Tuesday, June 06, 2006
FDR's Guest Worker Program for Sugar
President Bush is just following in the footsteps of other presidents with guest worker proposals.
Here's an article in American Conservative about how black workers were imported to do back breaking, awful work Americans refused to do for Big Sugar.
"Through an intergovernmental agreement on March 16, 1943, Roosevelt launched what later became the British West Indies Program (BWI). This opened the gates to farm workers from Jamaica, the Bahamas, and other Caribbean isles.
But FDR's plan was not just about opening the borders to these workers. Under FDR's BWI program, the federal government became an active partner with the sugar growers. Historian David McCally writes, "Between 1943 and 1947, the United States government played a direct role in negotiating employment contracts for offshore laborers and paid the cost of round-trip transportation for all workers between their homes and the United States."
Once again, Big Sugar was getting by on Big-Government largesse, but Uncle Sam's help in this situation was not merely in footing the boat fare for the cane cutters. Roosevelt's BWI program—and the guest-worker program that it grew into—provided sugar growers with the ideal worker."
. . ."A typical employer in a free market has only the power to stop paying his worker or possibly sue him if he doesn’t perform promised services. But under guest-worker programs, the employer gains the power of deportation.
In recognition of the fact that the employer/guest-worker relationship exists outside of the free market, the federal government provides special protection for these guest workers, guaranteeing adequate housing, food, and other conditions. In the rest of the economy, the enforcement mechanism for the worker’s needs is called freedom of movement. In a free market, a dissatisfied worker can walk away from a job. In the 20th-century indentured servitude of the cane fields, no such freedom."
Doesn't this sound like something we outlawed in the mid-19th century?
Here's an article in American Conservative about how black workers were imported to do back breaking, awful work Americans refused to do for Big Sugar.
"Through an intergovernmental agreement on March 16, 1943, Roosevelt launched what later became the British West Indies Program (BWI). This opened the gates to farm workers from Jamaica, the Bahamas, and other Caribbean isles.
But FDR's plan was not just about opening the borders to these workers. Under FDR's BWI program, the federal government became an active partner with the sugar growers. Historian David McCally writes, "Between 1943 and 1947, the United States government played a direct role in negotiating employment contracts for offshore laborers and paid the cost of round-trip transportation for all workers between their homes and the United States."
Once again, Big Sugar was getting by on Big-Government largesse, but Uncle Sam's help in this situation was not merely in footing the boat fare for the cane cutters. Roosevelt's BWI program—and the guest-worker program that it grew into—provided sugar growers with the ideal worker."
. . ."A typical employer in a free market has only the power to stop paying his worker or possibly sue him if he doesn’t perform promised services. But under guest-worker programs, the employer gains the power of deportation.
In recognition of the fact that the employer/guest-worker relationship exists outside of the free market, the federal government provides special protection for these guest workers, guaranteeing adequate housing, food, and other conditions. In the rest of the economy, the enforcement mechanism for the worker’s needs is called freedom of movement. In a free market, a dissatisfied worker can walk away from a job. In the 20th-century indentured servitude of the cane fields, no such freedom."
Doesn't this sound like something we outlawed in the mid-19th century?
# posted by Norma : 6/06/2006 11:55:00 AM
