It’s been exactly one year since US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued a Withhold Release Order (WRO) blocking imports from the Dominican Republic of raw sugar and sugar-based goods produced by Central Romana Corporation, Ltd., based on reasonable indications of forced labor in the company’s supply chain.
Like any company facing a WRO, if Central Romana wishes to regain access to the US market by having the WRO modified, it will have to effectively address the forced labor indicators on which the WRO is based (which are premised on international standards) and show CBP that it has remediated all conditions of forced labor.
However, evidence that CAL has gathered through sustained communications with workers, activists, and civil society organizations on the ground, a field visit earlier this year, and desk research on Central Romana lobbying suggests that over the 365 days since its sugar was blocked from entering the United States, Central Romana has chosen to implement only superficial changes for workers while pulling political strings in an apparent effort to make the import ban disappear.
This post provides a brief introduction to the Dominican sugar industry, which Central Romana dominates, followed by what CAL understands to be the principal steps Central Romana has taken since it began facing adverse market consequences for relying on forced labor.
Central Romana & the Dominican Sugar Industry
Central Romana is a privately held company that is partially owned by the US-based Fanjul Corporation, run by the billionaire Fanjul family. The Fanjuls, who are particularly well connected politically in the Dominican Republic and are large donors on both sides of the political aisle in the United States, also own ASR Group, the world’s largest refiner and marketer of cane sugar, which supplies sugar to Hershey and sells sugar to consumers under brands like Domino and C&H.
Central Romana is the largest landowner and largest private employer in the Dominican Republic. The breadth of its operations is enormous. It is simultaneously the country’s largest producer of sugar and of beef, a manufacturer of furfural and iron, and a real estate and tourism powerhouse. It has its own railway system, marine port, and airport. The company runs the famous Casa de Campo resort (which hosts the likes of Jennifer Lopez) and a real estate complex (where international elite own beachside villas) on the same property where, tucked away in a maze of sugarcane, out of site from the main roads, it operates its sugarcane fields that rely on the forced labor of migrants and descendants of migrants from Haiti, the vast majority of whom are undocumented or stateless.
Above, Central Romana sugarcane workers load cut cane into an oxen-pulled wagon for subsequent weighing in early 2023. Workers report that loading cane is one of the most physically grueling aspects of cane work. Although workers are paid based on the weight of the cane they cut individually and receive no compensation for helping each other load cane, workers often pitch in due to the arduous nature of the work.
Central Romana is one of three main sugar producers in the Dominican Republic, and the company far out-produces its counterparts, the Consorcio Azucarero de Empresas Industriales (CAEI) and Consorcio Azucarero Central (CAC). This trio produces more than 600,000 metric tons of sugar annually. The United States is the top buyer of Dominican sugar, and the Dominican Republic is the top sugar exporter to the United States, as it is consistently awarded the highest annual US Tariff Rate Quota (TRQ).
It’s been an open secret for decades that the Haitian and Haitian descendant workforce at Central Romana and across the Dominican sugar industry endure egregious living and working conditions. In fact, the US Department of Labor’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs has published seven periodic reports since 2013 on the hazardous working conditions and systemic labor rights abuse in the sector, following a damning complaint on labor rights abuses that was filed under a trade agreement mechanism more than a decade ago.
Central Romana’s sugarcane workforce is especially vulnerable to exploitation because the majority of workers are undocumented or stateless, meaning they are citizens of no country, which is relatively common within Haitian descendant communities in the Dominican Republic since a 2013 court decision revoked birthright citizenship for children of foreign parents and applied retroactively. Haitian migrants and their descendants in the Dominican Republic face widespread discrimination and abuse, and they are at constant risk of deportation when they assert their rights.
The above photos, taken in early 2023 in Central Romana bateyes, show ypical living conditions for sugarcane workers and their families. In the first photo, a woman crouches to open a fruit with a machete near what appears to be liquid waste from an outhouse and/or shared water spigot.
When it issued the WRO against Central Romana sugar last November, CBP identified the presence of five of eleven possible indicators of forced labor: abuse of vulnerability, isolation, withholding of wages, abusive working and living conditions, and excessive overtime. When members of the CAL team visited the Dominican Republic earlier this year, we identified a wide range of ongoing labor abuses taking place, including forced labor indicators that CBP did not name. CAL and other human rights groups maintain that additional forced labor indicators, including intimidation and threats and debt bondage, have also been present historically at Central Romana and should have been cited in the WRO. Conditions at Central Romana are so dire that special agents from the US Homeland Security Investigations have reportedly launched a criminal investigation into the case.
While the WRO against Central Romana sugar – and a true reckoning with its practices – was long overdue, the day after CBP issued the WRO, the company published a press release reflecting the “great astonishment” with which it received the allegations of forced labor. It pledged: “We will keep our head held high because we know that for over a century we have acted correctly, addressing challenges with determination and managing their resolution in a consistent manner.”* It has since maintained this position.
A Year in Review
Central Romana’s corporate leadership, its legal advisors, Capitol Hill lobbyists, and its proxies at the company-dominated union, the Sindicato Unido de Trabajadores, have worked hard over the past year to achieve modification of the WRO, but apparently not through the traditional route of remediating the forced labor. Here are some highlights.
Activity on Capitol Hill
In the first three quarters of 2023 alone, Central Romana spent nearly a quarter of a million dollars lobbying US government officials around the WRO. Publicly available documents provided in accordance with the United States Lobbying Disclosures Act show that so far this year, Central Romana has spent $231,000 on the activities of two lobbying firms: Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and Patino Brewster & Partners, LLC (whose lobbyists include James “Wally” Brewster, the former US Ambassador to the Dominican Republic). According to these lobbying disclosures, this money was spent lobbying the United States Senate, House of Representatives, Department of State, Department of Transportation, and CBP, the very body that issued the WRO against Central Romana’s sugar.
Just last month, another firm, Barsa Strategies (whose lobbyist John Barsa previously held a leadership position at the Department of Homeland Security), registered to lobby on behalf of Central Romana on "[i]ssues around the importation to the US of agricultural products.” These disclosures indicate that three firms are working to have Central Romana’s import ban disappear.
Central Romana spent $231,000 on WRO lobbying in Q1-Q3 2023
In the first quarter of 2023, Akin Gump disclosed that Central Romana paid it $50,000 for lobbying on the "withhold release order on sugar" before the House of Representatives.
The above screenshot is from Akin Gump’s Q1 lobbying disclosure for Central Romana, available here.
In the second quarter of 2023, Patino Brewster & Partners disclosed payment of $25,000 from Central Romana for lobbying on “labor and migrant issues, including withhold release order and migrant documentation, in sugar sector” before the Department of State and CBP.
The above screenshot is from Patino Brewster & Partners’ Q2 lobbying disclosure for Central Romana, available here.
In the third quarter of 2023, Akin Gump disclosed payment of $30,000 for lobbying on “withhold release order on sugar” before the US Senate, House of Representatives, and the State Department. Patino Brewster & Partners disclosed payment of $126,000 for lobbying on “Labor and migrant issues, including withhold release order and migrant documentation, in sugar sector” before the State Department, CBP, and the Department of Transportation.
The above screenshot is from Akin Gump’s Q3 lobbying disclosure for Central Romana, available here.
The above screenshot is from Patino Brewster & Partners’ Q3 lobbying disclosure for Central Romana, available here.
Activity on the Ground
Despite Central Romana’s claim that “50% of the company’s process has been automated, eliminating the need for foreign labor,” manual labor performed by thousands of workers remains an essential part of the sugarcane cultivation and harvesting process, and conditions have not changed significantly over the past year.
Addressing Systemic Debt Bondage
Credible reports indicate that some workers have been subjected to debt bondage at Central Romana. For example, earlier this year, multiple sugarcane workers reported to CAL that they had paid a recruiter (a buscón) an amount higher than they could pay out of pocket to bring them from Haiti to the Dominican Republic to work on Central Romana’s sugarcane plantations. When these workers arrived, even if they objected to the conditions they found or wanted to leave for any reason, they reported having to work to pay back the debt they owed recruiters. Several of these workers described dire situations including extreme poverty and the absence of consistent work in Haiti as the context from which they agreed to take on debt for recruitment in what they referred to as “labor trafficking.”
Based on additional worker reports, it appears that, historically, it has been even more common for workers to enter into debt bondage when they take out informal loans from private parties to supplement their wages, which do not constitute a living income. Sugarcane workers at Central Romana have reported to CAL that they periodically have to take out loans to make ends meet, often when a family member requires medical attention or passes away and there is no money for a funeral service. Workers report obtaining loans from any available source in these circumstances, sometimes from members of the community seemingly unaffiliated with Central Romana and other times from higher-ranked Central Romana employees. Workers reported to CAL earlier this year that loan payments were typically managed with the worker receiving the loan forfeiting his company ID card to the provider of the loan both as collateral and as a mechanism for direct payment. Workers allege that lenders, be they Central Romana employees or others, used those ID cards to collect payment from Central Romana payroll weekly to pocket the corresponding worker’s wages until the debt and interest had been paid off. These workers told CAL that they had to continue working, and sometimes even increased the amount of cane they cut to physically dangerous levels, to pay back their debts.
It is CAL’s understanding that Central Romana has fired some supervisory personnel who engaged in lending schemes that may have kept workers in cycles of debt bondage. This is a welcome improvement. However, CAL is concerned that without a significant pay increase and expanded access to social services, workers’ underlying vulnerability to debt bondage will continue. Workers still need additional funds to meet their basic needs, and Central Romana’s failure to pay workers a living wage keeps them vulnerable to predatory lending schemes and debt bondage, whether Central Romana personnel are involved in those lending schemes or not.
Electricity in the Bateyes
Thousands of Central Romana’s sugarcane workers and their families live in company-owned communities called bateyes. Central Romana claims that the bateyes closest to the city of La Romana “have water service and electricity supplied by the company” and that more isolated bateyes have electricity provided by the state electric company. However, the vast majority of bateyes, some of which have been around for decades, have never had electricity and still do not. (This does not seem like an oversight for a company that generates its own electricity for its tourist operations.)
Over the last several months, Central Romana has reportedly installed solar panels to supply some bateyes with electricity. This is an essential step forward for worker dignity, but the company has a long way to go to ensure that all workers and their families have electricity, and enough of it, to substantially improve living conditions. Workers have reported that in some places where solar panels have been installed, the electricity generated is only enough for a few people to charge their cellphones. (In the past, workers report having to pay supervisors whose homes have electricity to charge their phones). These workers report that in such bateyes, not enough electricity has been generated to use appliances that would help families cook, do laundry, use fans to bear the heat, connect a television to combat isolation, or anything else. In addition, as discussed below, some workers who did have access to electricity prior to the WRO have been relocated to bateyes that lack electrical access as a part of Central Romana’s batey reconfiguration.
Batey Reconfiguration
Additionally, Central Romana appears to be reconfiguring its bateyes. This may be – we hope – part of a longer-term company plan, albeit developed without consulting workers and family members living in the bateyes, to improve living conditions for sugarcane workers and their families living on company property. Whatever the ultimate plan is, in the past year, thousands of batey residents have been forcibly evicted from their homes and relocated, sometimes to bateyes where conditions are worse.
Such was the case of Batey Peligro, a housing community where more than 90 families of Central Romana sugarcane workers lived until this summer. Some families at Peligro had lived in the batey for generations. Unlike the majority of bateyes at the time, Batey Peligro had electricity, and its location allowed residents access to schools and other necessities, including off-site healthcare without having to pay high transportation fees. In the spring of this year, Central Romana personnel began informing Peligro residents of an imminent eviction and demolition of their batey. The community was outraged, and the company temporarily halted the eviction process after Guamate TV Radio, a local news outlet, covered the story in April 2023.
However, after coverage subsided, more than 90 families were evicted and the batey was demolished. Without providing residents with information on a longer-term plan for housing, Central Romana personnel forcibly evicted the entire Peligro community, giving residents only one option: to relocate to Batey Bermejo, a more isolated batey with no electricity.
Video coverage of the issue, including interviews with residents, is available on Guamate TV Radio’s facebook page. At the end of the video segment, children and adolescent residents of Peligro ask, in unison, for Central Romana not to destroy their batey.
The above photo shows housing foundations after the demolition of Batey Peligro.
Changes in Pay
Earlier this year, Central Romana agreed to increase sugarcane worker salaries by 18% over three years. While increases in pay are sorely needed, this amount is not nearly enough for workers to meet their basic needs. Additionally, the increase was decided in negotiations with the Sindicato Unido de Trabajadores, the company-dominated union that has operated for 60 years without having delivered significant improvements for sugarcane workers. In fact, sugarcane workers have told CAL time and again that not only does the Sindicato Unido not represent them, but that it is the biggest challenge they face. While the Sindicato Unido has reportedly collected upwards of 15 million pesos (more than $250,000) in dues this year, it has little to show for it. Workers continue to report that they are threatened with firing and/or eviction when they complain about conditions.
In addition to an inadequate pay increase for sugarcane workers, the company also paid out smaller bonuses this year than it has historically, citing lower profits based on the WRO. Historically, Central Romana has paid bonuses to sugarcane workers at the end of the harvest season and at the end of the year based on the number of days worked. Dominican law requires that companies pay workers a portion of their net profits annually. However, at the end of the harvest in June, the Sindicato Unido announced, through written notices to workers and its radio program, that the bonuses covered by its agreement with the company (based on the amount of cane cut and sugar sold to the United States) would not be paid this year. Reports indicate that after workers threatened to strike, the company agreed to pay roughly one-third of the amount of bonuses workers had originally anticipated.
Above, a June 2023 announcement from the Sindicato Unido informs workers that the amount of cane cut during the 2022-2023 harvest did not meet the baseline threshold agreed upon in a bargaining agreement with the company to result in the payment of bonuses.
Workers also report that Central Romana has begun providing some older cane workers with pensions, a longstanding demand of sugarcane workers who have paid into the government’s social security system for decades but who are unable to access their retirement benefits if they are undocumented. CAL has been informed that some sugarcane workers who have worked in Central Romana’s fields for 50 years have begun receiving small contributions from the company. While pensions are essential for worker dignity and economic justice, the amount Central Romana is offering workers (reportedly between $1,000-2,000) is far too little for workers to live on for the rest of their lives, let alone retire with dignity. Additionally, some workers who have been offered a pension over the last year report receiving an eviction notice at the same time, leaving them with no place to go.
Access to Healthcare
Central Romana recently announced an agreement to extend health insurance to all workers, including sugarcane workers, which, if implemented comprehensively, will improve cane workers’ lives. However, based on the company’s announcement, it appears likely that workers’ families, including women caregivers and children who live on company grounds, will be excluded from coverage, meaning that a significant portion of batey residents will remain uninsured.
While health insurance for workers is a welcome step forward, it should be part of a larger plan to improve living and working conditions and access to healthcare for workers and their families, for example, by ensuring that workers are permitted sick days, that they have safe and affordable transportation to healthcare sites, that they have enough potable water to drink in company housing and in the fields (many workers reportedly develop kidney disease from years of dehydration), and that they have access to adequate sanitation. Additionally, workers report that there is no comprehensive system in place to compensate workers and provide them with healthcare when accidents occur in the fields. Finally, insurance may not be the biggest barrier to healthcare for undocumented workers, many of whom stay on company grounds as much as possible to avoid risk of deportation or being picked up by immigration officials and later released upon payment of a ransom, as is commonplace.
This photo, taken in early 2023, is a latrine in an outhouse shared by families living in a Central Romana batey.
This photo, taken in the fall of 2023, shows Central Romana sugarcane workers filling up water bottles from a company water container reportedly meant to provide water for oxen. Workers report that while they know this water is not fit for human consumption – that tanks often appear to be rusting and dispense untreated water – they have no other option but to consume it when it is available. Workers report that the company does not provide them water or food during the workday. We have blurred several individuals’ faces in this photo to maintain their anonymity.
In fact, CAL finds the company’s reports about daily availability of mobile medical units to be inconsistent with workers’ lived experience. While the company has long claimed to provide healthcare access to all workers in the bateyes, including access to Central Romana’s hospital, workers have denied that such access exists. In general, the healthcare services the company purports to provide to all workers differ greatly from what sugarcane workers report having access to in practice. CAL will remain skeptical of these promises until we obtain verification from workers.
Approach to Civil Society
Since CBP issued the WRO, Central Romana appears to have intensified its approach to shut down its critics in the Dominican Republic and United States. At its most mild, this has looked like a failure to engage human rights organizations that have approached it about the opportunity to comprehensively address human rights abuses through a sustainable worker-driven program. As CAL’s Executive Director Charity Ryerson recently told Mother Jones, “labor rights advocates offered to collaborate with the company to develop an innovative, long-term solution for these workers […] Central Romana squandered that opportunity by not engaging in good faith.”
At its most extreme, members of civil society organizations in the Dominican Republic who are raising alarm bells about conditions at Central Romana fear for their safety and are reporting intensifying threats and intimidation by individuals they believe to be agents of the company. Additionally, the Sindicato Unido, has increased its anti-worker programming on local radio (La Romana 107.5 FM, La Voz del Trabajador), often broadcasting misinformation about workers' rights and threats against labor organizers and human rights activists.
What’s Next
A year after CBP issued a WRO blocking imports of Central Romana sugar from the US market based on forced labor, the company’s progress on remediation of abusive labor conditions has been unimpressive. It’s time for the company to redirect its resources to where they should have gone in the first place: effective and sustainable remediation by and for workers. Workers and civil society will continue to demand nothing less.
*Unofficial translation by CAL of “gran asombro” and “[m]antenemos la cabeza en alto porque sabemos que durante más de un siglo hemos actuado correctamente, enfrentando los retos con determinación y gestionando su resolución de manera constante,” included in a Central Romana communication published a day after the WRO was issued.
This post is also available in Spanish.
