Part 14

After the cans have been filled with the sliced pineapple and syrup, they are taken to another machine which automatically places the cover on the can and seals it.

The sealed cans are then taken on a tray to the cooking vat, where they are lowered in boiling water onto a slowly moving platform, which carries them, submerged, through the water for just a sufficient length of time, gauged automatically, to cook the fruit. The tray of cans is then raised, again automatically, onto a continuation of the moving platform, which immerses them in a cold bath, in which they are kept for a sufficient length of time to cool them. The cans are then sent to the labeling room, where they receive their various brands, according to grade and to the customers for whom they are intended.

All machinery is geared at a low rate of speed; the only process which holds any menace is the peeling and coring machine, which must have the careful attention of the operator to keep his fingers from the knives.

The cores, which formerly were thrown out with the waste, are now also sliced into inch lengths, cooked, canned and sold to confectioners, who coat them with chocolate and sell them as pineapple candies. As these cores have about as much taste as juicy wood, it is at least a question how much of pineapple the ultimate consumer is favored with.

The women workers in the canneries are divided into four classes: trimmers, packers, labelers and miscellaneous, the latter doing duty at the slicing machine, the pulp troughs and in packing the cores.

The new workers are usually started at trimming and at packing cores, the youngest ones performing the latter work or tending the slicing machines. All of this work is done in a sitting position in one of the canneries; but the other two establishments have no seats for any of their employes.

At the packing table, however, the workers stand shoulder to shoulder, sometimes in the height of the season as closely packed as they can work: ordinarily, however, there is ample room for each individual. At one cannery there are seats back of the packers, but they are so arranged that it is impossible to do more than lean back against them for a moment or two, and even this throws an additional strain on the workers’ feet, which it is necessary to brace against the floor or the framework of the fruit table.

Work commences at seven o’clock in the morning, and on days when the cannery runs full time the official closing time is half-past five; but in only one cannery did the employes state that there was an earlier closing time than six o’clock. Half an hour is allowed for lunch, this being divided between two shifts from noon until one o’clock. The normal working day is therefore eleven or eleven and one-half hours long, as in the factory world it is the custom to close half an hour earlier when the lunch hour is shortened to half an hour.

Footnote 5:

Butler, Elizabeth Beardsley; Women and the Trades, page 311.

No skill is required by any of the processes; but the packers must exercise good judgment in selecting slices of the proper grade, else cans marked to contain the best fruit may receive inferior contents and vice versa. The forewomen, of whom there is one at each table in two of the canneries, are responsible for the “pack,” as it is called. If the manager, in inspecting the cans, which he does haphazard, finds careless packing coming frequently from any table, the forewoman is deposed; but there are no fines and no penalties, for the reason that it is impossible to locate the packer responsible for the work. Sometimes two or three are engaged in packing the same grade of slices at the same table.

One cannery reports employing no forewoman because of the unwillingness on the part of any of the women workers to assume this responsibility.

The wages paid as reported by employers vary from five and six cents an hour, paid workers under sixteen years of age, to fifteen cents an hour paid to forewomen. As a result, girls who commence working at twelve years of age and are experienced and efficient workers, receive less wages than an older girl in her first season. The highest rate per hour paid to any but forewomen is ten cents, and the lowest paid to workers over sixteen years of age is seven and one-half cents an hour. One cannery reports paying for eleven hours if the employes work ten hours. Overtime is paid for at the regular rate of pay per hour; and in the case of night work until eight or half-past, the workers interviewed say they either go without supper until they return home or else their supper costs them the greater part of what they earn in the three extra hours. One employer says he pays time and a half for overtime, “when he has to,” and one gives the employes coffee and sandwiches for supper when they work later than 7 o’clock. As coffee and bread is the almost invariable breakfast and lunch—if, indeed, any lunch at all is eaten—the effect on the workers’ health of this overtime, without food, or with the kind of food available, cannot but be injurious.

The cannery owners state that during the heavy season it is necessary to work overtime to take care of the fruit, which deteriorates rapidly and which cannot be packed in cold storage; that the Federal Experiment Station had found no way to prevent waste, once the pineapple is ripe, if it is not canned immediately.

Sunday work, of which only five days are reported by the three canneries, is, however, devoted to labeling, this being done after the fruit is cooked, canned and ready for shipment, so there could be no question of deterioration here. A similar state of affairs, in regard to overtime work, was found in California canneries.

At seven and a half cents an hour—a trifle over the average paid all workers (omitting forewomen)—it is necessary for a girl working sixty hours a week (and being paid for sixty-six according to the one-hour bonus plan) to earn $4.95. Contrasted with the average wage earned by employes in the city and country canneries of California, this shows a much lower rate in Honolulu, the California average being $7.92 a week for 63.8 hours’ work in the country canneries and $7.21 a week for 57.8 hours’ work in the city establishments. (This average also omitted forewomen.)

Footnote 6:

Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 96, September, 1911; page 397.

The owner of one of the canneries stated that last year the average wage was $3.50 to $4.00, and that some of the employes who had been with them longest earned as high as $10.50 during the heavy season. This year the rate of pay was raised in all the canneries, due, I was told by several of the girls, to “kicks by the Jap women.”

The only menace to the health of the workers in the pineapple canneries which might arise from the occupation itself, is the effect of the pineapple juice on the skin. Chemical analysis shows that the acid is so strong, it digests the skin as secretions of the alimentary canal digest food.

By order of the Health Department, rubber gloves are supplied by the companies to the workers handling the fruit; but most of them work barefooted, standing in the drippings from the tables, and their feet were badly eaten by the juice.

On taking this up with the authorities, I was told that the reason the rubber gloves were ordered was not because of the probable injury to the workers, but in order to protect the product from possible contamination.

It would be possible to slat the floors where the workers stand, and flush them well with water several times a day.

None of the Honolulu canneries give free housing accommodations.

The work of screening, operating the syrup machines, cooking, sealing the cans, as well as peeling and coring, is done by men in all the canneries.

Table Showing Length of Season, Time Shut Down During Season; Overtime Run, in Honolulu Canneries in 1912:

───────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────────── Lgth of Season. │ Time Shut Down. Overtime Run. ───────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────── 1-4 months │7 half days. 28 hours Sunday, 24 │ hours night. 2-3½ months │1 whole, 4 hfdays 30 hours Sunday, 60 │ hours night. 3-3½ months │5 whole, 1 hf day 10 hours Sunday, 53 │ hours night. ═══════════════════════╧═══════════════════════════════════════════════

Table Showing Wages paid per hour, Season of 1912, in Honolulu Canneries (As of October 1st.)