Jaynes defends testimony in controversial labor trial

Law school activists believe a prominent Yale professor is helping an immoral cause. Gerald Jaynes, a Yale economics professor and a member of the African American Studies faculty, is testifying on behalf of a Florida sugar cane corporation in a suit over back wages for the 1989-90 season. Jamaican sugar workers are suing the Okeelanta Sugar Corporation for wages they contest were promised by a U.S. Department of Labor contract.

The Law School Workers' Rights Project, an organization of students at Yale Law School which supports labor unions and individual workers throughout the world, formally protested Jaynes' action about three weeks ago. "The Workers' Rights Project finds Okeelanta's history of labor abuses to be reprehensible, and it's wrong for anyone to defend them--espeicially such a known scholar," Shayne Stevenson, LAW '00, student director of the project said.

Nonetheless, Jaynes insists his participation in the trial is justified. He once compiled evidence to help New Haven defend an affirmative action law and has studied labor markets in the South, especially the abuse of black workers before and after the Civil War. Jaynes asserts that these studies qualify him to testify in the trial.

Jaynes said he believes in "any kind of straightforward means of improving workers' wages, conditions, and salaries." Although Okeelanta is known for being notoriously anti-labor, Jaynes has no qualms about testifying in the case, stating that the way the Jamaican workers are interpreting the contract is simply incorrect. The migrant workers' case argues that Okeelanta hired about 2,800 workers in '88 but sent them home before they fulfilled their contracts, thereby violating federal law. Jaynes said that "there is no way the contract could mean what they're claiming it to mean."

Whether or not Jaynes is on the side of the law, Stevenson thinks his support of Okeelanta is wrong. "We have a problem with Yale scholars testifying for a corporation that exploits low-wage workers," Stevenson said. "We're happy to shine the spotlight on anyone who chooses to testify for employers who exploit workers."

Still, Jaynes believes the Department of Labor will agree with his assertion that bad wording in the contract--not malice on the part of Okeelanta--is to blame. "You don't cut sugar cane by the hour, but the contract said the workers would be paid a minimum wage of $5.30 per hour," Jaynes explained. Instead, workers were paid based on the amount of sugar cane cut: each was required to cut eight tons of sugar cane in an eight-hour day. At the end of the day, the amount of cane cut was divided by the number of workers, and each was paid $5.30 per ton.

Even if he doesn't think the workers' case is valid, it's entirely different to go help a corporation that's exploiting workers," Stevenson insisted. He said if Jaynes disagreed with the workers' claim, the professor should have stayed out of the case.

But Jaynes believes what the workers' lawyers are arguing would actually lead to a loss of jobs. If the workers win their case, he thinks sugar companies will be motivated to switch to machines because labor will become more expensive. Thus, the lawyers aren't helping the workers; "they've helped them out of jobs," Jaynes said.

According to Stevenson, "Jaynes is shopping the prestige of the Yale name as a means of both legitimizing an exploitative employer and increasing his own wealth." Though Jaynes acknowledges he is being paid $350 per hour with a $5,000 retainer for his testimony, he says his fee is really not that high. He insists that he has an objective view of the case. "I don't think the way to improve workers' payment, conditions of work, and overall life is to hold up lawyers with false and untruthful interpretation of contract," Jaynes said.

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