[QUOTE=Nal0whs]Word of note:
Sugar prices can't really rise, because that would make them less competitive especially with the corn syrup deal that is coming into the local market. As such, the only way to increase wages is to fire a certain number of people (ie. unemployment goes up for those Haitians who would have starved to death in their own country-after all, that is why the come to the DR, because conditions are better here than in Haiti, otherwise they would leave at the end of the Zafra and never come back, but that is hardly the case).
I think you are missing the big issue. Last night report was about CHILD LABOR. On the report, I saw children up and about late in the night and at crack of dawn working the fields. There are children in their school uniforms working the field, meaning that they either go to school, if at all, after working the field in the morning or they come stray to the field after school. A kid's hand was messed up from cutting sugar cane all day long.
Companies will always complain that they will go bankrupt if they increase wages. This is their main defense, but companies that go belly up is because of mismanagement or embezzlement. If they Perhaps, attribute their lobbying money to paying higher wages, parents won't be forced to ask they kids to work the fields, thus possibly eliminating child labor.
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