Jury: Sugar Growers Didn't Underpay Cutters; Contract Did Not Call for
Workers to Earn $5.30 per Ton of Cane Cut
By Peter Franceschina, Staff Writer
From Sun-Sentinel, May 9, 2003
A Palm Beach County jury determined Thursday that Sugar Cane Growers
Cooperative of Florida didn't underpay its cane cutters during a four-year
period, giving sugar cane growers their third wage-dispute victory.
After about two hours of deliberations during two days, the six jurors
found that the cooperative's contract with the cane cutters, most from Jamaica
and other Caribbean islands, didn't call for them to earn $5.30 cents for
every ton of cane they cut, as the cutters' attorneys had argued.
"We always believed we paid our workers everything they were contractually
due," said cooperative spokeswoman Barbara Miedema.
 |
|
David Ross |
|
"We're very happy the jury ruled in our favor," said Miami attorney
David Ross, who represented the
cooperative. "I think any six reasonable people would rule for us."
Juror Kathy Nyhuis of Lake Worth said the verdict reflected the evidence
the jury heard in the two-week trial and how that evidence fit the single
question it had to answer -- whether the cutters should have been paid $5.30
for every ton they cut.
"Based on what we had to work with, there was no other decision we could
make," she said.
North Palm Beach attorney David Gorman said he was crushed by the verdict,
the third loss he has suffered in jury trials involving cases against sugar-cane
growers.
"I'm not sure my feeling is printable," he said. "I'm not a real happy
guy right now."
Despite the jury's verdict, he said, he thinks the cane cutters were
cheated on their pay.
"I believe they were treated essentially as indentured servants," he
said.
Gorman, who represented a class of several thousand men who cut cane
in the fields of western Palm Beach County, argued that documents filed
with the Department of Labor show that the cane cutters were to be paid
$5.30 per ton and were expected to cut one ton per hour in an eight-hour
day. But in reality, he said, they were paid about $3.80 per ton.
Ross told jurors there was nothing in the contract the cutters signed
linking their pay to the tonnage they cut. Instead, the contract guaranteed
they would be paid a minimum of $5.30 per hour, he said, and that they were
paid based on the condition of the cane and field they were working in.
If the jurors had found against the cooperative, damages would have been
about $15 million, based on the wage difference per ton. The two sides reached
a settlement on the damages, but that became moot with the jury's verdict.
The case dates to 1989, when Caribbean workers filed a class-action suit
against five Florida sugar companies. A circuit judge sided with the workers
in 1992, ordering the companies to pay $51 million in back pay, a verdict
thought to be one of the state's largest in a wage dispute.
But the verdict was reversed in 1995, and the companies opted to handle
their cases individually. U.S. Sugar Corp., the state's largest cane producer,
paid the workers a $5.65 million settlement. Two companies owned by the
Fanjul family of Palm Beach won the lawsuits filed against them, and one
case against another Fanjul company still is pending.
Gorman said he didn't know whether he would pursue the final case.
Article reposted with permission, as it appeared in the Sun-Sentinel,
May 9, 2003.
|
