Jury Rejects Cane Cutters on Pay
By Bill Douthat, Staff Writer
From Palm Beach Post, May 9, 2003
Workers from the Caribbean who harvested sugar cane in the late 1980s
with strong arms and sharp machetes were not cheated out of wages, jurors
in a class action lawsuit decided Thursday.
The jury rejected the cane cutters' claims they were promised $5.30 for
each ton harvested but actually earned much less.
The verdict was a major victory for the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative
in Belle Glade, which stood to lose about $15 million if forced to pay back
wages based on the ton rate. The cooperative said workers understood the
guarantee was $5.30 an hour with pay based on how many feet of cane row
a worker chopped.
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David Ross |
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"I hope this puts the issue to rest," said
David
Ross, who represented
the cooperative of 55 independent growers. "They were paid exactly the way
they were told."
The cutters' attorney argued that a job offer posted by the U.S. Department
of Labor said each worker would be expected to cut 8 tons of cane in a eight-hour
day with a guaranteed pay of $5.30 an hour.
Thursday's verdict following a 12-day trial was the third loss against
a sugar cane company by Dave Gorman, whose office is in North Palm Beach.
He has one more grower in his targets, Osceola Farms, but he has said
a loss against the cooperative would end his 14-year crusade for the cane
cutters, who came by the hundreds each year from Jamaica. Cane cutters all
but disappeared from the sugar fields around Lake Okeechobee in the early
1990s as growers mechanized harvests.
"I'm not a really happy guy right now," said Gorman, who lost three lawsuits
in past years against other growers who used Caribbean workers.
Cooperative President George Wedgworth said Gorman's "strange interpretation"
of the pay system for the cutters should be retired.
"This is the third jury that has failed to see what Mr. Gorman's arguments
are," Wedgworth said. "When do you give up?"
Juror Kathy Nyhuis said she had to decide the question given to her rather
than the overall pay system.
"Based on what we had to work with, there was no other decision we could
make," Nyhuis said. "It was unanimous, but whether or not there is more
to it... I'm sure there was."
Article reposted with permission, as it appeared in the Palm Beach Post, May 9, 2003.
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