There are several standpoints to justify this position: First of all, as mentioned in the Life and Debt documentary, and as stipulated in the legislation, the free zones are not regulated by the Jamaican government

Secondly, this condition leads to the inability of workers to become organized in unions and ask for their rights to be respected

This means that the American contractors, who in effect play the role of employers, minimize all costs, including those with work safety and security, personnel wages and so on; as a parenthesis, the salary of a Jamaican employee in the free zones if of $120 a month

The employees put in extra, unpaid hours and ever work six day weeks. When some of them rebel to ask for more money or the protection of their rights, they are fired.

All the above findings lead to the unfortunate conclusion that the United States of America is unfair in its trade relationship with Jamaica and that it exploits the conditions of the free zones to its own benefit.

3. The impacted stakeholders

The economic situation in Jamaica takes its tool on numerous categories of stakeholders. For instance:

a) The regular citizens are impeded from an access to borrowed funds; this means that they cannot further invest in improving their lives.

b) The high interest rates impact all categories of citizens, but differentiated by their current socio-economic status. From this standpoint, as it has been mentioned previously, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

c) The economic agents' access to borrowed funds is also restricted, meaning that their development opportunities are limited. This situation in turn generates a series of effects upon various stakeholder categories: the employees within these small...

Here, they will have to make do with a minimum wage of $30 a week and work in tough conditions.
e) The situation takes its toll on the families of these employees as well. As it can be noted in any global region, financial instability can break up a family. Then, the lack of sufficient financial resources will force parents to take the children out of school and have them hired. In the long-term, this decision has a disastrous impact on both the family, as well as the Jamaican people, whose levels of education and general living standards decrease dramatically.

f) An impact is also felt by the creditors who stand to recuperate over $30 billion from Jamaica. Given the tough conditions which impede the country's economic development, it is mostly unlikely for Jamaica to create sufficient resources to reimburse its loans. In other words, the last category of impacted stakeholders is represented by the creditors who might not recuperate their money.