Sweetening the Harvest

Many of those who harvest the sugar crop in Louisiana live in shacks that were once used by slaves. The walls are so worn that sunlight filters through. With an annual wage of about $2,750, the average sugar-cane worker has five children, and their diet is so poor that by the age of twelve their bodies are like those of people 50 years old.

The Department of Agriculture, in annual hearings, checks on the condition of sugar-cane laborers because it is authorized by law to regulate their wages. In 1970 that wage was $1.65 an hour for top workers, and before the 1971 wage was set the wage-price freeze went into effect. When Phase II thawed matters some, the 1971 rates would have raised top workers 10-c- an hour, but Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz ruled that the increase need not be paid until Jan. 10, 1972. "That is a big joke for Louisiana," says Sister Anne Catherine Bizalion of the Southern Mutual Help Association, "because by Jan. 10 there is no more work." The crop is in.

The workers have long failed to press for welfare benefits and other rights because of ignorance or fear of intimidation. But two of them, Huey Freeman and Gustave Rhodes, were so angry at the delayed raise that they filed a class-action suit on behalf of all the workers. Noting that the $100 million federal subsidy paid to sugar growers by the Department of Agriculture is conditioned on their payment of "fair and reasonable" wages, their lawyers tried for a sort of garnishment in reverse. As a result, Federal Judge John Pratt has just issued a preliminary injunction holding up all subsidy payments until an amended wage is established and paid for "all labor performed on or after Oct. 1, 1971," when the harvest began. Lawyers are hoping that each of 15,000 workers will get from $50 to $75, a bill that could cost the growers more than $1,000,000.

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