopped working.
Speaker 1: It's nineteen eighty six, and there are grumblings. It's the
Speaker 1: start of an infamous event in the annals of the
Speaker 1: Florida sugarcane industry. It started when a group of workers declared,
Speaker 1: we're not cutting cane at these prices. It's just not
Speaker 1: enough money.
Speaker 2: And so a number of the workers said, well, we're
Speaker 2: we're just not going to cut today and we're going
Speaker 2: to walk back to the camp. And it was not
Speaker 2: like it was on back roads that nobody saw there
Speaker 2: were all of a sudden, these hundreds of men walking
Speaker 2: down the highway. Then it certainly got people's attention.
Speaker 1: The farm these guys we're working for is one of
Speaker 1: the biggest of all the sugarcane farms in Florida. It's
Speaker 1: called Okolanta. It's owned by the most famous sugar barons
Speaker 1: in America, the vun Hul Brothers. So after that long
Speaker 1: walk back to the barracks, there's an eerily quiet night.
Speaker 1: It's not until the morning that a representative from the
Speaker 1: sugar company arrives. Rather than send the workers out on
Speaker 1: their usual bus to the field, the company wants to negotiate.
Speaker 1: They offer to pay a bit more, but the workers
Speaker 1: won't budge.
Speaker 2: Ultimately, the company just said we've had it, We're done
Speaker 2: with these.
Speaker 1: Guys, and that's when things really started to go bad.
Speaker 1: Minutes after the negotiation leaves, police cars begin to surround
Speaker 1: the building, accompanied by Okalanta buses and a helicopter.
Speaker 2: The company called the local sheriff's department, who sent out
Speaker 2: a riot squad, and the riot squad was directed to
Speaker 2: round up the supposed instigators, and they figured some might
Speaker 2: be hiding in the.
Speaker 1: Bearers inside the massive building is Jamaican sugarcane cutter Selven Grant.
Speaker 3: It was a strike, but I was not involved. But
Speaker 3: I was right there.
Speaker 1: He isn't part of the strike. Actually, he's cut his
Speaker 1: finger and is recuperating when all of a sudden, uniformed
Speaker 1: officers barge.
Speaker 3: In and one of the police was advancing to me,
Speaker 3: and I tell him, man, I'm not in fie my
Speaker 3: finger cut, I'm sick. I just come from a doctor,
Speaker 3: and I was showing them my band aid on my finger,
Speaker 3: saying that I'm not in tho strike.
Speaker 1: But from Selvin's perspective, the shotgun armed police seemed to
Speaker 1: be rounding up everyone, so.
Speaker 3: It seemed like Folly was not listening to me. He
Speaker 3: was advancing to me, like you want to grab me.
Speaker 1: Selvin isn't alone. There are loads of guys caught up
Speaker 1: in the chaos.
Speaker 2: Certain workers had actually gone to the barracks, not because
Speaker 2: they were hiding from the police, but they figured something
Speaker 2: is going on that sounds very bad, and we think
Speaker 2: the safest thing we can do is to sit on
Speaker 2: our bunk with our arms folded across our chest and
Speaker 2: nothing bad can happen to us. We won't be accused
Speaker 2: of striking. We'll just just be quiet and be obedient.
Speaker 3: My sins tell me that get away from this crowd.
Speaker 3: Get away, get away, And that's what I did.
Speaker 1: Selvin runs up some stairs and watches from a window
Speaker 1: on a higher floor.
Speaker 3: And I go upstairs and was watching what going on,
Speaker 3: and then all of a sudden, I see the police
Speaker 3: coming a dog.
Speaker 2: The riot squad came into the barracks and they brought
Speaker 2: with them their police dogs and the police dogs a cat.
Speaker 2: Some of these workers who were sitting on their bunks
Speaker 2: and several of them suffered some serious dog BikeE wounds.
Speaker 3: Most of the guys has careded a dog that they
Speaker 3: just didn't really run. I just say please, said, well,
Speaker 3: you got to come with me, because you guys seemed
Speaker 3: like the trobeltmaker. Very scary, very scary, so scared.
Speaker 2: The remaining workers who were viewed as instigators or strikers
Speaker 2: were placed on buses and sent to the Miami Airport
Speaker 2: to eventually be repatriated.
Speaker 1: More than three hundred workers were rounded up by the
Speaker 1: police at gunpoint and sent back home back to the Caribbean.
Speaker 4: This day.
Speaker 1: This event was given a name.
Speaker 2: Not only the workers involved, but everyone there that day
Speaker 2: refers to the event as the Dog War.
Speaker 1: The Dog War a day when tensions exploded to something
Speaker 1: that felt to many like armed combat. But how did
Speaker 1: things get this desperate, strained, violent? Even this really starts
Speaker 1: to get to the heart of what this whole series
Speaker 1: is about, not only the truth about what was happening
Speaker 1: in those fields, in those barracks, and how these men
Speaker 1: were being paid, but also the truth about what had
Speaker 1: been going on for decades, really in an impenetrable industry
Speaker 1: that was carefully and quietly managing its operations, its image,
Speaker 1: and its money in secrecy. But slowly people were beginning
Speaker 1: to take notice. I'm Celeste Hedley and from iHeartMedia, Imagine
Speaker 1: Audio and the teams at Weekday Fun and Novel. This
Speaker 1: is Big Sugar, Episode two. The Grass is Always Greener.
Speaker 1: Please go ahead introduce yourself. We are meeting at a
Speaker 1: cocktail party. Tell me who you are and what you do.
Speaker 4: I'm Edward Tuttenham and I'm an attorney.
Speaker 1: Edward Tuttenham has spent his career challenging some of the
Speaker 1: working practices of big agriculture and when that's your job,
Speaker 1: well you're bound to make a few enemies.
Speaker 4: I remember one farmer, Sue called me up and I
Speaker 4: picked up the phone and he just said, listen, I'm
Speaker 4: about to leave town and I want to kill you.
Speaker 4: I want you to drive down to my ranch right
Speaker 4: now so I can shoot you. I said, well, I'm
Speaker 4: tied up. Actually make it now, but if you'll call
Speaker 4: me back when you're back in town, we can talk
Speaker 4: about it.
Speaker 1: Farmers were angry, angry enough to threaten Edward's life, albeit
Speaker 1: not angry enough to make the short ride to commit
Speaker 1: the crime. But this, it turns out, was par for
Speaker 1: the course when you're a lawyer sticking up from migrant
Speaker 1: farm workers.
Speaker 4: The windows of our office were routinely broken out, people
Speaker 4: driving by at night throwing rocks of them.
Speaker 1: How did Edward wind up in this situation? After graduating
Speaker 1: from Harvard in nineteen seventy eight, he went to work
Speaker 1: for Texas Rural Legal Aid. It's an organization that gives
Speaker 1: free legal help to farm workers, helping them with their
Speaker 1: pay and conditions. Had you been to Texas before that?
Speaker 4: Uh? No, no, I had not.
Speaker 1: Despite having little to no knowledge of Texas, Edward buttoned
Speaker 1: up his brooks brother's shirt and got straight to work.
Speaker 4: They picked me up at the airport and immediately we
Speaker 4: drove to a picket line.
Speaker 1: He represented onion harvesters, cotton pickers, and then began what
Speaker 1: he calls the Texas Melon experience, standing up from Mexican
Speaker 1: candlop pickers in the Presidio Valley.
Speaker 4: And you know, that was exactly what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1: If this was a Rocky style training montage, Edward would
Speaker 1: be right there on the picket line, drafting briefs and
Speaker 1: cross examining witnesses. Instead of hooking Russian boxers, he'd be
Speaker 1: ko in exploitative farmers. The young ambitious lawyer even deposed
Speaker 1: a local sheriff whose claim to fame was that he
Speaker 1: conducted the last public hanging in Texas. The ranchers gave
Speaker 1: Edward a nickname, the Harvard Idiot. And is it true
Speaker 1: that a deputy wrote a song?
Speaker 4: It wasn't the deputy, it was the county sheriff. The
Speaker 4: name of the song was get out of Herford Trla,
Speaker 4: which was Texas urre Ilegal aid.
Speaker 1: All this is to say that almost nothing would deter
Speaker 1: this Harvard Idiot, not threatening phone calls, not even hostile
Speaker 1: ballads composed by local law enforcement. He was going to
Speaker 1: defend farm workers no matter what.
Speaker 2: I'm very similar to Edward Tutnham.
Speaker 1: This is Greg Shell, managing attorney at Southern Migrant Legal Services,
Speaker 1: another group that helps migrant farm workers. And Greg was
Speaker 1: one year behind Edward Tuttenham at Harvard Law School.
Speaker 2: One thing going to a high pressure, high prestige law
Speaker 2: school like Harvard is that it instills in you, if
Speaker 2: nothing else, an extreme sense of self confidence. Some people
Speaker 2: would say arrogance and you think that you can change
Speaker 2: the world and that you can do things. You can
Speaker 2: prevail over daunting odds because you can outsmart the other
Speaker 2: side and the challenge is something you relish.
Speaker 1: And Edward was outsmarting the other side, winning many of
Speaker 1: his cases.
Speaker 4: So picture it.
Speaker 1: Edward's writing high on a string of successes holding powerful
Speaker 1: farmers to account. Pay your workers properly, treat them properly.
Speaker 1: Side note, some of the farm workers did end up
Speaker 1: getting fired after the lawsuits. Farmers would find other ways
Speaker 1: of harvesting that were cheaper than paying proper wages. But hey,
Speaker 1: there's always going to be collateral damage in the pure
Speaker 1: pursuit of justice. Right. In the mid nineteen eighties, Edward
Speaker 1: wound up working in Washington, d c. And in search
Speaker 1: of his next big fish to fry, although this time
Speaker 1: the big fish was sweet sugar. There were many things
Speaker 1: Edward found himself fighting in the courts, like terrible working
Speaker 1: conditions and injuries. But when it came to the sugar
Speaker 1: cane cutters, there was one thing which kept coming up
Speaker 1: again and again. Wages.
Speaker 4: They didn't understand how they were being cheated. They just
Speaker 4: knew that they were being cheated in some way.
Speaker 1: Some sugar cane cutters reported they were somehow earning just
Speaker 1: a few dollars an hour, well below the minimum wage
Speaker 1: at the time. And this is also what journalist Marie
Speaker 1: Brenner heard when she was looking into the story in
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties. She was working on an article for
Speaker 1: Vanity Fair, an article which eventually became the inspiration for
Speaker 1: this podcast. So in full investigative mode, one day, she's
Speaker 1: in lawyer Gregshal's office and she comes across a letter
Speaker 1: that one cutter had written home.
Speaker 5: Here's a one letter we can read from the article.
Speaker 5: Dear Fatty, how keeping, I hope all of you are well.
Speaker 5: I write you and send you twenty six dollars. I
Speaker 5: don't know if you get it. You wouldn't know what
Speaker 5: I'm going through. We get a cane row for thirty dollars.
Speaker 5: It takes two days to cut it. That works out
Speaker 5: to be some one dollar and some cents an hour.
Speaker 5: I spoke to the timekeeper and he's ready to eat
Speaker 5: me up. He says, we just have to work fast enough,
Speaker 5: and then we'll make even more than the hourly wages
Speaker 5: they promised us. Imagine to leave Jamaica so many hundreds
Speaker 5: of miles to come to America and work for one
Speaker 5: dollar and some cents an hour. I looked up from
Speaker 5: that letter and I said to Gregschell, how is this
Speaker 5: even possible legally?
Speaker 1: Okay, So to answer that, let's get into the nuts
Speaker 1: and bolts of what happens when sugar cane is being cultivated.
Speaker 1: Imagine a massive field.
Speaker 2: Sugar cane is planted in rows, rows.
Speaker 1: And rows of these long, thick stalks of sugarcane. Some
Speaker 1: are thirteen feet high and two inches around.
Speaker 2: It's a grass, so it grows just like when you
Speaker 2: cut the grass in your yard. It grows up back
Speaker 2: year after year.
Speaker 1: And at the time we're talking about. In the eighties
Speaker 1: and nineties, virtually all the sugar cane in America was
Speaker 1: cut by hand. Using a machine to cut the cane
Speaker 1: is certainly safer and more efficient, but some growers prefer
Speaker 1: manual labor because machines can accidentally pull out the roots
Speaker 1: of sugarcane, meaning it won't regrow the following year. So
Speaker 1: the workers turn up in the morning to a field
Speaker 1: and they're told how much each row is worth.
Speaker 4: Every day in every field the rose would be priced differently.
Speaker 1: Cut this row today and you'll get fifty dollars. The
Speaker 1: next day it would be cut this row and you'll
Speaker 1: get eighty dollar. It was a moving target, so there.
Speaker 4: Was nothing fixed that you could put your finger on.
Speaker 1: The cutters then get to work chopping as quickly as
Speaker 1: they can, bent over all day, slashing the bottom of
Speaker 1: the cane with a machete.
Speaker 2: Sugar cane is very hard to.
Speaker 1: Cut, and these workers cut tons of it on some
Speaker 1: of these farms in Florida, like eight tons a day.
Speaker 1: To put that in perspective, that's heavier than the combined
Speaker 1: weight of five Toyota.
Speaker 4: Priases, which is astronomical.
Speaker 1: Then the sticks are sent to a sugar mill to
Speaker 1: be turned into syrup and finally crystals, which are packaged
Speaker 1: in the iconic bags found in nearly every supermarket and
Speaker 1: convenience store in America. These days, we eat on average
Speaker 1: six cups of sugar a week, and believe me, it's
Speaker 1: in almost everything. A couple years ago, I went sugar
Speaker 1: free for six months, and I was shocked to find
Speaker 1: that my bread had sugar in it, and my pizza sauce,
Speaker 1: and my peanut butter, and my dried fruit and my
Speaker 1: salad dressing. It was almost impossible to avoid it. So anyway,
Speaker 1: back to the sugar farms and to the cutters. At
Speaker 1: the end of the day, exhausted, they looked down at
Speaker 1: their pays stubbs. They think about how many hours they
Speaker 1: worked and how much it says they're going to be paid.
Speaker 1: It seems to be a lot less than what they
Speaker 1: expected to earn.
Speaker 4: I started looking into it, and at first we did
Speaker 4: not realize exactly what was going on.
Speaker 2: There was this problem workers were getting under pay that
Speaker 2: was well known to a whole large group of advocates.
Speaker 4: But we didn't really understand why.
Speaker 1: It was all a bit mysterious. But then Edward Tuttenham
Speaker 1: had an idea. By this point, he was an expert
Speaker 1: in H two litigation, which made him fairly specialized. H
Speaker 1: two A visas are used by farmers to bring in
Speaker 1: workers from overseas for ten ary agricultural work. So in
Speaker 1: the case of sugar, it had historically been used for
Speaker 1: cutters from the West Indies, mainly Jamaica, but also Barbados,
Speaker 1: Saint Lucia sent Kitts and others. Since the sugar companies
Speaker 1: claimed almost no Americans would do the job, Edwards starts
Speaker 1: scouring something called a clearance order. It's what an agent
Speaker 1: sends the Department of Labor on behalf of the farmers
Speaker 1: setting out what a job would be. It's like a contract.
Speaker 2: He looked at this very complicated contract that the Jamaican
Speaker 2: workers were employed under.
Speaker 1: And there were three terms that he obsessed over. It's complicated,
Speaker 1: so bear with me.
Speaker 4: One, if you cut eight tons in an eight hour day,
Speaker 4: you will be a satisfactory worker.
Speaker 1: That's one ton per hour.
Speaker 4: Two earning five dollars and thirty cents an hour is satisfactory.
Speaker 1: Five dollars and thirty cents is the minimum wage.
Speaker 4: Three, but anything less and you'll be fired. And I
Speaker 4: must have read those three sentences over and over and
Speaker 4: over again for months. Eight tons five thirty per hour
Speaker 4: is required. Worker would be expected to cut eight tons
Speaker 4: of pain in an eight hour day.
Speaker 2: He took the time to parse this very thick and
Speaker 2: confusing document.
Speaker 4: You will be expected to cut fast enough to earn
Speaker 4: five thirty.
Speaker 2: An hour, and he read it carefully.
Speaker 4: To pay five thirty a ton. A ton an hour
Speaker 4: is good enough and earning five thirty an hour, if
Speaker 4: you cut a ton an hour, you're a satisfactory worker.
Speaker 1: These three terms swirled around in.
Speaker 4: Edward's head until finally, in conversation with Greg, suddenly the
Speaker 4: light bulb went on.
Speaker 1: He's got it.
Speaker 4: When you have those three statements, the logical answer is
Speaker 4: then they have to pay at least five thirty per ton. Again,
Speaker 4: if one ton an hour is good enough and earning
Speaker 4: five thirty an hour is good enough, but anything less
Speaker 4: than five point thirty gets you fired, then they have
Speaker 4: to pay at least five thirty a ton.
Speaker 1: Edward had figured out one piece of the puzzle. He
Speaker 1: hypothesized that according to this clearance order, the workers should
Speaker 1: be paid at least five dollars and thirty cents for
Speaker 1: every ton of cane they cut. That would be in
Speaker 1: line with the contract and minimum wage, and it would
Speaker 1: be in line with the expectation that the workers have
Speaker 1: been told they're expected to cut at least a ton
Speaker 1: an hour or they'll be fired. But Edward suspected that
Speaker 1: the workers were being paid a lot less than five
Speaker 1: dollars thirty cents a ton.
Speaker 2: The problem was, how do you prove that this is occurring?
Speaker 1: How do you prove they were paying them less than
Speaker 1: five dollars thirty cents per ton. It's not like there
Speaker 1: were scales in the fields. The workers were just told
Speaker 1: a price for the row and got cutting. But there
Speaker 1: was potentially a lot at stake. And when I say
Speaker 1: a lot, I mean tens of millions of dollars.
Speaker 2: If you could prove in some easy way not only
Speaker 2: that the workers were not being paid properly, but the
Speaker 2: amount they were owed, that would be a huge amount
Speaker 2: of money.
Speaker 1: Then out of the blue, another piece falls into the puzzle.
Speaker 1: Edward sitting in his office in Washington, d c. Surrounded
Speaker 1: by boxes of paper pouring over the dense H two contract.
Speaker 1: He's been at this for months, All these phrases and
Speaker 1: clauses and legal parlance are echoing around in his brain.
Speaker 1: He's thinking in lawyer terms, how do I prove what's
Speaker 1: going on here?
Speaker 4: And then I'm in my office and the phone ring.
Speaker 1: Is The secretary says to Edward, it's Ed.
Speaker 4: Fountain and he needs to talk to you. I didn't
Speaker 4: know who Ed Fountain was, and I took the call
Speaker 4: and he said he was a former sugar supervisor.
Speaker 1: US Sugar is one of the biggest sugarcane producers in
Speaker 1: the country.
Speaker 4: So I got this call. Okay, you're a supervisor for
Speaker 4: US Sugar.
Speaker 6: What about it?
Speaker 4: And he said, well, you know, I've just been fired
Speaker 4: and I have some information that I think you would
Speaker 4: find useful. I said, really, what kind of information? And
Speaker 4: he says, well, I'm the guy who prices the roads.
Speaker 4: I know how they do it. And that birked up
Speaker 4: my ears pretty quickly. Yeah, and I said, great, where
Speaker 4: are you.
Speaker 1: Put ed Fountain on hold? What exactly he told Edward
Speaker 1: In just a minute more after the break, let's get
Speaker 1: back for a moment to who the story is really
Speaker 1: about the sugarcane. I wonder if you would if we
Speaker 1: could start, if you don't mind by telling me a
Speaker 1: little bit about Jamaica. What is Jamaica like?
Speaker 6: Where? Tell your boy Jamaica, Jamaica is very nice, very sonny.
Speaker 6: You have a lots of nice places where you can
Speaker 6: go hang out, I enjoy yourself.
Speaker 1: Two of the Jamaican sugar cane cutters who found themselves
Speaker 1: caught up in the story are Victor Blackwood and Selven Grant,
Speaker 1: and from the way they talk about their motherland, it's
Speaker 1: clear they love the island in particular. They can wax
Speaker 1: lyrical about the food.
Speaker 6: Dirt, chicken, fish, rice and chicken, and if you eat
Speaker 6: aqui and salfish and banana fish.
Speaker 3: Fish is my favorite meal fish snapper fish. A matter
Speaker 3: of fact, fish is the best meal in the whole water.
Speaker 3: Very delicious.
Speaker 1: Despite the delicious snapperfish, growing up in downtown Kingston also
Speaker 1: came with its challenges For Selven, I'll.
Speaker 3: Go up in ghetto. So guys my age, they die
Speaker 3: and is the reason why they died in gangs. Some
Speaker 3: of them get shot by guns, tell of them and
Speaker 3: get stuck by knife. Theyn't have anywhere is to go live,
Speaker 3: So I got to live in that same neighborhood. I
Speaker 3: gotta be keep looking over my shoulder, morning, noon and night.
Speaker 1: For some people in Jamaica, including Selvin, the H two
Speaker 1: worker visa was a way to get out of the cycle,
Speaker 1: to come to the US and earn money and change
Speaker 1: their lives.
Speaker 2: Being able to come to the United States is a
Speaker 2: very prized right in Jamaica. One way you can tell
Speaker 2: who has been working in the United States is very
Speaker 2: obvious when you travel rural Jamaica. As you ride through
Speaker 2: rural Jamaica, you will observe it's like the Little Children's
Speaker 2: story the Three Little Pigs. You'll see most homes are
Speaker 2: made out of sticks, out of straw, but you'll see
Speaker 2: the homes made out of cinder blocks. In almost every instance,
Speaker 2: the homemade out of cinder blocks is a home that
Speaker 2: is being built via a worker who has come to
Speaker 2: the United States on the Age two program.
Speaker 1: Selvin's life in Jamaica could have gone very differently. At
Speaker 1: one point, some guys asked him to join a gang,
Speaker 1: but he refused. He wanted to be like his dad,
Speaker 1: the kind of guy who worked from before sunrise to
Speaker 1: after sunset on his own farm.
Speaker 3: It was a hard worker. My dad was a very
Speaker 3: very hard worker. I don't see no man in the
Speaker 3: world could work like my dad.
Speaker 1: Speaking of dads, Victor's father was actually part of the
Speaker 1: farm worker program too, Cutting Caine. He'd come home from
Speaker 1: working abroad and he'd bring Victor new wrangler janes and
Speaker 1: cautionary tales about the difficulties of the job.
Speaker 6: So when he comes back and we are talking, he says, son,
Speaker 6: it is very off. It is very off. I said, well, Dad,
Speaker 6: I would like to go a dear go experience it
Speaker 6: for myself day to come. But he said to me,
Speaker 6: it is very off.
Speaker 1: So what part about it made you want to go?
Speaker 1: Why did you want to follow in your dad's footsteps
Speaker 1: and also travel the Cutcaine.
Speaker 6: Tell you the answers to what I would like to
Speaker 6: have the experience, And at that time I have two kids,
Speaker 6: So my goal is to go the antwerk and come
Speaker 6: up here, come work and buy Pisa and to make
Speaker 6: a house and to help take care of my kids.
Speaker 1: Selvin had similar aspirations.
Speaker 3: To better my life and not just me and my
Speaker 3: family too, build my house and send my kids to
Speaker 3: a better school.
Speaker 1: Selven credits divine intervention for getting his shot at the
Speaker 1: Age two program. He says God put him in the
Speaker 1: right place, at the right time. He simply overheard people
Speaker 1: talking about a local government official who was giving out
Speaker 1: farm worker cards. These are like passes that would allow
Speaker 1: you to go for an interview for the program.
Speaker 3: Just like that, Just like that, That's my first opportunity.
Speaker 3: Right there.
Speaker 1: Selvin went to the official and asked for a card.
Speaker 1: He did his homework, asked people about the interview, the tests,
Speaker 1: and even took the day off work.
Speaker 3: Before his physical I do not want to fail.
Speaker 1: Both Selvin and Victor had heard it was a rigorous process.
Speaker 1: When Victor turned up for the selection day, so.
Speaker 6: They called me name, and I go up to a man,
Speaker 6: a big, trapping white man by the name of Miranda,
Speaker 6: and he said yes Victor Blackwood. I said yes, you
Speaker 6: eat pork. I say yes, sir.
Speaker 1: They supposedly didn't want any pork abstaining Rastafarians on the program.
Speaker 6: He said, you were seven days a week. I said yes.
Speaker 6: You say you eat rice? I said yes, sir.
Speaker 1: Then they ask can you cut sugarcane? Selvin says yeah,
Speaker 1: I've worked with my dad and cut fourteen tons a day.
Speaker 3: He said, what because a lot? I say, I'm very
Speaker 3: strong and I'm a hard worker. You know, and not
Speaker 3: another word. You just say you passed.
Speaker 1: You go over there next the infamous hand test.
Speaker 6: So let me see your hand, and I turn over
Speaker 6: my hand and I show you my name, feel my hand.
Speaker 2: The last of the workers to turn over their hands
Speaker 2: to see if they have houses on them. Is this
Speaker 2: a person who's been doing manual labor or is this
Speaker 2: a person who's been working in an office building?
Speaker 1: What was he looking for when he was touching your hands?
Speaker 6: You want to know if my hand took are itself?
Speaker 6: If you hand south, they're not gonna take it. Say
Speaker 6: you never I used the word for your handself.
Speaker 5: This was like out of slave trade. You know, they're
Speaker 5: looking at their hands to make sure their hands are
Speaker 5: big enough to be able to hold these sites in
Speaker 5: the fields. You hear about these scenes and you could
Speaker 5: be back in the nineteenth century with the slave trade.
Speaker 1: And there's more. Selvin and Victor have to go to
Speaker 1: a testing center in Hanover Street, Kingston, and I.
Speaker 6: Go inside a room. Is a big room, big place,
Speaker 6: about three hundred men. And we've got inside a room.
Speaker 6: You take off your clothes and then you leave into
Speaker 6: your your underwear.
Speaker 1: A doctor arrives in this huge room where the men
Speaker 1: are waiting in their underwear, and.
Speaker 6: Then he said, you said drop your jazz. And then
Speaker 6: he said you most bent over, honey, combat and look
Speaker 6: if you have.
Speaker 1: Pile hundreds of naked men bent over the doctor looking
Speaker 1: to see if the men have hemorrhoids. The men were
Speaker 1: treated as though they were livestock, a brutal and dehumanizing process.
Speaker 1: Then once clothed.
Speaker 3: Then I gotta go take a blood test. My blood
Speaker 3: was was good. I gotta take a youine test by you,
Speaker 3: and that was good. I gotta take like Chesick's tray.
Speaker 1: The hand test, the physical, the blood test, the X ray.
Speaker 1: Selvin and Victor got through it all.
Speaker 3: I passed. I pass everything I do. I pas all. This.
Speaker 1: Imagine the physical condition you need to be in just
Speaker 1: to cut sugarcane. Not something you want to think about
Speaker 1: when you're adding a teaspoon of sweetness to your morning coffee.
Speaker 1: So most men are ushered to the reject exit, but
Speaker 1: Victor and Selvin are directed towards another door. They're going
Speaker 1: to America.
Speaker 3: I was so confident that I'm going to America. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I was so confident.
Speaker 1: One last thing before they move on to their bright future.
Speaker 1: In the US, they just need to add their signature
Speaker 1: to a stack of documents.
Speaker 6: You're saying, right, contract.
Speaker 1: Did you read the contract before you signed it?
Speaker 6: Not exactly, Bucadia find print and there were so many
Speaker 6: papers you couldn't really have got if you if you
Speaker 6: got to door papers, it would take it award day.
Speaker 1: Did you notice anyone trying to stop and read them
Speaker 1: before they signed?
Speaker 6: No? No, no, no, no. Everybody was so happy to
Speaker 6: gos that they didn't really stop us and read the papers.
Speaker 6: Then do you understand I do.
Speaker 1: More after the break? So we're back to the contract.
Speaker 1: That contract they signed, Well, it's the same document, Lawyer
Speaker 1: Edward Tuttenham would go on to obsess over for months
Speaker 1: before that fateful call from the former US sugar supervisor
Speaker 1: Ed Fountain. Ed has evidence, he says, of how this
Speaker 1: complicated and frankly confusing system of row pricing works, of
Speaker 1: how much money the sugar cane cutters are really being paid.
Speaker 1: So Edward says to him.
Speaker 4: Okay, mister Fountain, when can I meet you anytime? Anytime?
Speaker 4: Just come you know, next time you're in Ashville. I said, well,
Speaker 4: I'm coming to Ashville just as soon as I can
Speaker 4: get a plane ticket. I flew to Ashville and met
Speaker 4: mister Fountain in a diner. And then the thing that
Speaker 4: he gave is that sort of broke the case open.
Speaker 4: Was a pricing sheet.
Speaker 1: This was how the company supposedly determined how much the
Speaker 1: cutter was going to be paid per row of cane
Speaker 1: he cut.
Speaker 4: It was an insanely complicated system to figure out from scratch.
Speaker 4: There are hundreds and hundreds of cane fields and they
Speaker 4: need to be priced every day.
Speaker 1: This pricing chart was produced by the sugar companies for
Speaker 1: each field they planted. The chart lays out the estimated
Speaker 1: number of tons in every single field to sugar, as
Speaker 1: well as how many rows are in a given field.
Speaker 1: And according to ed, this is how they calculate the
Speaker 1: total price to be paid per row.
Speaker 4: It was all pre calculated. I mean, it's just a
Speaker 4: mathematical conversion.
Speaker 1: For example, if one field is estimated to hold forty
Speaker 1: tons of sugar planted in let's say eight rows, this
Speaker 1: will give you five tons of cut sugar per row.
Speaker 1: Multiplying this number by the amount budgeted for the harvest
Speaker 1: gives the farmer the price they want to pay per row.
Speaker 4: And to make it even easier. At the very top,
Speaker 4: it said, you know, three twenty five per ton.
Speaker 1: Was that a little like a smoking gun?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, a smoking gun, because remember from the contract.
Speaker 4: If one ton an hour is good enough, and earning
Speaker 4: five thirty an hour is good enough, but anything less
Speaker 4: than five point thirty gets you fired, then they have
Speaker 4: to pay at least five thirty a ton.
Speaker 1: That three dollars and twenty five cents per ton at
Speaker 1: the top of the sheet. That was not the five
Speaker 1: dollars thirty cents per ton that Edward understood the workers
Speaker 1: would be legally paid.
Speaker 4: It was clear they were not paying anything close to
Speaker 4: five thirty a ton. Then it became obvious they were
Speaker 4: pricing the cane so that to earn five thirty an
Speaker 4: hour you had to cut over a ton and a
Speaker 4: half per hour, and people just couldn't do it. People
Speaker 4: clearly were not cutting fast enough. They just couldn't physically
Speaker 4: could not. I don't care whether you're an Olympic champion,
Speaker 4: you cannot cut cane that fast.
Speaker 5: And that is why thousands of these workers wound up
Speaker 5: off and getting paid three dollars an hour.
Speaker 1: But if a worker was only cutting enough cane to
Speaker 1: earn three dollars an hour. Well, that's not going to work.
Speaker 1: That's below minimum wage, which yes, also applies to H
Speaker 1: two visa workers. The company would have to make up
Speaker 1: the difference, or it turned out there was another option.
Speaker 4: To disguise the fact that they were pushing people too fast.
Speaker 4: They then had to match the hours to put down
Speaker 4: fewer hours than people work to make it look like
Speaker 4: they were cutting more per hour than they actually were.
Speaker 1: A worker may have been in the fields for eight
Speaker 1: hours but earning only four dollars an hour. A timekeeper thinks, hmmm,
Speaker 1: let's erase that. Let's say it was actually six hours,
Speaker 1: and like magic, the tickets sale worker is now earning
Speaker 1: five dollars thirty cents an hour.
Speaker 2: You were supposed to make five dollars hour. You made
Speaker 2: five dollars an hour. Everything looks good to the government,
Speaker 2: looks good to the inspectors, and, knowing the workers were
Speaker 2: unlikely to complain, the companies realized tens of millions of
Speaker 2: dollars every year by doing it exactly that way.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons this went on for so long
Speaker 1: was because the workers knew if they spoke out about
Speaker 1: the hours shorting or anything else, for that matter, they
Speaker 1: could be sent home. And to appreciate what a threat
Speaker 1: that was, I need to tell you one more detail
Speaker 1: about H two visas. There's strong evidence there was often
Speaker 1: also a background check for the cutters. If you'd cut
Speaker 1: cane before and complained about the pay or tried to unionize,
Speaker 1: you're blacklisted and you'll never be allowed back. Think back
Speaker 1: on the Dog War when police with dogs rounded up
Speaker 1: and arrested workers striking over their wages, and the sugar
Speaker 1: company got them deported. Remember Selvin watched all this unfold.
Speaker 1: He didn't realize that's what was going on until later
Speaker 1: that these men were being sent back home without warning
Speaker 1: or choice.
Speaker 3: I didn't know it was so serious until I heard.
Speaker 3: But everything was done. But the police was there just
Speaker 3: to calm them down, and they go back to her
Speaker 3: the next day. But I didn't get to come back.
Speaker 3: They send them home. They's sending them back to Jamaica.
Speaker 1: We've tracked down photos of one of the men who
Speaker 1: was arrested through a freedom of information request. He's barefoot,
Speaker 1: his thumb bandaged, and a patch on his inner arm.
Speaker 1: He's wearing a red tank top that's ripped on one shoulder,
Speaker 1: held together by a thread. Some people lawyers trying to
Speaker 1: help the men, say they saw the men boarding the
Speaker 1: planes in their underwear. They hadn't had time to gather
Speaker 1: their possessions.
Speaker 3: All their belongings and everything. They left the ears. Maybe
Speaker 3: they get the money in their locker room and they
Speaker 3: left it.
Speaker 1: It made Selvin really nervous the idea that he could
Speaker 1: be sent.
Speaker 3: Home like that, and that was a scare, very scare part.
Speaker 3: That's the reason why I did never want anything like
Speaker 3: that happened to me.
Speaker 2: That's a system that is prone to exploitation of workers
Speaker 2: because the workers are totally at the mercy of the employer.
Speaker 2: And if the choice is I can accept the job
Speaker 2: in the US, and I'm being cheated in that job,
Speaker 2: but it certainly is better than what I have at
Speaker 2: home in Jamaica, I'm inclined to just be quiet and
Speaker 2: accept those conditions and continue working in that job.
Speaker 1: Victor's take is that the men were more or less disposable.
Speaker 6: So many men is a tear, And then tell your
Speaker 6: plan if you don't want to quote it. When I
Speaker 6: go home, your brother are coming.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know that Supposedly they had a liaison
Speaker 1: officer for you who was supposed to help you sort
Speaker 1: out problems. Did you feel like you had resources people
Speaker 1: that you could go to if there were problems with
Speaker 1: your your pay or your treatment.
Speaker 6: Listen to me. Listen to me tell you the truth.
Speaker 6: The listen Apsadam. Them is no good. Them is no
Speaker 6: no good.
Speaker 1: We asked the sugarcane companies and their trade group to
Speaker 1: respond to the claims that they underpaid their workers, the blacklisting,
Speaker 1: and much more about the working and living conditions on
Speaker 1: the farms in the eighties and nineties. No one replied.
Speaker 1: We also spoke to the Palm Beach County Sheriff's office
Speaker 1: because they were involved in the dog War. When asked
Speaker 1: about it, a representative told us, quote, this is over
Speaker 1: thirty five years ago in which there was a different agency, command, structure, employees, etc.
Speaker 1: End quote. They didn't have anything further to say. Victor
Speaker 1: and his coworkers felt trapped by the system and ignored
Speaker 1: by the people supposed to represent them inside the sugar farms.
Speaker 1: They knew there were issues with their pay, but didn't
Speaker 1: know what they could or should do about it, And
Speaker 1: at this point they had no idea there was a
Speaker 1: group of people outside the sugar farms who were eager
Speaker 1: to represent them, and how did these lawyers plan to
Speaker 1: represent them by suing the major sugar companies. Edward wanted
Speaker 1: to launch a class action on behalf of a whopping
Speaker 1: twenty thousand sugarcane cutters in America who they believed had
Speaker 1: been seriously underpaid. As is so often the case with
Speaker 1: the law, though it's not the headline grabbing stories which
Speaker 1: win cases. It's all in the details, or, as Edward
Speaker 1: had discovered, it's all in the contract.
Speaker 4: Contract law was just the most straightforward. There are no defenses.
Speaker 4: If this is what you promised, this is what you
Speaker 4: have to pay. It seemed so easy at the time.
Speaker 4: It seems so straightforward. I have never done a case
Speaker 4: that was more clearcut.
Speaker 1: But you can't win a legal battle based on contract
Speaker 1: law without a contract lawyer.
Speaker 4: So they approached this local Florida attorney named Dave Gorman.
Speaker 2: Who specializes in business contracts.
Speaker 4: He's a very nice guy, very smart, very smart. It's
Speaker 4: very different from most of my friends. He drove a Harley,
Speaker 4: an enormous Harley. He was a biker, long and short
Speaker 4: of it.
Speaker 5: Oh, Dave was I met him? He drove into Belglade.
Speaker 5: I believe on his Harley and he was wearing his
Speaker 5: leather jacket.
Speaker 4: He lifted weights and here was a biker. That's all
Speaker 4: I can sing.
Speaker 6: Well.
Speaker 7: I mean, I do have a motorcycle. I haven't ridden
Speaker 7: it much lately because of hip and back issues. But
Speaker 7: that doesn't mean you're I'm a goon.
Speaker 1: I don't think what kind of motorcycle is it?
Speaker 7: So Harley Davison, I got a nineteen eighty eight low Rider.
Speaker 1: When you ask people about Dave Gorman, they usually tell
Speaker 1: you he's a biker, and they also tell you.
Speaker 2: Dave enlisted in the Vietnam War.
Speaker 4: He had been a Vietnamese interpreter.
Speaker 5: He was a firebrand who had been in the Vietnam or.
Speaker 1: This came after a bit of boyish delinquency, adding to
Speaker 1: the bad boy persona. Dave had dabbled in some frat
Speaker 1: boy behavior while at Duke University.
Speaker 7: I got in a little bit of trouble with the
Speaker 7: school after a fraternity party. The police, Durham County Sheriff
Speaker 7: picked me up. I mean, they didn't charge me with anything.
Speaker 7: I was drunk as a lord, but they did turn
Speaker 7: me into the school. So the school charged me with
Speaker 7: drunkenness and conduct on becoming a duke gentleman. It's kind
Speaker 7: of hard to argue.
Speaker 1: By his own admission, Dave was lacking direction.
Speaker 7: I was going nowhere fast, so I wound up enlisting
Speaker 7: for It was a four year enlistment.
Speaker 2: He avoided being shot at in the war because he
Speaker 2: was so smart. He could learn Vietnamese. I think he
Speaker 2: became a translator.
Speaker 1: After the war, Dave became a lawyer, moved to Florida,
Speaker 1: and figured maybe working in the law he wouldn't have
Speaker 1: to take orders anymore.
Speaker 7: I was never particularly good at taking orders in the.
Speaker 1: Army, so career began. He didn't plaster his own face
Speaker 1: on billboards or put ads on TV. He just waited
Speaker 1: for cases to come to him.
Speaker 7: My practice from the very nearly the very beginning, I
Speaker 7: have never and would never advertise.
Speaker 1: And a life altering case was just around the corner.
Speaker 1: So this intelligence officer turned lawyer, Dave Gorman, is sitting in.
Speaker 7: His office, same office I'm in now.
Speaker 1: And here comes. Although it doesn't seem special at the time,
Speaker 1: the second fateful phone call in this story.
Speaker 7: That to me doesn't stand out as anything particularly strange
Speaker 7: or unusual.
Speaker 1: Dave didn't know it would be momentous. He gets calls
Speaker 1: like this all the time from other lawyers working on
Speaker 1: big cases who want his help, and Dave likes to
Speaker 1: take on what he calls twilight zone cases, those that
Speaker 1: are odd or fall outside the norm. On the other
Speaker 1: end of the line is Edward Tuttenham.
Speaker 4: I remember I was sick that day. I was living
Speaker 4: in Austin, Texas.
Speaker 1: Edward is actually lying in bed and he tells Dave
Speaker 1: about the case he's about to embark on that he
Speaker 1: wants to sue the sugar industry on behalf of the workers,
Speaker 1: and he needs a contract lawyer.
Speaker 4: And I recognized immediately that he was smart and he
Speaker 4: knew what he was doing. And I think conversely, he
Speaker 4: recognized that I knew what I was doing too. I
Speaker 4: knew what this contract said, and I knew it should
Speaker 4: be a complete winner.
Speaker 1: So would Dave help out mounting this case?
Speaker 7: And I said, okay, well that's that's yeah, that's fine,
Speaker 7: I don't mind doing that sounds interesting.
Speaker 2: And remember if they were right, then these workers were
Speaker 2: owed tens of millions of dollars in extra wages.
Speaker 1: And the lawyers stood to pocket a couple of million
Speaker 1: dollars themselves.
Speaker 4: And so no, it didn't take any convincing at all.
Speaker 4: I think we talked for thirty men and he said,
Speaker 4: I'm on, that sounds like a great case. How can
Speaker 4: we lose?
Speaker 1: So Edward hops on the back of Dave's Harley and
Speaker 1: they ride off into the sunset on their righteous highway
Speaker 1: towards destination justice. This could be the biggest case of
Speaker 1: their careers and it seems unlosable.
Speaker 2: It all looked like smooth sailing, but.
Speaker 1: That wouldn't make for much of a story, would it.
Speaker 1: This case was anything but smooth. Next time on Big Sugar,
Speaker 1: did they know what they were getting into?
Speaker 5: No work?
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 5: The case went through so many twists and turns the
Speaker 5: last I.
Speaker 2: Don't think anybody anticipated what was going to happen.
Speaker 7: And it changed very, very quickly.
Speaker 1: Big Sugar is produced by Imagine Audio, Weekday Fund Productions
Speaker 1: and Novel for iHeartMedia. The series is hosted by me
Speaker 1: Celeste Hedley. Big Sugar is produced by Jeff Eisenman at
Speaker 1: Weekday Fund Productions. It's executive produced by Kara Welker, Nathan
Speaker 1: Kloke and Marie Brenner Story editor and executive producer is
Speaker 1: Joe Wheeler. The researcher is Nadia Metti. Production management from
Speaker 1: Cherie Houston, Frankie Taylor, and Charlotte Wolfe. Our fact checker
Speaker 1: is Sona Avakian. Field reporting by Amber Amortgie. Sound design
Speaker 1: and mixing by Eli Block, Naomi Clark and Daniel Kempsen.
Speaker 1: Original music composed by Troy McCubbin at Alloy Tracks. Additional
Speaker 1: music by Nicholas Alexander. Special thanks to Alec Wilkinson, author
Speaker 1: of the book Big Sugar, and Stephanie Black, director of
Speaker 1: the documentary H two Worker. Big Sugar is based on
Speaker 1: the Vanity Fair article in the Kingdom of Big Sugar
Speaker 1: by Marie Brenner