Caribbean Migration: Contract Labor in U.S. Agriculture
UnpublishedNovember/December
1977
Volume:
11
Number:
8
Article
"Most of our people are reluctant to take dirty, low-paying and dead-end jobs. To fill these jobs, we need less choosy foreigners or the work won't get done.
Every year, thousands of West Indian contract workers fly on chartered jets from Kingston, Jamaica to mainland Florida. They travel late at night to be greeted at the airport by the Meranda Company of Miami, whose business it is to arrange the flights, house the arriving workers and finally disperse them by commercial buses to the farms, fields and orchards of the eastern United States.
Puerto Rico is second only to Mexico as a source of cheap imported labor for U.S.
Growers who defend the importation of Jamaican apple pickers say the job requires special attributes--traits they would like to pass off as national characteristics. Veterans of the apple harvest, on the other hand, say all that's needed is a stomach for 12-hour days of brutal, boring labor and a piece rate system that never lets you rest.
Nicasio
Recent events in Nicaragua threaten to bring an end to the infamous Somoza dynasty which has been in control for the past 42 years. A broad spectrum of Nicaragua's political forces, including some former adherents of the regime, have stepped up demands for the ouster of General Anastasio Somoza Debayle and for the recognition of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) as a legal organization.
Bob Norman
Recent headlines have been filled with news from the U.S.
Elmo Dominguez
The Panama Canal Treaty has become one of the most important political issues this year.
Victor M. Quintana
On November 10, over 10,000 workers, representing 42 labor unions, paralyzed traffic for hours as they marched to the Capitol building in San Juan. They were protesting the mid-October assassination of Teamster leader Juan Rafael Caballero Santana as part of a new wave of repression unleashed against the labor movement in Puerto Rico.