Afro-Jamaican traditions and labor organizing on United Fruit Company plantations in Costa Rica, 1910

Journal of Social History, Summer, 1995 by Avi Chomsky

In the early days of its existence, the Union's main function was to provide mutual aid and organize social functions, along the lines of the Jamaican churches, lodges and Friendly Societies in Costa Rica. It also ran a cooperative store or commissary,(9) and a bar where meetings were held. The union store is a good example of how workers sought ways to improve their situation without directly placing any demands on the Company. The Company generally paid workers with coupons which could be used only in Company commissaries. Other local stores discounted the coupons 20-25% off their marked value, the rate at which the Company would redeem them (in merchandise). If a worker wanted to be paid in cash, he would often have to wait up to two weeks after the end of the month to receive his pay; coupons could be obtained in advance. Whenever workers voiced their complaints against the Company, the coupon system ranked high on the list.(10) The union commissary may have circumvented these problems by allowing members to buy on credit, thus enabling them to wait for their pay in cash instead of accepting coupons.

The union's first actual demand to the Company occurred on July 16, 1910, when it notified the UFCO that it intended to declare August 1, Jamaican Emancipation Day, a holiday, and refrain from working that day. Emancipation Day, a public holiday in Jamaica, held great symbolic importance - not only affirming the difference in workers' status from that of slaves, but also asserting a Jamaican identity through a celebration unacknowledged by either the UFCO or Costa Rica.(11) The fact that the union's first demand concerned national identity and dignity rather than wages or working conditions is further indication of the race/ethnic rather than the class nature of the union.

The following day the Company locked out some 600 workers identified as belonging to the Union and told them that they were relieved of their positions.(12) The Company thus turned what had begun as a social and cultural celebration into an issue of labor discipline and control, which in turn suggested to the workers that their freedom still had severe limitations.

Both the Company and the workers turned immediately to the Costa Rican government for support. The workers' protest focused on pay issues, in particular, the system of hourly wages which resulted in workers never receiving the daily wage they had been guaranteed. They also protested long waits before the monthly pay check arrived, the coupon system, and the money discounted for the Company hospital. In addition, they denounced merciless supervisors who "turn the respect and obedience of the workers into a perfect slavery. They have them jailed and everything that comes into the heads of such lords [caciques], they engage in physical abuse [torturar en el trozo], abolished by law, orders which are followed by the Police Officers, because since they are subsidized by the Allied Companies, they are afraid of losing this bonus [sobresueldo]."(13) The Company, for its part, complained that the union "is nothing less than a threat to the industrial interests of the country."(14) It named three of the union's leaders as "very dangerous" and asked that they be deported.(15) But the government had little institutional presence on the isolated Atlantic Coast and was slow to respond, so the Company quickly resorted to its own power.