Available for the first time ever, this DVD includes an 18 minute video update made in 2009 about the present expansion of H-2A and H-2B guestworker programs in the U.S.
H-2 Worker is a controversial expose of the travesty of justice that takes place
around the shores of Florida's Lake Okeechobee—a situation which, until the film's
release, has been one of America's best-kept secrets. There, for six months a year,
over 10,000 men from Jamaica and other Caribbean islands perform the brutal
task of cutting sugar cane by hand-a job so dangerous and low-paying that
Americans refuse to do it.
H-2 Worker is the first documentary to tell the story of these men—named for their
special temporary guestwork "H-2" visas. They live and work in conditions
reminiscent of the days of slavery on sugar plantations: housed in overcrowded
barracks, poorly fed, denied adequate treatment for their frequent on-the-job
injuries, paid less than minimum wage, and deported if they do not do exactly as
they are told.
The sugar plantations who employ the H-2 workers sustain this exploitatioin—and
their own profits—with the help of the U.S. government, which authorizes the
importation of Third World workers while it blocks the importation of cheaper Third
World sugar through a system of quotas and price supports, citing "national
security" as the reason for its costly subsidizing of a domestic sugar industry.
The scandal of the H-2 program has existed for over 45 years. It began in 1942,
when the U.S. Sugar Cane Corporation was indicted for conspiracy to enslave
black American workers. In 1943 the first West Indian cane cutters were brought in.
This scandal has largely been kept out of the public eye, and the sugar companies
and their government supporters have escaped accountability. On the contrary, a
new immigration law has paved the way for a rapid expansion of the H-2 program.
AWARDS:
Grand Jury Prize Best Documentary - Sundance Film Festival (1990)
Best Cinematography, Sundance Film Festival (1990)
Quotes
"'H-2 Worker' is that rare hybrid that succeeds as both film and advocacy. The documentary's look and form is smooth and sophisticated ... [and] it solidly frames issues about the economy, employment and the treatment of workers who seem just steps away from slavery." —The New York Times
"With admirable fluency, Black combines straightforward information and analysis with more evocative glimpses of the workers' lives .... Black and her collaborators have an unsentimental conviction that these workers are fully human, that they experience not just anger and suffering but also love and pleasure - and even hope."—The Nation
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