Could nineteenth-century contract laborers consent to their employers' use of violence on them?

During the nineteenth century, it was commonly understood among Asian contract laborers in Hawaii's sugar cane fields that they could be whipped by supervisors if they worked too slowly. Did the contract laborers therefore tacitly consent to the risk of being subjected to whippings? Or is the corporal punishment a wrongful initiation of the use of force, even if the contract laborers accepted the job knowing that they might be whipped? Does the answer change if consent was explicit -- meaning that the laborer voluntarily signed a contract allowing the supervisor to whip him at will?