The Bitter Taste of Labor Violations

From the park closer to my house, I see the former sugar domino factory in Brooklyn, where the Florida and the Caribbean reed was exquisite for decades. Some of the reeds were grown there on plantations in Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Florida belonging to companies like Central Romana Corporation. The Domino Sugar logo lights up brighter than ever every night, but the plant is now a Delyux-livestock where Condo Penthouse Condo costs $ 7 million, and one-room apartment rents more than $ 6,200 per month. The building is a symbol of the transformation of the industrial zone into a chic residential area, the revival of the earlier working class Williamsburg as a heredified playground.

In 2022, the Biden administration had banned imports on products from the central corporation, based in the Dominican Republic, after propaganda for numerous non -governmental organizations in the US and the Dominican Republic. The 2023 report of the US Department of Labor allegedly used forced labor, the form of trafficking in human beings, on the central plantations of the novel. The report has recognized some improvements since 2022, but concluded that they were not enough to justify the ban. Ever since the ban was accepted for the first time, the company has spent millions on political donations and lobbying legislators to return access to US markets, including $ 1 million donation to a political action commission that supports Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and more than $ 400,000. These efforts finally paid off. The New York Times report On Wednesday, March 19, 2025, the Trump administration lifted the sanctions, banning imports from the central novel.

Employees working on sugar farms in the Dominican Republic, such as the Central Roman, is preferably from the origin of Haiti. Many lack regular legal or social status in the Dominican Republic, although many were born or worked there for sugar farms.

The lack of regular immigration status and documentation makes these workers vulnerable to trafficking in human beings. Most uneducated and many cannot even read their employment contracts. They are located in rudimentary and crowded shelters in isolated rural areas near the fields where they work, intimidated by armed guards who patrol the fields. They are paid pitten when they pay at all; Some of them are debt to the company despite the very long hours. Almost all polled in December 2023 in the Labor Department report that they would leave if they could. In their situation there are many typical features of trafficking in human beings, including the exploitation of lack of legal status, debt, isolation and threats.

Sugar production has long been connected with forced labor and trafficking in the US and other places. Sugar was made with slave work in the Caribbean and colonial states for use in the colonies and for export to the United Kingdom and in other places that feed the slave trade. Emancipation did not lead to the end of the abuse in sugar production; In 1942, a woman nicknamed Viola Crossed wrote the first Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, which described how her son was forced to work without paying at the forced sugar plantation camp in Florida: Florida: Florida:

I am a colored mother and I need your help.

My boy responded to advertising in our publication for work because he did not work, and depending on him, depending on him and two young boys. As it turned out, they were sent to Clevist Flrary a month ago and he couldn’t leave and write. I worry about him when I talked to some white people and told them how they were approached, guarded by armed guards at night and were not allowed to write home.

Will you help me, please get back to my boy home?

There were many cases such as the Cross from the 1860s before World War II. The federal government finally took measures against forced labor not on a moral principle, but because it needed to send these young people abroad. The contradiction of the dispatch of African Americans, made up of communities destroyed by exploitation and work violations, to fight “For Freedom” was too bright to ignore them.

Today, the cancellation of the ban on imported sugar from the central novel in the face of the Department of Labor provides a dangerous precedent. The US law prohibits importing goods prepared with forced labor, including children’s work. The law prohibits importing cotton from Chinese workers where Uighur is internshiped and apply sanctions to People who enjoy forced labor In other sectors, such as cryptocurrency and other online -off. But if the republican administration essentially accepts donations in exchange for silent permit permission, including children, other companies may expect such treatment. Political donations will be considered as purely transactional, appropriate to remove legitimate obstacles to the use of forced labor.

The decision of the Trump administration is played by the government from the rules and the rule of law to the system that is managed by the whim and services for donors, regardless of the consequences for people who work in horrific conditions. In response, 30 organizations, including trade unions, as well as supporters of rights and human rights, signed letter Expressing disappointment when lifting sanctions on the central novel.

The decision demonstrates ignoring the administration for both the workers and the US. This makes us ask if workers on American soil can also be vulnerable to this type of corporate bribery. Changes to the rules of work can affect not only workers in other countries but also in the US. In another recent Agriculture case was a trader in Georgia convict By the year and on the day of imprisonment and it is necessary to pay more than $ 300,000 for the resistance to the victims in the “flowering bow operation”. Could transactional donations prevent allegations in such cases in America? Can political donations lead to a pardon of convicted trade?

These are not rhetorical questions. We live in a new gilded era, during which Republicans offered changes in labor legislation to allow children to work longer, use heavy equipment, while the richest give money to politicians and oppose trade unions in the US. The Americans were killed by fighting the robbers of Barons for an eight -hour working day, a five -day working week, the abolition of children’s work and the cessation of dangerous and abusive conditions in the workplace. Every worker and anyone who is engaged in working conditions must act to prevent the cancellation of any of these achievements in the US and other places.