Dr Rita Pemberton

TOBAGO’S post-emancipation labour problems were manifested in the operations of the metairie system which, from the 1840s, was widely used for the cultivation of sugar cane. The impoverished sugar planters had no option but to make use of the resident workers on the island to maintain their operations.

Although the desire was strong, they were not allowed to import immigrant labour because the island’s Treasury could not afford it. Their situation was compounded by the extensive damage to estate property by the hurricane of 1847, the correction of which required financial inputs which planters did not possess.

The fact is that the Tobago sugar industry was on the decline and because of which the island faced economic challenges. Planters failed to attract the credit which was required to institute changes to their system of operation. Their focus was on changing the system of labour while maintaining the traditional ways of operation, so they sought salvation from immigration schemes.

However, the imperial government refused to allow schemes which the island’s Treasury could not afford. Hence, Tobago plantation owners remained dependent on the resident labour force and instituted the metairie system which, once implemented, became the main system of labour utilised by plantations during the post-emancipation years.

When the system was first introduced, its operation was guided by written contracts made between the plantation owner or his manager, in which the terms of operation were specified, but very quickly written contracts fell into disuse and verbal contracts were instituted. Three developments were responsible for this change.

Firstly, there were disagreements over the terms of trade as specified in the written contracts as both parties sought to wring the best deal for themselves.

Secondly, as estates changed owners and/or managers, disagreements intensified over the practices to which the workers were accustomed and those which the new owners/managers wished to utilise to maximise their benefits.

The third factor was the shortage of cash that the island faced, which caused planters to be unable to pay wages and to resort to payments in kind. With no established and mutually agreed basis on which to evaluate the quantum of the substituted items that was equivalent to one day’s labour, planter/worker conflicts escalated.

However, for the planters, payment in access to land was initially seen as a convenient payment mechanism, which they came to regret. The metayers (as the workers were called) engaged in multiple arrangements with different plantations and so increased the extent of their access to land, which alarmed plantation owners.

In particular, new owners were not prepared to respect worker claims to land allotments on their estates and whenever a dispute arose between metayer and estate owner, it was common for owners to attempt to expel the metayer from the estate, so depriving him of the wages he had previously earned, which were not necessarily related to th