This Film Will Make Your Cubical Look Pretty Good

posted by brooklynfoodconference, on August 30, 2009

Nineteen years after winning the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, Stephanie Black’s artful exposé H2 Worker (trailer) is still relevant. Darn. I would hope that what Ms. Black revealed by sneaking into remote labor camps at night might have woken us all up enough to say, “Hey, we’re willing to pay a little more for sugar (or cucumbers or apples or…) so that people aren’t being exploited to harvest it.”

Even though it’s been running since 1942, not too many of us know that there’s a program that lets US companies bring in temporary guest workers from other countries “for jobs Americans don’t want.” (Oh yeah?) The Department of Labor’s site makes the program look like a good deal for both sides. Companies must pay at least minimum wage, provide free housing if the fields are not close from where a worker can easily commute, provide three meals a day, provide worker’s comp, keep accurate records, etc.

But in practice, the growers get around the regulations, and everything’s kept out of sight. The H2 program has expanded since Stephanie Black’s film, and it hasn’t become more humane. On January 17, 2009, three days before leaving office, the Bush administration made the program even sweeter for the companies, slashing the wage requirements and reducing oversight. It was “one of the most significant steps backwards for farm workers in the past several decades,” said Arturo S. Rodriguez, president of the United Farm Workers. The new Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, the daughter of Mexican and Nicaraguan immigrant laborers, immediately announced she was suspending the changes while they’re reviewed. However, a North Carolina court has sued Secretary Solis and a federal judge entered an injunction prohibiting the Bush regulations from being suspended. The workers are being paid the same low wages and receiving the lower benefits.

This is why the 1990 film, just released on DVD, is particularly relevant right now. This is why we all want to go see it at the Park Slope Food Coop (details below).

Says Jay Tran of the Safe Food Squad, which is presenting the film night, “This film shows how immigrant workers are given false promises and then exploited. To add insult to injury, our tax dollars go to subsidize the sugar industry that exploits the workers and unfairly competes with other sugar producing countries, all in the name of fair trade.”

But H2 Worker is so much more than these facts. “Amidst the terrible oppression and mistreatment and exploitation of the workers,” said Mimi Rosenberg when she interviewed Black last May on WBAI, “There is a sense of their perseverance and their dignity that really shines through.” The Nation said, “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.”

Was it hard to get into the camps, Rosenberg asked. Yes, said Black, but she had the help of Rosa, a Jamaican woman who went into the camps at night to sell supplies.  The workers joked about how she arrived in a different color car each time (Black would change in her rental car every two days to keep from being tracked by the police who were owned by the growers). One night she locked the keys in the car and wasn’t able to make her usual hasty exit and was seen by the grower. As he approached, Maryse Alberti, the cinematographer (her work on this film won Best Cinematography at Sundance. She recently shot The Wrestler.), covered the camera with her jacket. Without a word, one of the workers slipped it out from under her arm and carried it to the barracks. The grower told the three women, “When you’re finished here, come on up to the house.” Lucky for them, he assumed that three women in the camp at night had to be prostitutes. Unlucky for him, they were plying a different trade.

Black also filmed some segments in Jamaica, fell in love with the country and later returned to take a job there. This led to another acclaimed documentary, Life and Debt, which you may have seen at the Brooklyn Food Conference.

You might want to hold the second Tuesday night of each month open for a whole series of films from the Safe Food Squad.  They’re all free, and you can stick around after the film for a discussion with an expert.

H2 Worker Screening
Date: Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2009
Time: 7:00
Place: Park Slope Food Coop, 2nd Floor, 782 Union Street (between Sixth and Seventh Aves)
Cost: Free

Related Reading

• A Film Lover’s Guide. Films at the Brooklyn Food Conference and a list of other great food films. more
• Devastating Decision for Farm Workers. Federal court in North Carolina halts suspension of Bush H-2A rules. What’s happening now with the H2-A Program. more
• Big Sugar: Seasons in the Canefields of Florida by New Yorker staff writer Alec Wilkinson.