Now called Chiquita Brands International, the formerly United Fruit Company was established in 1899 when a Central American railway company and Boston Fruit Company joined forces. Their goal was to make the banana the cheapest and most accessible fruit in the United States of America, accomplishing this goal by horrible worker mistreatment in Central and South America along with the Caribbean. Nicknamed el pulpo, meaning octopus, the company was pervasive and infamous throughout the Western hemisphere. Throughout northern South America, the United Fruit Company had created a virtual monopoly on transportation; the movement of fruit and other goods was done though United Fruit Company owned railways and ports. The company even built radio towers …show more content…
Initially, workers protested “the lack of sanitary facilities in their living quarters, the nonexistence of medical services, and terrible working conditions. They stated, furthermore, that they were not being paid in real money but in scrip, which was good only to buy Virginia ham in the company commissaries.” These subhuman conditions echo those of both Cienega and other famous strikes, showing the capitalist disregard for the laboring body. José Arcadio Segundo was at one point jailed for revealing that the scrips were a means that the company used to finance their fruit boats, demonstrating corruption in the legal system before the strike. “The other complaints were common knowledge,” as stated in the novel. The doctors the company brought in only prescribed copper sulfate pills to treat ailments, flooding their availability to the point where children used them as bingo pieces instead of taking them as medication. The living space of workers is described as a barracks, showing just how crowded and unfit for living they were. “The engineers, instead of putting in toilets, had a portable latrine for every fifty people brought to the camps at Christmas time and they held public demonstrations of how to use them so that they would last …show more content…
Jack Brown, the president of the banana company, goes to almost comical lengths to avoid treating his employees like people. When first learning of the unanimous petitions, he left Macondo along with prominent representatives of his company. Despite this, he was soon spotted at a local brothel and forced to sign, his lawyers arguing that that man was an imposter. In the next incident, “he appeared before the judges with his hair dyed black and speaking flawless Spanish. The lawyers showed that the man was not Mr. Jack Brown, the superintendent of the banana company, born in Prattville Alabama, but a harmless vendor of medicinal plants, born in Macondo and baptized there with the name of Dagoberto Fonseca.” Eventually, he forged a death certificate. When taken to higher courts, it was ruled “that the demands lacked all validity for the simple reason that the banana company did not have, never had had, and never would have any workers in its service because they were all hired on a temporary and occasional basis,” (Marquez) mirroring that of the 1928 Banana
The Stone Mountain Coal Company wielded monopoly control over the town of Matewan through a feudal system of economic, cultural, political, and environmental processes. Every person in the town of Matewan came under the power of the company in one way or another. The employees of Stone Mountain were under a bondage contract with the company. Once they came to the company it was impossible to leave and at the same time maintain a basic standard of living. They could not leave also because once they signed on with the company they owed the company a large sum of money for everything ranging from the ticket for the train that brought them to Matewan to the equipment they needed to work there. In this way it was as if they were paying the company to let them work in the mines rather the other way around. They did not have the rights basic to capitalism such as the right to join a union, the right to sell their labor in a labor market to the bidder of their choice, and the right to spend their wage freely.
The soldiers lacked basic necessities such as clothing and food. In Document B it Dr. Albigence Waldo states, "There comes a Soldier, his bare feet are seen thro' his worn out Shoes, his legs nearly naked from the tatter'd remains of an only pair of stocks". In other words, these soldiers clothing were very worn out due to being used so often and were not provided with brand new attire. Since there were many mouths to feed, food became scarce, which left many soldiers starving. Around the camp soldiers cry
The representation of Don Amador back in control of the mill and returning to his old ways of running the mill, ultimately, represented the end of the worker’s dreams that had been part of the various struggles and accomplishments that led throughout the push to Chile’s road for socialism. Works Cited Winn, Peter. The. Weavers of Revolution: The Yarur Workers and Chile’s Road to Socialism. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. Print.
Factory workers worked twelve to fifteen hours a day in hazardous condition. There were no protective rules for women and children and no insurances for job-related accidents or industrial illness. The workers were obliged to trade at company store
We have had to deal with, “poor food- hard lodging- cold weather- fatigue, “(Document B). In this diary by Dr Waldo, a doctor we have at camp, he has accurately described what life is like at camp. The factors that we undergo make us sick both physically and mentally, these factors make us lose all sense of empowerment to win this war that we once felt, these factors make us want to go home more than anything just to hear our mother’s voice just once more. The absence of encouragement from other colonists and countries, and how I have to go to bed with my stomach empty every single night pushes me over the edge to give up and just
Working conditions were described as dangerous, dirty, unhealthy, polluted, dark, dim and drafty. These workers who worked very hard with their strong muscles in these horrible conditions were not valued. If they were hurt and could not work, they were simply replaced. This was also stated in Document 4, with the same thing happening to children. In conclusion, both adult and child workers were not valued equally and treated like garbage.
Even though, this is a fictional book, it tells a true story about the struggle of the farm worker to obtain a better life for themselves and their families. There are two main themes in this book, non-violence, and the fight for dignity. Cesar Chavez was a non-violent man who would do anything to not get in a fight while they where boycotting the growers. One, incident in the story was when a grower pulled out a gun, and he pointed it at the strikers, Chavez said, “He has a harder decision to make, we are just standing here in peace…” The picketer were beaten and put in jail before they would fight back and that is what why all farm workers look up to Cesar Chavez , along with his good friend Martin Luther King Jr. Non-Violence is the only way to solve anything. The growers in that time did not care about their workers, if people were striking, the growers would go to Mexico and bring in Braceros, mean that they would not have to sign the union contract and not take union workers, who were willing to work if the grower would sign the contract.
It is the worker’s condition that he truly focuses on. Many of the problems that people faced during this time include: tenement housing, poor working conditions, child labor, monopolies of business, social and political inequality, and most importantly people putting profits over lives. It is around the same time that a terrible fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. The unsafe working conditions made the employees escape nearly impossible.
The documentary strived to show us how factories were corrupt that they couldn’t provide good working conditions for the workers until we lost people. This documentary is about the tragic fire that took place on March 25, 1911 in the Triangle factory. We can clearly see through this documentary that these people didn’t matter to the factory owners because their needs were not met. The documentary shows that the year before the fire took place the workers led a strike asking for better working conditions, but obviously their voices were not heard. After the fire took place this is when factories started improving working conditions. It is sad to learn that it took 146 lives of innocent people in order for factory owners to be convinced that they need to improve the poor working
When a group of people must adapt to a lifestyle distinct from the agricultural lifestyle one would not know what to expect. Like a nation that is just starting, it would take time to construct and enhance laws; it’s a trial and error process. These businesses were starting out and there were no regulations as to how to run them. Unquestionably, there were no laws imposed to aid the labor conditions of these employees like we know today. The testimony and interview proved that the 1800’s took advantage of the work of children, often depriving them of food. It was obvious most children stuck around due to the urgency of money, therefore I am sure employees threatened to replace them seeing how the money was needed for families. For those who worked in factories with heavy, dangerous machinery, they were prone to accidents or even death. According to the sub-commissioner, the young girls picked the coal “with the regular pick used by men” . It is typically easier for a grown man to lift a regular pick than it is for a young girl because of the physical development and obvious age difference. Still there weren’t any regulations to protect children against the harms of labor and their wages were unreasonably
Blatant discrimination against African Americans and Hispanics was the norm in the 1950’s in many parts of the country. The miners are fighting for the same rights as the Anglo or white miners, who are safer because they are able to work in pairs. The company uses the fact that the miners were minorities as an excuse to not take them seriously. They think that they are lazy and would give up on the strike easily. At one point the company men say the Mexican miners are like children, and should be treated that
The working class faced conditions in the factory that wealthier skill workers did not have deal with. These men were not in a comfortable financial situation at home, and could not find comfort in hazardous working conditions with the dangerous machines they had to operate. Workers were harmed daily and among these injured employees were children (Shi 62). Many of these children were as young as nine years old, and due to financial reasons their families sent them away to work in workshops, mines, and even in factories surrounded by dangerous machinery. Realistically, these children were doomed to working in a factory for their entire lives. They did not attended school and worked to help provide for their families. With no education, they would not be able to find a more prestigious job with higher pay. The waged for factory workers were low, but they were not always guaranteed. The Knights of Labor pushed for a federal law that would force employers to “pay employees weekly, in full, for labor performed during the preceding week” (Shi 62). These people were only working in harmful conditions to survive but were not guaranteed enough money to feed their families. Charity handouts did not necessarily help feed a poor family, but aimed to “... produce most beneficial results to [the] community” (Shi 60). This meant that the wealthy didn’t directly give citizens money, but
For Chiquita, historically the organization appeared to prefer a profoundly centralized, a ethnocentric method for global management, with a heavy focus on profitableness. Moreover, there was limited if any hiring of the committee staff from the local workforce within Latin America. The corporation favored transplanting their crew to administer orders.
The strike had been triggered by the dismissal of a worker following the publication of Annie Besant’s article, White Slavery in London. Besant highlighted the poor
Another representation of the struggle of the working poor faced was dehumanization. At the opening scene of the movie the people coming out from the subways was blatantly compared to a herd of sheep being funneled through a small opening of a fence (Modern np). The employers did not look at their employees to be people but instead they see them a part that can be easily replaced by other spare parts; that each one of the workers are just a piece that make up the machine – the line. And because of that, the rise of the Union sparked workers who were once afraid to lose their job to unite and demand better conditions. Threatened that their business would collapse if no workers show up, the employers gave in to the strikers demands which gave way to the worker's rights that comes with benefits that today's workers are freely