H-2 Worker

My review was written in March 1990 after a New Directors/New Films screening at MoMA.

This to-the-point documentary exposes the problems of underpaid Jamaican workers who rek for six months to toil in the Florida sugar cane fields. It should arouse some action on a long-dormant issue.

Tourists take for granted the dormitory-style barracks and company stores for field workers that dot the Florida roadside. There's virtually no interaction with the guest workers, who visit the U. S. for 6-month stretches under the H-2 work program. It's hardly a topic for the nightly newscasts in West Palm Beach or Fort Lauderdale.

Debuting director Stephanie Black lays the issues on the table in clearcut fashion: poverty in Jamaica makes the chance to earn U. S. bucks nearly irresistible, yet the heavily subsidized farm employers chisel the Jamaicans' wages.

Smug U. S. and Jamaican officials repeatedly assert there is no problem, though the Jamaican prime minister admits things could be improved and that poverty is the root cause here for supporting the program.

Pic's weakest segment presents a thorny issue, namel trade and international economics, in glib fashion. Black counterpoints (on the side of the angels) New York and New Jersey politicians arguing for cutting farm subsidies and quotas to help the sugar economies of other countries, with Floridians naturally supporting the status quo. Her cross-cutting between the sad-eyed workers and shots of whites enjoying a sugar festival shifts the film into the realm of propaganda.

Black uses hidden-camera techniques to gather footage of the workers' cramped living conditions. There's nothing spectacular about what she shows, but the testimony of the workers points up injustice. Old black & white newsreels drive home the racism behind this phenomenon.

Pic would benefit from pruning as the images of lonely workers become repetitive and a subplot involving a '40s field hand who now has to collect cans for subsistence is off the mark. Thick accents of the Jamaican interviewees should be subtitled for clarity.

Stephanie Black's documentary on Jamaican H-2 visa farm workers in Florida is one of the better labor documentaries around. The film provides an intimate portrait of the daily lives of farm workers - and moves seamlessly from the hot, overcrowded barracks of the hands themselves to the offices of government officials in Washington to Jamaica's political leaders. The film leaves you without a clear idea of how to solve the problems of saving American farms while not destroying agricultural life in the Third World which then must send countless of its citizens to work in hellish, underpaid positions on American farms. Though, thirteen years later, the film itself might have the feel of being dated - the social, economic, and trade problems it highlights unfortunately persist today. It's well worth your time to see this unsettling and moving documentary. And while you're at it, check out the more recent documentary called "Life and Debt" - which returns to Jamaica to examine how trade and the economic prescriptions of the World Bank and IMF have affected that island nation. Together, "Life and Debt" and "H-2 Worker" are a great introduction to trade issues, helping to show how all the esoteric policy-talk actually affects human lives.