There's been a great deal of talk lately about big-shot developer Richard Fields and his plans to revitalize Suffolk Downs, which his company, Coastal Development, recently purchased. "I was told that Suffolk Downs is a family," Fields recently told The Boston Globe. "We've met just about everybody there, and it is a family. Our goal is to make [Suffolk] family-friendly and to make it customer-friendly."A story in today's Patriot Ledger, the daily in Quincy, is about a doctor and nurse who visit the East Boston oval regularly to dispense free health care to the jockeys, trainers, groomers and stable hands. So much for Fields' "family." Here is an unseemly and hidden truth about "the sport of kings": It takes the sacrifice of poorly-compensated immigrant labor to run a racetrack, where the horses receive much better care than the people. The article notes:
"Because tracks like Suffolk Downs are seasonal, the 300 to 400 workers there are classified as migrants, and thus are exempt from state wage, hour and benefit laws. The men who show up at Bowe’s clinic put in seven-day work weeks to earn around $300 to $500, with no vacation days or health insurance and the near-certainty that, if they don’t get sick, they’ll eventually get hurt by a horse."Meanwhile, Fields just announced the return of Suffolk's biggest race, the Massachusetts Handicap, which will be run on Sept. 22 and will have a purse of $500,000. Here is another example of how American society depends on behind-the-scenes immigrant labor. Further, it's also an example of how the system -- in this case, laws governing healthcare -- actively protect the haves while punishing the have-nots.
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