Ten years after Jamaica’s 1962 independence from British colonial rule, the democratic socialist People’s National Party was voted in and launched extensive reforms. They addressed housing, education, transportation, and land access, established a minimum wage, and nationalized some sectors that were controlled by transnational companies. Three large private sugar plantations were sold to the state, which organized them into 23 worker cooperatives, with around 5,000 workers – roughly 200 workers each – to operate them. Empowerment of the new workers clashed against the government’s production goals, and against legacy managers who were ambivalent or hostile to the cooperative. The cooperatives operated from 1975 to 1981 when, in debt and losing money, they were forced by an incoming conservative government administration to privatize.
Books
- Feuer – Jamaica and the Sugar Worker Cooperatives: The Politics of Reform [preview] (1984)
- Frölander-Ulf and Lindenfeld – A new earth : the Jamaican sugar workers’ cooperatives, 1975-1981 (1984)
Articles
- Frölander-Ulf – Frank Lindenfeld Remembered (2012)
- Lindenfeld and Wynn – Why Some Worker Co-ops Succeed While Others Fail (1995)
- Lindenfeld – The Jamaican Sugar Workers Cooperatives and the Severance Pay Crisis (1982)
- Stone – An Appraisal of the Co-Operative Process in the Jamaican Sugar Industry (1978)