June 27, 2023 • 44 mins
Tensions between workers and a sugarcane farm erupt into violence. A ragtag group of lawyers seek justice for thousands of sugarcane cutters who have allegedly been underpaid for their grueling labor.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Each day, when a cutter is brought to a field,
they're told in number, it's the amount they'll earn for
cutting a row of sugarcane. Remember, sugarcane is planted in rows.
Some days it's one hundred dollars per row, some days
it's one hundred and fifty dollars, some days it's eighty dollars.
And a single row can take days to cut. But
I want to zero in on one day and one field.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
In this particular field, the workers, after cutting for a
couple hours, figured out, we're not going to make any
money because the price is too low. That the price
you're paying, we'll be lucky to make ten dollars today,
and so they stopped working.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
It's nineteen eighty six, and there are grumblings. It's the
start of an infamous event in the annals of the
Florida sugarcane industry. It started when a group of workers declared,
we're not cutting cane at these prices. It's just not
enough money.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
And so a number of the workers said, well, we're
we're just not going to cut today and we're going
to walk back to the camp. And it was not
like it was on back roads that nobody saw there
were all of a sudden, these hundreds of men walking
down the highway. Then it certainly got people's attention.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
The farm these guys we're working for is one of
the biggest of all the sugarcane farms in Florida. It's
called Okolanta. It's owned by the most famous sugar barons
in America, the vun Hul Brothers. So after that long
walk back to the barracks, there's an eerily quiet night.
It's not until the morning that a representative from the
(01:35):
sugar company arrives. Rather than send the workers out on
their usual bus to the field, the company wants to negotiate.
They offer to pay a bit more, but the workers
won't budge.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Ultimately, the company just said we've had it, We're done
with these guys.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
And that's when things really started to go bad. Minutes
after the negotiation leaves, police cars begin to surround the building,
accompanied by Okalanta buses and a helicopter.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
The company called the local sheriff's department, who sent out
a riot squad, and the riot squad was directed to
round up the supposed instigators, and they figured some might
be hiding in the.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Bearers inside the massive building is Jamaican sugarcane cutter Selven Grant.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
It was a strike, but I was not involved. But
I was right there.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
He isn't part of the strike. Actually, he's cut his
finger and is recuperating when all of a sudden, uniformed
officers barge.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
In and one of the police was advancing to me,
and I tell him, man, I'm not in fine. My
finger cut, I'm sick. I just come from the doctor,
and I was showing them my band aid on my finger,
saying that I'm not in tho strike.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
But from Selvin's perspective, the shotgun armed police seemed to
be rounding up everyone, so.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
It seemed like fully was not listening to me. He
was advancing to me, like you want to grab me.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Selvin isn't alone. There are loads of guys caught up
in the chaos.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Certain workers had actually gone to the barracks, not because
they were hiding from the police, but they figured something
is going on that sounds very bad, and we think
the safest thing we can do is to sit on
our bunk with our arms folded across our chest and
nothing bad can happen to us. We won't be accused
of striking. We'll just just be quiet and be obedient.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
My sense tell me that get away from this crowd.
Get away, get away, And that's what I did.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Selvin runs up some stairs and watches from a window
on a higher floor.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
And I go upstairs and was watching what going on,
and then all of a sudden, I see the police
coming a dog.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
The riot squad came into the barracks and they brought
with them their police dogs, and the police dogs a cat.
Some of these workers who were sitting on their bunks,
and several of them suffered some serious dog BikeE wounds.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Most of the guys just careded a dog, so they
just didn't really run. I just say, police said, well,
you got to come with me, because you guys seemed
like the trobeltmaker. Very scary, very scar scare.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
The remaining workers who were viewed as instigators or strikers
were placed on buses and sent to the Miami Airport
to eventually be repatriated.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
More than three hundred workers were rounded up by the
police at gunpoint and sent back home back to the Caribbean.
This day, this event was given a name.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Not only the workers involved, but everyone there that day
refers to the event as the Dog War.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
The Dog War a day when tensions exploded to something
that felt to many like armed combat. But how did
things get this desperate, strained, violent? Even this really starts
to get to the heart of what this whole series
is about, not only the truth about what was happening
in those fields, in those barracks, and how these men
were being paid, but also the truth about what had
(05:19):
been going on for decades, really in an impenetrable industry
that was carefully and quietly managing its operations, its image,
and its money in secrecy. But slowly people were beginning
to take notice. I'm Celeste Hedley and from iHeartMedia, Imagine
Audio and the teams at Weekday Fun and Novel. This
(05:40):
is Big Sugar, Episode two. The Grass is Always Greener.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
Please go ahead introduce yourself. We are meeting at a
cocktail party. Tell me who you are and what you do.
Speaker 5 (06:05):
I'm Edward Tuttenham and I'm an attorney.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Edward Tuttenham has spent his career challenging some of the
working practices of big agriculture. And when that's your job,
well you're bound to make a few enemies.
Speaker 5 (06:18):
I remember one farmer, Sue called me up and I
picked up the phone and he just said, listen, I'm
about to leave town and I want to kill you.
I want you to drive down to my ranch right
now so I can shoot you. I said, well, I'm
tied up. Actually make it now, but if you'll call
me back when you're back in town, we can talk
(06:39):
about it.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Farmers were angry, angry enough to threaten Edward's life, albeit
not angry enough to make the short ride to commit
the crime. But this, it turns out, was par for
the course when you're a lawyer sticking up from migrant
farm workers.
Speaker 5 (06:53):
The windows of our office were routinely broken out, people
driving by at night throwing rocks of them.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
How did Edward wind up in this situation? After graduating
from Harvard in nineteen seventy eight, he went to work
for Texas Rural Legal Aid. It's an organization that gives
free legal help to farm workers, helping them with their
pay and conditions.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
Had you been to Texas before that?
Speaker 5 (07:18):
Uh? No, No, I had not.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Despite having little to no knowledge of Texas, Edward buttoned
up his Brooks brother's shirt and got straight to work.
Speaker 5 (07:30):
They picked me up at the airport and immediately we
drove to a picket line.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
He represented onion harvesters, cotton pickers, and then began what
he calls the Texas Melon experience, standing up from Mexican
candlop pickers in the Presidio Valley.
Speaker 5 (07:46):
And that was exactly what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
If this was a Rocky style training montage, Edward would
be right there on the picket line, drafting briefs and
cross examining witnesses. Instead of hooking Russian boxers, he'd be
ko in exploitative farmers. The young ambitious lawyer even deposed
a local sheriff whose claim to fame was that he
conducted the last public hanging in Texas. The ranchers gave
(08:10):
Edward a nickname, the Harvard Idiot. And is it true
that a deputy wrote a song.
Speaker 5 (08:19):
It wasn't the deputy, it was the county sheriff. The
name of the song was get out of Herford Trla,
which was Texas where illegal aid.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
All this is to say that almost nothing would deter
this Harvard Idiot. Not threatening phone calls, not even hostile
ballads composed by local law enforcement he was going to
defend farm workers no matter what.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
I'm very similar to Edward Tutnham.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
This is Greg Shell, managing attorney at Southern Migrant Legal Services,
another group that helps migrant farm workers, and Greg was
one year behind Edward Tuttenham at Harvard Law School.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
One thing going to a high pressure, high prestige law
school like Harvard is that it instills in you, if
nothing else, an extreme sense of self confidence. Some people
would say arrogance and you think that you can change
the world and that you can do things. You can
prevail over daunting odds because you can outsmart the other
(09:24):
side and the challenge is something you relish.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
And Edward was outsmarting the other side, winning many of
his cases.
Speaker 5 (09:32):
So picture it.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Edward's writing high on a string of successes, holding powerful
farmers to account. Pay your workers properly, treat them properly.
Side note, some of the farm workers did end up
getting fired after the lawsuits. Farmers would find other ways
of harvesting that were cheaper than paying proper wages. But hey,
there's always going to be collateral damage in the pure
(09:56):
pursuit of justice. Right in the mid nineteen eighties, Edward
wound up working in Washington, d c. And in search
of his next big fish to fry, although this time
the big fish was sweet sugar. There were many things
Edward found himself fighting in the courts, like terrible working
(10:16):
conditions and injuries, But when it came to the sugar
cane cutters, there was one thing which kept coming up
again and again. Wages.
Speaker 5 (10:26):
They didn't understand how they were being cheated. They just
knew that they were being cheated in some way.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Some sugar cane cutters reported they were somehow earning just
a few dollars an hour, well below the minimum wage
at the time. And this is also what journalist Marie
Brenner heard when she was looking into the story in
the nineteen nineties. She was working on an article for
Vanity Fair, an article which eventually became the inspiration for
this podcast. So in full investigative mode, one day, she's
(10:56):
in lawyer Gregshal's office and she comes across a letter
that one cutter had written home.
Speaker 6 (11:01):
Here's a one letter we can read from the article.
Dear Fatty, how keeping, I hope all of you are well.
I write you and send you twenty six dollars. I
don't know. If you get it, you wouldn't know what
I'm going through. We get a cane row for thirty dollars.
It takes two days to cut it. That works out
(11:21):
to be some one dollar and some cents an hour.
I spoke to the timekeeper and he's ready to eat
me up. He says, we just have to work fast enough,
and then we'll make even more than the hourly wages
they promised us. Imagine to leave Jamaica so many hundreds
of miles to come to America and work for one
(11:42):
dollar and some cents an hour. I looked up from
that letter and I said to Gregschell, how is this
even possible legally?
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Okay? So to answer that, let's get into the nuts
and bolts of what happens when sugar cane is being cultivated.
Imagine a massive field.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Sugar cane is planted in rows, rows.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
And rows of these long, thick stalks of sugarcane. Some
are thirteen feet high and two inches around.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
It's a grass, so it grows just like when you
cut the grass in your yard. It grows up back
year after year.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
And at the time we're talking about in the eighties
and nineties, virtually all the sugar cane in America was
cut by hand. Using a machine to cut the cane
is certainly safer and more efficient, but some growers prefer
manual labor because machines can accidentally pull out the roots
of sugarcane, meaning it won't regrow the following year. So
(12:43):
the workers turn up in the morning to a field
and they're told how much each row is worth.
Speaker 5 (12:49):
Every day in every field the rose would be priced differently.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Cut this row today and you'll get fifty dollars. The
next day it would be cut this row and you'll
get eighty dollar. It was a moving target, so there.
Speaker 5 (13:02):
Was nothing fixed that you could put your finger on.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
The cutters then get to work chopping as quickly as
they can, bent over all day, slashing the bottom of
the cane with a machete.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Sugar cane is very hard to.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Cut, and these workers cut tons of it on some
of these farms in Florida, like eight tons a day.
To put that in perspective, that's heavier than the combined
weight of five Toyota priases.
Speaker 5 (13:31):
Which is astronomical.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Then the sticks are sent to a sugar mill to
be turned into syrup and finally crystals, which are packaged
in the iconic bags found in nearly every supermarket and
convenience store in America. These days, we eat on average
six cups of sugar a week, and believe me, it's
in almost everything. A couple years ago, I went sugar
(13:54):
free for six months, and I was shocked to find
that my bread had sugar in it, and my pizza sauce,
and my peanut butter, and my dried fruit and my
salad dressing. It was almost impossible to avoid it. So anyway,
back to the sugar farms and to the cutters. At
the end of the day, exhausted, they looked down at
(14:16):
their pays stumps. They think about how many hours they
worked and how much it says they're going to be paid.
It seems to be a lot less than what they
expected to earn.
Speaker 5 (14:26):
I started looking into it, and at first we did
not realize exactly what was going on.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
There was this problem workers were getting under pay that
was well known to a whole large group of advocates.
Speaker 5 (14:40):
But we didn't really understand why.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
It was all a bit mysterious. But then Edward Tuttenham
had an idea. By this point, he was an expert
in H two litigation, which made him fairly specialized. H
two A visas are used by farmers to bring in
workers from overseas for ary agricultural work. So in the
case of sugar, it had historically been used for cutters
from the West Indies, mainly Jamaica but also Barbados. Saint
(15:08):
Lucia sent Kitts and others. Since the sugar companies claimed
almost no Americans would do the job. Edwards starts scouring
something called a clearance order. It's what an agent sends
the Department of Labor on behalf of the farmers, setting
out what a job would be. It's like a contract.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
He looked at this very complicated contract that the Jamaican
workers were employed under.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
And there were three terms that he obsessed over. It's complicated,
so bear with me.
Speaker 5 (15:37):
One, if you cut eight tons in an eight hour day,
you will be a satisfactory worker.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
That's one ton per hour.
Speaker 5 (15:45):
Two earning five dollars and thirty cents an hour is satisfactory.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Five dollars and thirty cents is the minimum wage.
Speaker 5 (15:55):
Three but anything less and you'll be fired. And I
must have read those three sentences over and over and
over again for months. Eight tons five thirty per hour
is required. Worker would be expected to cut eight tons
(16:15):
of pain in an eight hour day.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
He took the time to parse this very thick and
confusing document.
Speaker 5 (16:23):
You will be expected to cut fast enough to earn
five thirty.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
An hour, and he read it carefully.
Speaker 5 (16:30):
To pay five thirty a ton. A ton an hour
is good enough and earning five thirty an hour, if
you cut a ton an hour, you're a satisfactory worker.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
These three terms swirled around in.
Speaker 5 (16:42):
Edward's head until finally, in conversation with Greg, suddenly the
light bulb went on.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
He's got it.
Speaker 5 (16:51):
When you have those three statements, the logical answer is
then they have to pay at least five thirty per ton. Again,
if one ton an hour is good enough and earning
five thirty an hour is good enough, but anything less
than five point thirty gets you fired, then they have
(17:13):
to pay at least five thirty a ton.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Edward had figured out one piece of the puzzle. He
hypothesized that according to this clearance order, the workers should
be paid at least five dollars and thirty cents for
every ton of cane they cut. That would be in
line with the contract and minimum wage, and it would
be in line with the expectation that the workers have
been told they're expected to cut at least a ton
an hour or they'll be fired. But Edward suspected that
(17:39):
the workers were being paid a lot less than five
dollars thirty cents a ton.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
The problem was, how do you prove that this is occurring.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
How do you prove they were paying them less than
five dollars thirty cents per ton. It's not like there
were scales in the fields. The workers were just told
a price for the row and got cutting. But there
was potentially a lot at stake. And when I say
a lot, I mean tens of millions of dollars.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
If you could prove in some easy way not only
that the workers were not being paid properly, but the
amount they were owed, that would be a huge amount
of money.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Then out of the blue, another piece falls into the puzzle.
Edward sitting in his office in Washington, d c. Surrounded
by boxes of paper pouring over the dense H two contract.
He's been at this for months. All these phrases and
clauses and legal parlance are echoing around in his brain.
(18:37):
He's thinking, in lawyer terms, how do I prove what's
going on here?
Speaker 5 (18:41):
And then I'm in my office and the phone rings.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
The secretary says to Edward.
Speaker 5 (18:49):
It's Ed Fountain and he needs to talk to you.
I didn't know who Ed Fountain was, and I took
the call and he said he was a former sugar supervisor.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
US Sugar is one of the biggest sugarcane producers in
the country.
Speaker 5 (19:05):
So I got this call. Okay, you're a supervisor for
US Sugar. What about it? And he said, well, you know,
I've just been fired and I have some information that
I think you would find useful. I said, really, what
kind of information? And he says, well, I'm the guy
who prices the roads. I know how they do it.
(19:29):
And that birked up my ears pretty quickly. Yeah, and
I said, great, where are.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
You put Ed Fountain on hold? What exactly he told
Edward In just a minute more after the break, let's
get back for a moment to who the story is
(19:58):
really about the sugarcane. I wonder if you would if
we could start, if you don't mind by telling me
a little bit about Jamaica. What is Jamaica like?
Speaker 7 (20:08):
Where tell your boy Jamaica. Jamaica is very nice, very sonny.
You have a lots of nice places where you can
go hang out, I enjoy yourself.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Two of the Jamaican sugar cane cutters who found themselves
caught up in the story are Victor Blackwood and Selven Grant,
and from the way they talk about their motherland, it's
clear they love the island in particular. They can wax
lyrical about the food.
Speaker 7 (20:37):
Dirt, chicken, fish, rice and chicken, and if you eat
aquian salfish and banana.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
Fish, fish is my favorite meal fish snapper fish. A
matter of fact, fish is the best meal in the
whole water. Very delicious.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Despite the delicious snapperfish, growing up in downtown Kingston also
came with its challenges For Selven, I'll.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
Go in ghetto so guys my age, they die and
is the reason why they died in gangs. Some of
them get shot by guns telling it and get stuck
by knife. They're not anywhere is to go live, So
I got to live in that same neighborhood. I gotta
be keep looking over my shoulder morning, noon and night.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
For some people in Jamaica, including Selvin, the h two
worker visa was a way to get out of the cycle,
to come to the US and earn money and change
their lives.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Being able to come to the United States is a
very prized right in Jamaica. One way you can tell
who has been working in the United States is very
obvious when you travel rural Jamaica. As you ride through
rural Jamaica, you will observe it's like the Little Children's
story the Three Little Pigs. You'll see most homes are
(21:56):
made out of sticks, out of straw, but you'll see
the homes made out of cinder blocks. In almost every instance,
the homemade out of cinder blocks is a home that
is being built via a worker who has come to
the United States on the Age two program.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Selvin's life in Jamaica could have gone very differently. At
one point, some guys asked him to join a gang,
but he refused. He wanted to be like his dad,
the kind of guy who worked from before sunrise to
after sunset on his own farm.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
It was a hard worker. My dad was a very
very hard worker. I don't see no man in the
world could work like my dad.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Speaking of dads, Victor's father was actually part of the
farm worker program too. Cutting Caine, he'd come home from
working abroad and he'd bring Victor new Wrangler Janes and
cautionary tales about the difficulties of the job.
Speaker 7 (22:48):
So when he comes back and we are talking, he says, son,
it is very off. It is very off. I said, well, Dad,
I would like to go a dear go experience it
for myself day to come. But he said to me,
it is very off.
Speaker 4 (23:04):
So what part about it made you want to go?
Why did you want to follow in your dad's footsteps
and also travel the Cutcaine.
Speaker 7 (23:13):
Tell you the answers to what I would like to
have the experience, And at that time I have two kids,
So my goal is to go the antwork and come
up with a come work and buy Pisa, and to
make a house and to help take care of my kids.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Selvin had similar aspirations.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
To better my life and not just me and my
family too, build my house and send my kids to
a better school.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Selven credits divine intervention for getting his shot at the
Age two program. He says God put him in the
right place at the right time. He simply overheard people
talking about a local government official who was giving out
farm worker cards. These are like passes that would allow
you to go for an interview for the program.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
Just like that, Just like that, that's my first opportunity there.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Selvin went to the official and asked for a card.
He did his homework, asked people about the interview, the tests,
and even took the day off work before.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
His physical I do not want to fail.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Both Selvin and Victor had heard it was a rigorous process.
When Victor turned up for the selection day.
Speaker 7 (24:31):
So they called me name, and I go up to
a man, a big, trapping white man by the name
of Miranda, and he said yes Victor Blackwood. I said yes,
you eat pork. I say yes, sir.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
They supposedly didn't want any pork abstaining Rastafarians on the program.
Speaker 7 (24:48):
He said, you were seven days a week. I said yes.
You say you eat rice? I said yes, sir.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Then they ask can you cut sugarcane? Selvin says yeah,
I've worked with my dad and cut fourteen tons a day.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
He said, what because a lot? I say, I'm very
strong and I'm a hard worker, you know, and not
another word. You just say you passed.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
You go over there next the infamous hand test.
Speaker 7 (25:15):
So let me see your hand, and I turn over
my hand, and I show you my name, feel my hand.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
The last of the workers to turn over their hands
to see if they have houses on them. Is this
a person who's been doing manual labor or is this
a person who's been working in an office building?
Speaker 4 (25:31):
What was he looking for when he was touching your hands?
Speaker 7 (25:34):
You want to know if my hand took are itself?
If your hand south, they're not gonna take it. Say
you never used the word for your handself.
Speaker 6 (25:44):
This was like out of slave trade. You know, they're
looking at their hands to make sure their hands are
big enough to be able to hold these sites in
the fields. You hear about these scenes and you could
be back in the nineteenth century with the slave trade.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
And there's more. Selvin and Victor have to go to
a testing center in Hanover Street, Kingston, and I.
Speaker 7 (26:08):
Go inside a room. Is a big room, big place,
about three hundred men, and we've got inside a room.
You take off your clothes and then you leave into
your your underwear.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
A doctor arrives in this huge room where the men
are waiting in their underwear.
Speaker 7 (26:27):
And then he said, you said drop your jazz and
then he said, you most bent over, honey, combat and
look if you have pie.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Hundreds of naked men bent over the doctor looking to
see if the men have hemorrhoids. The men were treated
as though they were livestock, a brutal and dehumanizing process.
Then once clothed.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
Then I gotta go take a blood test. My blood
was was good. I gotta take a youine test by you,
and that was good. I gotta take like Chesick's tray.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
The hand test, the physical, the blood test, the X ray.
Selvin and Victor got through it all.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
I passed. I pass everything I do.
Speaker 5 (27:13):
I pas all this.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Imagine the physical condition you need to be in just
to cut sugarcane not something you want to think about
when you're adding a teaspoon of sweetness to your morning coffee.
So most men are ushered to the reject exit, but
Victor and Selvin are directed towards another door. They're going
to America.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
I was so confident that I'm going to America. Yeah,
I was so confident.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
One last thing before they move on to their bright
future in the US, they just need to add their
signature to a stack of documents.
Speaker 7 (27:55):
You're saying, right, contract.
Speaker 4 (27:59):
Did you read the contract before you signed it?
Speaker 7 (28:02):
Not exactly. Bucadia find print and there were so many
papers you couldn't really have got if you if you
got to doors papers, it would take it award day.
Speaker 4 (28:13):
Did you notice anyone trying to stop and read them
before they signed?
Speaker 7 (28:17):
No?
Speaker 3 (28:18):
No, no, no, no.
Speaker 7 (28:19):
Everybody was so happy to gos that they didn't really
stop us and read the papers. Then do you understand
I do.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
More after the break? So we're back to the contract.
That contract they signed, Well, it's the same document, Lawyer
Edward Tuttenham would go on to obsess over for months
(28:51):
before that fateful call from the former US sugar supervisor
Ed Fountain. Ed has evidence, he says, of how this
complicated and frankly confusing system of row pricing works, of
how much money the sugar cane cutters are really being paid.
So Edward says.
Speaker 5 (29:08):
To him, Okay, mister Fountain, when can I meet you anytime? Anytime?
Just come you know, next time you're in Ashville. I said, well,
I'm coming to Ashville just as soon as I can
get a plane ticket. I flew to Ashville and met
mister Fountain in a diner and then the thing that
(29:28):
he gave is that sort of broke the case open.
Was a pricing sheet.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
This was how the company supposedly determined how much the
cutter was going to be paid per row of cane
he cut.
Speaker 5 (29:40):
It was an insanely complicated system to figure out from scratch.
There are hundreds and hundreds of cane fields and they
need to be priced every day.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
This pricing chart was produced by the sugar companies for
each field they planted. The chart lays out the estimated
number of tons in every single field to sugar, as
well as how many rows are in a given field.
And according to ed, this is how they calculate the
total price to be paid per row.
Speaker 5 (30:09):
It was all pre calculated. I mean, it's just a
mathematical conversion.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
For example, if one field is estimated to hold forty
tons of sugar planted in let's say eight rows, this
will give you five tons of cut sugar per row.
Multiplying this number by the amount budgeted for the harvest
gives the farmer the price they want to pay per row.
Speaker 5 (30:32):
And to make it even easier, at the very top,
it said, you know, three twenty five per ton.
Speaker 4 (30:39):
Was that a little like a smoking gun.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Uh yeah, a smoking gun. Because remember from the contract.
Speaker 5 (30:48):
If one ton an hour is good enough, and earning
five thirty an hour is good enough, but anything less
than five point thirty gets you fired. Then they have
to pay at least five thirty a ton.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
That three dollars and twenty five cents per ton at
the top of the sheet. That was not the five
dollars thirty cents per ton that Edward understood the workers
would be legally paid.
Speaker 5 (31:11):
It was clear they were not paying anything close to
five thirty a ton. Then it became obvious they were
pricing the cane so that to earn five thirty an
hour you had to cut over a ton and a
half per hour, and people just couldn't do it. People
clearly were not cutting fast enough. They just couldn't physically
(31:35):
could not. I don't care whether you're an Olympic champion,
you cannot cut cane that fast.
Speaker 6 (31:43):
And that is why thousands of these workers wound up
off and getting paid three dollars an hour.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
But if a worker was only cutting enough cane to
earn three dollars an hour, well that's not going to work.
That's below minimum wage, which yes, also applies to h
two visa workers. The company would have to make up
the difference, or it turned out there was another option.
Speaker 5 (32:10):
To disguise the fact that they were pushing people too fast.
They then had to match the hours to put down
fewer hours than people work, to make it look like
they were cutting more per hour than they actually were.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
A worker may have been in the fields for eight
hours but earning only four dollars an hour. A timekeeper thinks, hmmm,
let's erase that. Let's say it was actually six hours,
and like magic, the tickets sale worker is now earning
five dollars thirty cents an hour.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
You were supposed to make five dollars hour, You made
five dollars an hour. Everything looks good to the government,
looks good to the inspectors, and knowing the workers were
unlikely to complain, the companies realized tens of millions of
dollars every year by doing it exactly that way.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
One of the reasons this went on for so long
was because the workers knew if they spoke out about
the hours shorting, or anything else for that matter, they
could be sent home. And to appreciate what a threat
that was, I need to tell you one more detail
about H two visas. There's strong evidence there was often
also a background check for the cutters. If you'd cut
(33:17):
cane before and complained about the pay or tried to unionize,
you're blacklisted and you'll never be allowed back. Think back
on the Dog War when police with dogs rounded up
and arrested workers striking over their wages, and the sugar
company got them deported. Remember Selvin watched all this unfold.
(33:37):
He didn't realize that's what was going on until later,
that these men were being sent back home without warning
or choice.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
I didn't know it was so serious until I heard.
But everything was done. But the police was there just
to calm them down, and they go back to her
the next day. But I didn't get to come back.
They send them home. They's sending them back to Jamaica.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
We've tracked down photos of one of the men who
was arrested through a Freedom of information request. He's barefoot,
his thumb bandaged, and a patch on his inner arm.
He's wearing a red tank top that's ripped on one shoulder,
held together by a thread. Some people lawyers trying to
help the men, say they saw the men boarding the
planes in their underwear. They hadn't had time to gather
(34:28):
their possessions.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
All their belongings and everything. They left the ears. Maybe
they get their money in their locker room and they
left it.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
It made Selvin really nervous the idea that he could
be sent.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
Home like that, and that was a scare, very scare. Part.
That's the reason why I never want anything like that
happened to me.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
That's a system that is prone to exploitation of workers
because the workers are totally at the mercy of the employer.
And if the choice is I can accept the job
in the US, and I'm being cheated in that job,
but it certainly is better than what I have at
home in Jamaica, I'm inclined to just be quiet and
accept those conditions and continue working in that job.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
Victor's take is that the men were more or less disposable.
Speaker 7 (35:19):
Yeah, so many men is a tear. And then tell
your plan if you don't want to quote it when
I go home, your brother are coming.
Speaker 4 (35:30):
I mean, I know that supposedly they had a liaison
officer for you who was supposed to help you sort
out problems. Did you feel like you had resources people
that you could go to if there were problems with
your your pay or your treatment.
Speaker 7 (35:43):
Listen to me. Listen to me tell you the truth.
The listen Apsadam Them is no good. Them is no
no good.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
We asked the sugarcane companies and their trade group to
respond to the claims that they underpaid their workers, the blacklisting,
and much more about the working and living conditions on
the farms in the eighties and nineties. No one replied.
We also spoke to the Palm Beach County Sheriff's office
because they were involved in the dog War. When asked
about it, a representative told us, quote, this is over
(36:16):
thirty five years ago in which there was a different agency, command, structure, employees, etc.
End quote. They didn't have anything further to say. Victor
and his coworkers felt trapped by the system and ignored
by the people supposed to represent them inside the sugar farms.
They knew there were issues with their pay, but didn't
(36:37):
know what they could or should do about it, And
at this point they had no idea there was a
group of people outside the sugar farms who were eager
to represent them, and how did these lawyers plan to
represent them? By suing the major sugar companies. Edward wanted
to launch a class action on behalf of a whopping
(36:59):
twenty thousand sugarcane cutters in America who they believed had
been seriously underpaid. As is so often the case with
the law, though it's not the headline grabbing stories which
win cases. It's all in the details, or, as Edward
had discovered, it's all in the contract.
Speaker 5 (37:19):
Contract law was just the most straightforward. There are no defenses.
If this is what you promised, this is what you
have to pay. It seemed so easy at the time.
It seems so straightforward. I have never done a case
that was more clearcut.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
But you can't win a legal battle based on contract
law without a contract lawyer.
Speaker 5 (37:43):
So they approached this local Florida attorney named Dave Gorman.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
Who specializes in business contracts.
Speaker 5 (37:52):
He's a very nice guy, very smart, very smart. It's
very different from most of my friends. He drove a Harley,
an enormous Harley. He was a biker, long and short
of it.
Speaker 6 (38:06):
Oh, Dave was he I met him. He drove into Belglade,
I believe, on his Harley and he was wearing his
leather jacket.
Speaker 5 (38:15):
He lifted weights and here was a biker. That's all
I consent.
Speaker 8 (38:25):
Well, I mean I do have a motorcycle. I haven't
ridden it much lately because of hip and back issues.
But that doesn't mean you're I'm a goon.
Speaker 4 (38:36):
I don't think what kind of motorcycle is it?
Speaker 8 (38:38):
So Harley Davison, I got a nineteen eighty eight low Rider.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
When you ask people about Dave Gorman, they usually tell
you he's a biker, and they also tell you.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
Dave enlisted in the Vietnam War.
Speaker 5 (38:51):
He had been a Vietnamese interpreter.
Speaker 6 (38:55):
He was a firebrand who had been in the Vietnam War.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
This came after a bit of boyish delinquency. Adding to
the bad boy persona, Dave had dabbled in some frat
boy behavior while at Duke University.
Speaker 8 (39:07):
I got in a little bit of trouble with the
school after a fraternity party. The police, Durham County Sheriff
picked me up. I mean, they didn't charge me with anything.
I was drunk as a lord, but they did turn
me into the school. So the school charged me with
drunkenness and conduct. On becoming a Duke gentleman, it's kind
of hard to argue.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
By his own admission, Dave was lacking direction.
Speaker 8 (39:34):
I was going nowhere fast, so I wound up en
listening for It was a four year enlistment.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
He avoided being shot at in the war because he
was so smart. He could learn Vietnamese. I think he
became a translator.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
After the war, Dave became a lawyer, moved to Florida,
and figured maybe working in the law he wouldn't have
to take orders anymore.
Speaker 8 (39:54):
I was never particularly good at taking orders in the.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Army, so career began. He didn't plaster his own face
on billboards or put ads on TV. He just waited
for cases to come to him.
Speaker 8 (40:09):
My practice from the very nearly the very beginning, I
have never and would never advertise.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
And a life altering case was just around the corner.
So this intelligence officer turned lawyer, Dave Gorman, is sitting in.
Speaker 8 (40:28):
His office, same office I'm in now.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
And here comes. Although it doesn't seem special at the time,
the second fateful phone call in this story.
Speaker 8 (40:38):
That to me doesn't stand out as anything particularly strange
or unusual.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Dave didn't know it would be momentous. He gets calls
like this all the time from other lawyers working on
big cases who want his help, and Dave likes to
take on what he calls twilight zone cases, those that
are odd or fall outside the norm. On the other
end of the line is Edward Tuttenham.
Speaker 5 (41:02):
I remember I was sick that day. I was living
in Austin, Texas.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
Edward is actually lying in bed and he tells Dave
about the case he's about to embark on that he
wants to sue the sugar industry on behalf of the workers,
and he needs a contract lawyer.
Speaker 5 (41:16):
And I recognized immediately that he was smart and he
knew what he was doing. And I think conversely, he
recognized that I knew what I was doing too. I
knew what this contract said, and I knew it should
be a complete winner.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
So would Dave help out mounting this case?
Speaker 8 (41:38):
And I said, okay, well that's that's yeah, that's fine.
I don't mind doing that.
Speaker 5 (41:43):
Sounds interesting.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
And remember if they were right, then these workers were
owed tens of millions of dollars in extra wages.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
And the lawyers stood to pocket a couple of million
dollars themselves.
Speaker 5 (41:55):
And so no, it didn't take any convincing at all.
I think we talked for thirty men and he said,
I'm on, that sounds like a great case. How can
we lose?
Speaker 1 (42:08):
So Edward hops on the back of Dave's Harley and
they ride off into the sunset on their righteous Highway
towards destination justice. This could be the biggest case of
their careers, and it seems unlosable.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
It all looked like smooth sailing, but.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
That wouldn't make for much of a story, would it.
This case was anything but smooth. Next time on Big Sugar,
did they know what they were getting into?
Speaker 6 (42:33):
No work?
Speaker 5 (42:36):
Now.
Speaker 6 (42:38):
The case went through so many twists and turns the last.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
I don't think anybody anticipated what was going to happen.
Speaker 8 (42:45):
And it changed very, very quickly.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
Big Sugar is produced by Imagine Audio, Weekday Fund Productions
and Novel for iHeartMedia. The series is hosted by me
Celeste Hedley. Big Sugar is produced by Jeff Eisenman at
Weekday Fund Productions. It's executive produced by Kara Welker, Nathan Kloke,
and Marie Brenner. Story editor and executive producer is Joe Wheeler.
(43:15):
The researcher is Nadia Metti. Production management from Scherie Houston,
Frankie Taylor, and Charlotte Wolfe. Our fact checker is Sona Avakian.
Field reporting by Amber Amortgie, Sound design and mixing by
Eli Block, Naomi Clark and Daniel Kempsen. Original music composed
by Troy McCubbin at Alloy Tracks. Additional music by Nicholas Alexander.
(43:40):
Special thanks to Alec Wilkinson, author of the book Big Sugar,
and Stephanie Black, director of the documentary H two Worker.
Big Sugar is based on the Vanity Fair article in
the Kingdom of Big Sugar by Marie Brenner
Each day, when a cutter is brought to a field,
they're told in number, it's the amount they'll earn for
cutting a row of sugarcane. Remember, sugarcane is planted in rows.
Some days it's one hundred dollars per row, some days
it's one hundred and fifty dollars, some days it's eighty dollars.
And a single row can take days to cut. But
I want to zero in on one day and one field.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
In this particular field, the workers, after cutting for a
couple hours, figured out, we're not going to make any
money because the price is too low. That the price
you're paying, we'll be lucky to make ten dollars today,
and so they stopped working.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
It's nineteen eighty six, and there are grumblings. It's the
start of an infamous event in the annals of the
Florida sugarcane industry. It started when a group of workers declared,
we're not cutting cane at these prices. It's just not
enough money.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
And so a number of the workers said, well, we're
we're just not going to cut today and we're going
to walk back to the camp. And it was not
like it was on back roads that nobody saw there
were all of a sudden, these hundreds of men walking
down the highway. Then it certainly got people's attention.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
The farm these guys we're working for is one of
the biggest of all the sugarcane farms in Florida. It's
called Okolanta. It's owned by the most famous sugar barons
in America, the vun Hul Brothers. So after that long
walk back to the barracks, there's an eerily quiet night.
It's not until the morning that a representative from the
(01:35):
sugar company arrives. Rather than send the workers out on
their usual bus to the field, the company wants to negotiate.
They offer to pay a bit more, but the workers
won't budge.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Ultimately, the company just said we've had it, We're done
with these guys.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
And that's when things really started to go bad. Minutes
after the negotiation leaves, police cars begin to surround the building,
accompanied by Okalanta buses and a helicopter.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
The company called the local sheriff's department, who sent out
a riot squad, and the riot squad was directed to
round up the supposed instigators, and they figured some might
be hiding in the.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Bearers inside the massive building is Jamaican sugarcane cutter Selven Grant.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
It was a strike, but I was not involved. But
I was right there.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
He isn't part of the strike. Actually, he's cut his
finger and is recuperating when all of a sudden, uniformed
officers barge.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
In and one of the police was advancing to me,
and I tell him, man, I'm not in fine. My
finger cut, I'm sick. I just come from the doctor,
and I was showing them my band aid on my finger,
saying that I'm not in tho strike.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
But from Selvin's perspective, the shotgun armed police seemed to
be rounding up everyone, so.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
It seemed like fully was not listening to me. He
was advancing to me, like you want to grab me.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Selvin isn't alone. There are loads of guys caught up
in the chaos.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Certain workers had actually gone to the barracks, not because
they were hiding from the police, but they figured something
is going on that sounds very bad, and we think
the safest thing we can do is to sit on
our bunk with our arms folded across our chest and
nothing bad can happen to us. We won't be accused
of striking. We'll just just be quiet and be obedient.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
My sense tell me that get away from this crowd.
Get away, get away, And that's what I did.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Selvin runs up some stairs and watches from a window
on a higher floor.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
And I go upstairs and was watching what going on,
and then all of a sudden, I see the police
coming a dog.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
The riot squad came into the barracks and they brought
with them their police dogs, and the police dogs a cat.
Some of these workers who were sitting on their bunks,
and several of them suffered some serious dog BikeE wounds.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Most of the guys just careded a dog, so they
just didn't really run. I just say, police said, well,
you got to come with me, because you guys seemed
like the trobeltmaker. Very scary, very scar scare.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
The remaining workers who were viewed as instigators or strikers
were placed on buses and sent to the Miami Airport
to eventually be repatriated.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
More than three hundred workers were rounded up by the
police at gunpoint and sent back home back to the Caribbean.
This day, this event was given a name.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Not only the workers involved, but everyone there that day
refers to the event as the Dog War.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
The Dog War a day when tensions exploded to something
that felt to many like armed combat. But how did
things get this desperate, strained, violent? Even this really starts
to get to the heart of what this whole series
is about, not only the truth about what was happening
in those fields, in those barracks, and how these men
were being paid, but also the truth about what had
(05:19):
been going on for decades, really in an impenetrable industry
that was carefully and quietly managing its operations, its image,
and its money in secrecy. But slowly people were beginning
to take notice. I'm Celeste Hedley and from iHeartMedia, Imagine
Audio and the teams at Weekday Fun and Novel. This
(05:40):
is Big Sugar, Episode two. The Grass is Always Greener.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
Please go ahead introduce yourself. We are meeting at a
cocktail party. Tell me who you are and what you do.
Speaker 5 (06:05):
I'm Edward Tuttenham and I'm an attorney.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Edward Tuttenham has spent his career challenging some of the
working practices of big agriculture. And when that's your job,
well you're bound to make a few enemies.
Speaker 5 (06:18):
I remember one farmer, Sue called me up and I
picked up the phone and he just said, listen, I'm
about to leave town and I want to kill you.
I want you to drive down to my ranch right
now so I can shoot you. I said, well, I'm
tied up. Actually make it now, but if you'll call
me back when you're back in town, we can talk
(06:39):
about it.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Farmers were angry, angry enough to threaten Edward's life, albeit
not angry enough to make the short ride to commit
the crime. But this, it turns out, was par for
the course when you're a lawyer sticking up from migrant
farm workers.
Speaker 5 (06:53):
The windows of our office were routinely broken out, people
driving by at night throwing rocks of them.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
How did Edward wind up in this situation? After graduating
from Harvard in nineteen seventy eight, he went to work
for Texas Rural Legal Aid. It's an organization that gives
free legal help to farm workers, helping them with their
pay and conditions.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
Had you been to Texas before that?
Speaker 5 (07:18):
Uh? No, No, I had not.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Despite having little to no knowledge of Texas, Edward buttoned
up his Brooks brother's shirt and got straight to work.
Speaker 5 (07:30):
They picked me up at the airport and immediately we
drove to a picket line.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
He represented onion harvesters, cotton pickers, and then began what
he calls the Texas Melon experience, standing up from Mexican
candlop pickers in the Presidio Valley.
Speaker 5 (07:46):
And that was exactly what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
If this was a Rocky style training montage, Edward would
be right there on the picket line, drafting briefs and
cross examining witnesses. Instead of hooking Russian boxers, he'd be
ko in exploitative farmers. The young ambitious lawyer even deposed
a local sheriff whose claim to fame was that he
conducted the last public hanging in Texas. The ranchers gave
(08:10):
Edward a nickname, the Harvard Idiot. And is it true
that a deputy wrote a song.
Speaker 5 (08:19):
It wasn't the deputy, it was the county sheriff. The
name of the song was get out of Herford Trla,
which was Texas where illegal aid.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
All this is to say that almost nothing would deter
this Harvard Idiot. Not threatening phone calls, not even hostile
ballads composed by local law enforcement he was going to
defend farm workers no matter what.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
I'm very similar to Edward Tutnham.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
This is Greg Shell, managing attorney at Southern Migrant Legal Services,
another group that helps migrant farm workers, and Greg was
one year behind Edward Tuttenham at Harvard Law School.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
One thing going to a high pressure, high prestige law
school like Harvard is that it instills in you, if
nothing else, an extreme sense of self confidence. Some people
would say arrogance and you think that you can change
the world and that you can do things. You can
prevail over daunting odds because you can outsmart the other
(09:24):
side and the challenge is something you relish.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
And Edward was outsmarting the other side, winning many of
his cases.
Speaker 5 (09:32):
So picture it.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Edward's writing high on a string of successes, holding powerful
farmers to account. Pay your workers properly, treat them properly.
Side note, some of the farm workers did end up
getting fired after the lawsuits. Farmers would find other ways
of harvesting that were cheaper than paying proper wages. But hey,
there's always going to be collateral damage in the pure
(09:56):
pursuit of justice. Right in the mid nineteen eighties, Edward
wound up working in Washington, d c. And in search
of his next big fish to fry, although this time
the big fish was sweet sugar. There were many things
Edward found himself fighting in the courts, like terrible working
(10:16):
conditions and injuries, But when it came to the sugar
cane cutters, there was one thing which kept coming up
again and again. Wages.
Speaker 5 (10:26):
They didn't understand how they were being cheated. They just
knew that they were being cheated in some way.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Some sugar cane cutters reported they were somehow earning just
a few dollars an hour, well below the minimum wage
at the time. And this is also what journalist Marie
Brenner heard when she was looking into the story in
the nineteen nineties. She was working on an article for
Vanity Fair, an article which eventually became the inspiration for
this podcast. So in full investigative mode, one day, she's
(10:56):
in lawyer Gregshal's office and she comes across a letter
that one cutter had written home.
Speaker 6 (11:01):
Here's a one letter we can read from the article.
Dear Fatty, how keeping, I hope all of you are well.
I write you and send you twenty six dollars. I
don't know. If you get it, you wouldn't know what
I'm going through. We get a cane row for thirty dollars.
It takes two days to cut it. That works out
(11:21):
to be some one dollar and some cents an hour.
I spoke to the timekeeper and he's ready to eat
me up. He says, we just have to work fast enough,
and then we'll make even more than the hourly wages
they promised us. Imagine to leave Jamaica so many hundreds
of miles to come to America and work for one
(11:42):
dollar and some cents an hour. I looked up from
that letter and I said to Gregschell, how is this
even possible legally?
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Okay? So to answer that, let's get into the nuts
and bolts of what happens when sugar cane is being cultivated.
Imagine a massive field.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Sugar cane is planted in rows, rows.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
And rows of these long, thick stalks of sugarcane. Some
are thirteen feet high and two inches around.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
It's a grass, so it grows just like when you
cut the grass in your yard. It grows up back
year after year.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
And at the time we're talking about in the eighties
and nineties, virtually all the sugar cane in America was
cut by hand. Using a machine to cut the cane
is certainly safer and more efficient, but some growers prefer
manual labor because machines can accidentally pull out the roots
of sugarcane, meaning it won't regrow the following year. So
(12:43):
the workers turn up in the morning to a field
and they're told how much each row is worth.
Speaker 5 (12:49):
Every day in every field the rose would be priced differently.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Cut this row today and you'll get fifty dollars. The
next day it would be cut this row and you'll
get eighty dollar. It was a moving target, so there.
Speaker 5 (13:02):
Was nothing fixed that you could put your finger on.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
The cutters then get to work chopping as quickly as
they can, bent over all day, slashing the bottom of
the cane with a machete.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Sugar cane is very hard to.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Cut, and these workers cut tons of it on some
of these farms in Florida, like eight tons a day.
To put that in perspective, that's heavier than the combined
weight of five Toyota priases.
Speaker 5 (13:31):
Which is astronomical.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Then the sticks are sent to a sugar mill to
be turned into syrup and finally crystals, which are packaged
in the iconic bags found in nearly every supermarket and
convenience store in America. These days, we eat on average
six cups of sugar a week, and believe me, it's
in almost everything. A couple years ago, I went sugar
(13:54):
free for six months, and I was shocked to find
that my bread had sugar in it, and my pizza sauce,
and my peanut butter, and my dried fruit and my
salad dressing. It was almost impossible to avoid it. So anyway,
back to the sugar farms and to the cutters. At
the end of the day, exhausted, they looked down at
(14:16):
their pays stumps. They think about how many hours they
worked and how much it says they're going to be paid.
It seems to be a lot less than what they
expected to earn.
Speaker 5 (14:26):
I started looking into it, and at first we did
not realize exactly what was going on.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
There was this problem workers were getting under pay that
was well known to a whole large group of advocates.
Speaker 5 (14:40):
But we didn't really understand why.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
It was all a bit mysterious. But then Edward Tuttenham
had an idea. By this point, he was an expert
in H two litigation, which made him fairly specialized. H
two A visas are used by farmers to bring in
workers from overseas for ary agricultural work. So in the
case of sugar, it had historically been used for cutters
from the West Indies, mainly Jamaica but also Barbados. Saint
(15:08):
Lucia sent Kitts and others. Since the sugar companies claimed
almost no Americans would do the job. Edwards starts scouring
something called a clearance order. It's what an agent sends
the Department of Labor on behalf of the farmers, setting
out what a job would be. It's like a contract.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
He looked at this very complicated contract that the Jamaican
workers were employed under.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
And there were three terms that he obsessed over. It's complicated,
so bear with me.
Speaker 5 (15:37):
One, if you cut eight tons in an eight hour day,
you will be a satisfactory worker.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
That's one ton per hour.
Speaker 5 (15:45):
Two earning five dollars and thirty cents an hour is satisfactory.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Five dollars and thirty cents is the minimum wage.
Speaker 5 (15:55):
Three but anything less and you'll be fired. And I
must have read those three sentences over and over and
over again for months. Eight tons five thirty per hour
is required. Worker would be expected to cut eight tons
(16:15):
of pain in an eight hour day.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
He took the time to parse this very thick and
confusing document.
Speaker 5 (16:23):
You will be expected to cut fast enough to earn
five thirty.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
An hour, and he read it carefully.
Speaker 5 (16:30):
To pay five thirty a ton. A ton an hour
is good enough and earning five thirty an hour, if
you cut a ton an hour, you're a satisfactory worker.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
These three terms swirled around in.
Speaker 5 (16:42):
Edward's head until finally, in conversation with Greg, suddenly the
light bulb went on.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
He's got it.
Speaker 5 (16:51):
When you have those three statements, the logical answer is
then they have to pay at least five thirty per ton. Again,
if one ton an hour is good enough and earning
five thirty an hour is good enough, but anything less
than five point thirty gets you fired, then they have
(17:13):
to pay at least five thirty a ton.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Edward had figured out one piece of the puzzle. He
hypothesized that according to this clearance order, the workers should
be paid at least five dollars and thirty cents for
every ton of cane they cut. That would be in
line with the contract and minimum wage, and it would
be in line with the expectation that the workers have
been told they're expected to cut at least a ton
an hour or they'll be fired. But Edward suspected that
(17:39):
the workers were being paid a lot less than five
dollars thirty cents a ton.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
The problem was, how do you prove that this is occurring.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
How do you prove they were paying them less than
five dollars thirty cents per ton. It's not like there
were scales in the fields. The workers were just told
a price for the row and got cutting. But there
was potentially a lot at stake. And when I say
a lot, I mean tens of millions of dollars.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
If you could prove in some easy way not only
that the workers were not being paid properly, but the
amount they were owed, that would be a huge amount
of money.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Then out of the blue, another piece falls into the puzzle.
Edward sitting in his office in Washington, d c. Surrounded
by boxes of paper pouring over the dense H two contract.
He's been at this for months. All these phrases and
clauses and legal parlance are echoing around in his brain.
(18:37):
He's thinking, in lawyer terms, how do I prove what's
going on here?
Speaker 5 (18:41):
And then I'm in my office and the phone rings.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
The secretary says to Edward.
Speaker 5 (18:49):
It's Ed Fountain and he needs to talk to you.
I didn't know who Ed Fountain was, and I took
the call and he said he was a former sugar supervisor.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
US Sugar is one of the biggest sugarcane producers in
the country.
Speaker 5 (19:05):
So I got this call. Okay, you're a supervisor for
US Sugar. What about it? And he said, well, you know,
I've just been fired and I have some information that
I think you would find useful. I said, really, what
kind of information? And he says, well, I'm the guy
who prices the roads. I know how they do it.
(19:29):
And that birked up my ears pretty quickly. Yeah, and
I said, great, where are.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
You put Ed Fountain on hold? What exactly he told
Edward In just a minute more after the break, let's
get back for a moment to who the story is
(19:58):
really about the sugarcane. I wonder if you would if
we could start, if you don't mind by telling me
a little bit about Jamaica. What is Jamaica like?
Speaker 7 (20:08):
Where tell your boy Jamaica. Jamaica is very nice, very sonny.
You have a lots of nice places where you can
go hang out, I enjoy yourself.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Two of the Jamaican sugar cane cutters who found themselves
caught up in the story are Victor Blackwood and Selven Grant,
and from the way they talk about their motherland, it's
clear they love the island in particular. They can wax
lyrical about the food.
Speaker 7 (20:37):
Dirt, chicken, fish, rice and chicken, and if you eat
aquian salfish and banana.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
Fish, fish is my favorite meal fish snapper fish. A
matter of fact, fish is the best meal in the
whole water. Very delicious.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Despite the delicious snapperfish, growing up in downtown Kingston also
came with its challenges For Selven, I'll.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
Go in ghetto so guys my age, they die and
is the reason why they died in gangs. Some of
them get shot by guns telling it and get stuck
by knife. They're not anywhere is to go live, So
I got to live in that same neighborhood. I gotta
be keep looking over my shoulder morning, noon and night.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
For some people in Jamaica, including Selvin, the h two
worker visa was a way to get out of the cycle,
to come to the US and earn money and change
their lives.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Being able to come to the United States is a
very prized right in Jamaica. One way you can tell
who has been working in the United States is very
obvious when you travel rural Jamaica. As you ride through
rural Jamaica, you will observe it's like the Little Children's
story the Three Little Pigs. You'll see most homes are
(21:56):
made out of sticks, out of straw, but you'll see
the homes made out of cinder blocks. In almost every instance,
the homemade out of cinder blocks is a home that
is being built via a worker who has come to
the United States on the Age two program.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Selvin's life in Jamaica could have gone very differently. At
one point, some guys asked him to join a gang,
but he refused. He wanted to be like his dad,
the kind of guy who worked from before sunrise to
after sunset on his own farm.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
It was a hard worker. My dad was a very
very hard worker. I don't see no man in the
world could work like my dad.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Speaking of dads, Victor's father was actually part of the
farm worker program too. Cutting Caine, he'd come home from
working abroad and he'd bring Victor new Wrangler Janes and
cautionary tales about the difficulties of the job.
Speaker 7 (22:48):
So when he comes back and we are talking, he says, son,
it is very off. It is very off. I said, well, Dad,
I would like to go a dear go experience it
for myself day to come. But he said to me,
it is very off.
Speaker 4 (23:04):
So what part about it made you want to go?
Why did you want to follow in your dad's footsteps
and also travel the Cutcaine.
Speaker 7 (23:13):
Tell you the answers to what I would like to
have the experience, And at that time I have two kids,
So my goal is to go the antwork and come
up with a come work and buy Pisa, and to
make a house and to help take care of my kids.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Selvin had similar aspirations.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
To better my life and not just me and my
family too, build my house and send my kids to
a better school.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Selven credits divine intervention for getting his shot at the
Age two program. He says God put him in the
right place at the right time. He simply overheard people
talking about a local government official who was giving out
farm worker cards. These are like passes that would allow
you to go for an interview for the program.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
Just like that, Just like that, that's my first opportunity there.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Selvin went to the official and asked for a card.
He did his homework, asked people about the interview, the tests,
and even took the day off work before.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
His physical I do not want to fail.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Both Selvin and Victor had heard it was a rigorous process.
When Victor turned up for the selection day.
Speaker 7 (24:31):
So they called me name, and I go up to
a man, a big, trapping white man by the name
of Miranda, and he said yes Victor Blackwood. I said yes,
you eat pork. I say yes, sir.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
They supposedly didn't want any pork abstaining Rastafarians on the program.
Speaker 7 (24:48):
He said, you were seven days a week. I said yes.
You say you eat rice? I said yes, sir.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Then they ask can you cut sugarcane? Selvin says yeah,
I've worked with my dad and cut fourteen tons a day.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
He said, what because a lot? I say, I'm very
strong and I'm a hard worker, you know, and not
another word. You just say you passed.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
You go over there next the infamous hand test.
Speaker 7 (25:15):
So let me see your hand, and I turn over
my hand, and I show you my name, feel my hand.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
The last of the workers to turn over their hands
to see if they have houses on them. Is this
a person who's been doing manual labor or is this
a person who's been working in an office building?
Speaker 4 (25:31):
What was he looking for when he was touching your hands?
Speaker 7 (25:34):
You want to know if my hand took are itself?
If your hand south, they're not gonna take it. Say
you never used the word for your handself.
Speaker 6 (25:44):
This was like out of slave trade. You know, they're
looking at their hands to make sure their hands are
big enough to be able to hold these sites in
the fields. You hear about these scenes and you could
be back in the nineteenth century with the slave trade.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
And there's more. Selvin and Victor have to go to
a testing center in Hanover Street, Kingston, and I.
Speaker 7 (26:08):
Go inside a room. Is a big room, big place,
about three hundred men, and we've got inside a room.
You take off your clothes and then you leave into
your your underwear.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
A doctor arrives in this huge room where the men
are waiting in their underwear.
Speaker 7 (26:27):
And then he said, you said drop your jazz and
then he said, you most bent over, honey, combat and
look if you have pie.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Hundreds of naked men bent over the doctor looking to
see if the men have hemorrhoids. The men were treated
as though they were livestock, a brutal and dehumanizing process.
Then once clothed.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
Then I gotta go take a blood test. My blood
was was good. I gotta take a youine test by you,
and that was good. I gotta take like Chesick's tray.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
The hand test, the physical, the blood test, the X ray.
Selvin and Victor got through it all.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
I passed. I pass everything I do.
Speaker 5 (27:13):
I pas all this.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Imagine the physical condition you need to be in just
to cut sugarcane not something you want to think about
when you're adding a teaspoon of sweetness to your morning coffee.
So most men are ushered to the reject exit, but
Victor and Selvin are directed towards another door. They're going
to America.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
I was so confident that I'm going to America. Yeah,
I was so confident.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
One last thing before they move on to their bright
future in the US, they just need to add their
signature to a stack of documents.
Speaker 7 (27:55):
You're saying, right, contract.
Speaker 4 (27:59):
Did you read the contract before you signed it?
Speaker 7 (28:02):
Not exactly. Bucadia find print and there were so many
papers you couldn't really have got if you if you
got to doors papers, it would take it award day.
Speaker 4 (28:13):
Did you notice anyone trying to stop and read them
before they signed?
Speaker 7 (28:17):
No?
Speaker 3 (28:18):
No, no, no, no.
Speaker 7 (28:19):
Everybody was so happy to gos that they didn't really
stop us and read the papers. Then do you understand
I do.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
More after the break? So we're back to the contract.
That contract they signed, Well, it's the same document, Lawyer
Edward Tuttenham would go on to obsess over for months
(28:51):
before that fateful call from the former US sugar supervisor
Ed Fountain. Ed has evidence, he says, of how this
complicated and frankly confusing system of row pricing works, of
how much money the sugar cane cutters are really being paid.
So Edward says.
Speaker 5 (29:08):
To him, Okay, mister Fountain, when can I meet you anytime? Anytime?
Just come you know, next time you're in Ashville. I said, well,
I'm coming to Ashville just as soon as I can
get a plane ticket. I flew to Ashville and met
mister Fountain in a diner and then the thing that
(29:28):
he gave is that sort of broke the case open.
Was a pricing sheet.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
This was how the company supposedly determined how much the
cutter was going to be paid per row of cane
he cut.
Speaker 5 (29:40):
It was an insanely complicated system to figure out from scratch.
There are hundreds and hundreds of cane fields and they
need to be priced every day.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
This pricing chart was produced by the sugar companies for
each field they planted. The chart lays out the estimated
number of tons in every single field to sugar, as
well as how many rows are in a given field.
And according to ed, this is how they calculate the
total price to be paid per row.
Speaker 5 (30:09):
It was all pre calculated. I mean, it's just a
mathematical conversion.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
For example, if one field is estimated to hold forty
tons of sugar planted in let's say eight rows, this
will give you five tons of cut sugar per row.
Multiplying this number by the amount budgeted for the harvest
gives the farmer the price they want to pay per row.
Speaker 5 (30:32):
And to make it even easier, at the very top,
it said, you know, three twenty five per ton.
Speaker 4 (30:39):
Was that a little like a smoking gun.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Uh yeah, a smoking gun. Because remember from the contract.
Speaker 5 (30:48):
If one ton an hour is good enough, and earning
five thirty an hour is good enough, but anything less
than five point thirty gets you fired. Then they have
to pay at least five thirty a ton.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
That three dollars and twenty five cents per ton at
the top of the sheet. That was not the five
dollars thirty cents per ton that Edward understood the workers
would be legally paid.
Speaker 5 (31:11):
It was clear they were not paying anything close to
five thirty a ton. Then it became obvious they were
pricing the cane so that to earn five thirty an
hour you had to cut over a ton and a
half per hour, and people just couldn't do it. People
clearly were not cutting fast enough. They just couldn't physically
(31:35):
could not. I don't care whether you're an Olympic champion,
you cannot cut cane that fast.
Speaker 6 (31:43):
And that is why thousands of these workers wound up
off and getting paid three dollars an hour.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
But if a worker was only cutting enough cane to
earn three dollars an hour, well that's not going to work.
That's below minimum wage, which yes, also applies to h
two visa workers. The company would have to make up
the difference, or it turned out there was another option.
Speaker 5 (32:10):
To disguise the fact that they were pushing people too fast.
They then had to match the hours to put down
fewer hours than people work, to make it look like
they were cutting more per hour than they actually were.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
A worker may have been in the fields for eight
hours but earning only four dollars an hour. A timekeeper thinks, hmmm,
let's erase that. Let's say it was actually six hours,
and like magic, the tickets sale worker is now earning
five dollars thirty cents an hour.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
You were supposed to make five dollars hour, You made
five dollars an hour. Everything looks good to the government,
looks good to the inspectors, and knowing the workers were
unlikely to complain, the companies realized tens of millions of
dollars every year by doing it exactly that way.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
One of the reasons this went on for so long
was because the workers knew if they spoke out about
the hours shorting, or anything else for that matter, they
could be sent home. And to appreciate what a threat
that was, I need to tell you one more detail
about H two visas. There's strong evidence there was often
also a background check for the cutters. If you'd cut
(33:17):
cane before and complained about the pay or tried to unionize,
you're blacklisted and you'll never be allowed back. Think back
on the Dog War when police with dogs rounded up
and arrested workers striking over their wages, and the sugar
company got them deported. Remember Selvin watched all this unfold.
(33:37):
He didn't realize that's what was going on until later,
that these men were being sent back home without warning
or choice.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
I didn't know it was so serious until I heard.
But everything was done. But the police was there just
to calm them down, and they go back to her
the next day. But I didn't get to come back.
They send them home. They's sending them back to Jamaica.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
We've tracked down photos of one of the men who
was arrested through a Freedom of information request. He's barefoot,
his thumb bandaged, and a patch on his inner arm.
He's wearing a red tank top that's ripped on one shoulder,
held together by a thread. Some people lawyers trying to
help the men, say they saw the men boarding the
planes in their underwear. They hadn't had time to gather
(34:28):
their possessions.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
All their belongings and everything. They left the ears. Maybe
they get their money in their locker room and they
left it.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
It made Selvin really nervous the idea that he could
be sent.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
Home like that, and that was a scare, very scare. Part.
That's the reason why I never want anything like that
happened to me.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
That's a system that is prone to exploitation of workers
because the workers are totally at the mercy of the employer.
And if the choice is I can accept the job
in the US, and I'm being cheated in that job,
but it certainly is better than what I have at
home in Jamaica, I'm inclined to just be quiet and
accept those conditions and continue working in that job.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
Victor's take is that the men were more or less disposable.
Speaker 7 (35:19):
Yeah, so many men is a tear. And then tell
your plan if you don't want to quote it when
I go home, your brother are coming.
Speaker 4 (35:30):
I mean, I know that supposedly they had a liaison
officer for you who was supposed to help you sort
out problems. Did you feel like you had resources people
that you could go to if there were problems with
your your pay or your treatment.
Speaker 7 (35:43):
Listen to me. Listen to me tell you the truth.
The listen Apsadam Them is no good. Them is no
no good.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
We asked the sugarcane companies and their trade group to
respond to the claims that they underpaid their workers, the blacklisting,
and much more about the working and living conditions on
the farms in the eighties and nineties. No one replied.
We also spoke to the Palm Beach County Sheriff's office
because they were involved in the dog War. When asked
about it, a representative told us, quote, this is over
(36:16):
thirty five years ago in which there was a different agency, command, structure, employees, etc.
End quote. They didn't have anything further to say. Victor
and his coworkers felt trapped by the system and ignored
by the people supposed to represent them inside the sugar farms.
They knew there were issues with their pay, but didn't
(36:37):
know what they could or should do about it, And
at this point they had no idea there was a
group of people outside the sugar farms who were eager
to represent them, and how did these lawyers plan to
represent them? By suing the major sugar companies. Edward wanted
to launch a class action on behalf of a whopping
(36:59):
twenty thousand sugarcane cutters in America who they believed had
been seriously underpaid. As is so often the case with
the law, though it's not the headline grabbing stories which
win cases. It's all in the details, or, as Edward
had discovered, it's all in the contract.
Speaker 5 (37:19):
Contract law was just the most straightforward. There are no defenses.
If this is what you promised, this is what you
have to pay. It seemed so easy at the time.
It seems so straightforward. I have never done a case
that was more clearcut.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
But you can't win a legal battle based on contract
law without a contract lawyer.
Speaker 5 (37:43):
So they approached this local Florida attorney named Dave Gorman.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
Who specializes in business contracts.
Speaker 5 (37:52):
He's a very nice guy, very smart, very smart. It's
very different from most of my friends. He drove a Harley,
an enormous Harley. He was a biker, long and short
of it.
Speaker 6 (38:06):
Oh, Dave was he I met him. He drove into Belglade,
I believe, on his Harley and he was wearing his
leather jacket.
Speaker 5 (38:15):
He lifted weights and here was a biker. That's all
I consent.
Speaker 8 (38:25):
Well, I mean I do have a motorcycle. I haven't
ridden it much lately because of hip and back issues.
But that doesn't mean you're I'm a goon.
Speaker 4 (38:36):
I don't think what kind of motorcycle is it?
Speaker 8 (38:38):
So Harley Davison, I got a nineteen eighty eight low Rider.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
When you ask people about Dave Gorman, they usually tell
you he's a biker, and they also tell you.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
Dave enlisted in the Vietnam War.
Speaker 5 (38:51):
He had been a Vietnamese interpreter.
Speaker 6 (38:55):
He was a firebrand who had been in the Vietnam War.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
This came after a bit of boyish delinquency. Adding to
the bad boy persona, Dave had dabbled in some frat
boy behavior while at Duke University.
Speaker 8 (39:07):
I got in a little bit of trouble with the
school after a fraternity party. The police, Durham County Sheriff
picked me up. I mean, they didn't charge me with anything.
I was drunk as a lord, but they did turn
me into the school. So the school charged me with
drunkenness and conduct. On becoming a Duke gentleman, it's kind
of hard to argue.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
By his own admission, Dave was lacking direction.
Speaker 8 (39:34):
I was going nowhere fast, so I wound up en
listening for It was a four year enlistment.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
He avoided being shot at in the war because he
was so smart. He could learn Vietnamese. I think he
became a translator.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
After the war, Dave became a lawyer, moved to Florida,
and figured maybe working in the law he wouldn't have
to take orders anymore.
Speaker 8 (39:54):
I was never particularly good at taking orders in the.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Army, so career began. He didn't plaster his own face
on billboards or put ads on TV. He just waited
for cases to come to him.
Speaker 8 (40:09):
My practice from the very nearly the very beginning, I
have never and would never advertise.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
And a life altering case was just around the corner.
So this intelligence officer turned lawyer, Dave Gorman, is sitting in.
Speaker 8 (40:28):
His office, same office I'm in now.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
And here comes. Although it doesn't seem special at the time,
the second fateful phone call in this story.
Speaker 8 (40:38):
That to me doesn't stand out as anything particularly strange
or unusual.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Dave didn't know it would be momentous. He gets calls
like this all the time from other lawyers working on
big cases who want his help, and Dave likes to
take on what he calls twilight zone cases, those that
are odd or fall outside the norm. On the other
end of the line is Edward Tuttenham.
Speaker 5 (41:02):
I remember I was sick that day. I was living
in Austin, Texas.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
Edward is actually lying in bed and he tells Dave
about the case he's about to embark on that he
wants to sue the sugar industry on behalf of the workers,
and he needs a contract lawyer.
Speaker 5 (41:16):
And I recognized immediately that he was smart and he
knew what he was doing. And I think conversely, he
recognized that I knew what I was doing too. I
knew what this contract said, and I knew it should
be a complete winner.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
So would Dave help out mounting this case?
Speaker 8 (41:38):
And I said, okay, well that's that's yeah, that's fine.
I don't mind doing that.
Speaker 5 (41:43):
Sounds interesting.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
And remember if they were right, then these workers were
owed tens of millions of dollars in extra wages.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
And the lawyers stood to pocket a couple of million
dollars themselves.
Speaker 5 (41:55):
And so no, it didn't take any convincing at all.
I think we talked for thirty men and he said,
I'm on, that sounds like a great case. How can
we lose?
Speaker 1 (42:08):
So Edward hops on the back of Dave's Harley and
they ride off into the sunset on their righteous Highway
towards destination justice. This could be the biggest case of
their careers, and it seems unlosable.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
It all looked like smooth sailing, but.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
That wouldn't make for much of a story, would it.
This case was anything but smooth. Next time on Big Sugar,
did they know what they were getting into?
Speaker 6 (42:33):
No work?
Speaker 5 (42:36):
Now.
Speaker 6 (42:38):
The case went through so many twists and turns the last.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
I don't think anybody anticipated what was going to happen.
Speaker 8 (42:45):
And it changed very, very quickly.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
Big Sugar is produced by Imagine Audio, Weekday Fund Productions
and Novel for iHeartMedia. The series is hosted by me
Celeste Hedley. Big Sugar is produced by Jeff Eisenman at
Weekday Fund Productions. It's executive produced by Kara Welker, Nathan Kloke,
and Marie Brenner. Story editor and executive producer is Joe Wheeler.
(43:15):
The researcher is Nadia Metti. Production management from Scherie Houston,
Frankie Taylor, and Charlotte Wolfe. Our fact checker is Sona Avakian.
Field reporting by Amber Amortgie, Sound design and mixing by
Eli Block, Naomi Clark and Daniel Kempsen. Original music composed
by Troy McCubbin at Alloy Tracks. Additional music by Nicholas Alexander.
(43:40):
Special thanks to Alec Wilkinson, author of the book Big Sugar,
and Stephanie Black, director of the documentary H two Worker.
Big Sugar is based on the Vanity Fair article in
the Kingdom of Big Sugar by Marie Brenner
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