(Washington D.C.) Today over a hundred organizations from around
the country have issued formal objections to the Bush Administration’s
plan to overhaul the H-2A agricultural guestworker program. The
groups claim that these flawed changes would encourage agricultural
employers to hire a flood of foreign workers that would be brought
into the country without basic protections and assurances. The
Department of Labor (DOL) and the Department of Homeland Security
(DHS), who are issuing the proposed regulations changes, were open to
input on the plan during a short public comment period which ended
today.
The
H-2A program allows agricultural employers to hire foreign workers for
seasonal jobs using temporary work visas if they can show that there
is a shortage of U.S. workers. The program also ensures that the
wages and working conditions offered are not so low as to undermine
the labor standards of U.S. farmworkers. The groups claim that the
DOL has long neglected to enforce worker protections in the existing
plan, which has been plagued by abuses, and is now trying to rush
through an immensely flawed overhaul that would reduce government
oversight and worker protections even further.
According to a sign-on letter some of the groups submitted, the
intent of the proposed changes is to increase employer’s access to
easily exploitable laborers from poor countries who could not demand
the wages and working conditions legal U.S. workers could. “The end
result of DOL’s proposed changes—developed with the requested input of
agricultural employers who have made clear their preference for a
captive workforce of young, male guestworkers—would be a diminishing
workforce of U.S farmworkers replaced by a vulnerable workforce of
exploitable imported temporary workers”. Although the DOL asked for
agricultural employer input for the program, it failed to ask the same
of farmworker advocacy and labor organizations.
The
solution to our nation’s need for farmworkers, the letter says, is to
reduce discrimination against agricultural workers in U.S. employment
law which results in farmworkers being denied the basic worker
protections afforded to workers in other professions.
“The
Administration has an opportunity to offer meaningful solutions to the
perpetual “plight” of farmworkers that has been the subject of exposés
and government commission recommendations for decades” the letter
states. “Rather than rise to this opportunity, DOL proposes to return
to a distant past of failed government policies and complicity in
rampant abuses by agricultural employers. By proposing regulations
relieving employers of liability, discouraging U.S. workers from
seeking H-2A jobs, lowering H-2A wages, eliminating or reducing many
of the program’s labor protections, and narrowing the class of U.S.
workers protected by the H-2A regulations, DOL would permit employers
to displace U.S. workers, exploit the vulnerability of hundreds of
thousands of guestworkers and worsen job terms for all farmworkers.
This nation should not go down that path once again”.
March 10, 2008
Senators Kennedy and Obama Send Letters to DOL requesting extended Public
Comment Period on Proposed Changes to H-2A Program
The letter from the Senators can be
downloaded here
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March 06, 2008
Key Senior Congressional Members Send Letters to DOL Urging
Withdrawal of Bush Proposal
Representatives Miller, Conyers, Berman, Woolsey and Lofgren
urge withdrawal of Bush Plan
Representatives George Miller (D-CA), Chairman of the Committee on
Education and Labor; John Conyers (D-MI), Chairman of the Committee
on the Judiciary; Howard
Berman (D-CA), Acting Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs; Lynn Woolsey (D-CA),
Chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections; and Zoe Lofgren (D-CA),
Chairwoman on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security
and International Law, sent a
letter this morning to Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao urging her to
withdraw the proposal to change the H-2A guestworker program.
The letter also asks that Secretary Chao extend the shortened
45-day comment period to the
normal 90-day period if she insists
on going forward with the proposed changes.
Download a pdf of the letter here
Clinton Issues Statement Criticizing Bush Administration Guestworker Plan
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Contact: Clinton Press Office 202-224-2243 or
press@clinton.senate.gov
STATEMENT OF SENATOR HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON ON THE DEPARTMENT OF
LABOR'S PROPOSED H-2A REGULATIONS
Washington, DC – “I am deeply concerned that the Bush
Administration's proposed H-2A regulations would worsen an already
flawed program. The changes would weaken protections for U.S. and
foreign workers, reduce government oversight, and slash wage rates,
while failing to address the many problems that have prevented
growers from using the program for more than a small fraction of
their labor needs. Our nation needs sensible, comprehensive H-2A
legislation that protects the rights and wages of workers and
provides a stable and sufficient workforce for growers. I call on
the Administration to join me in striving to achieve that kind of
real and meaningful reform.”
Obama Issues letter
to DOL condemning
Bush Administration Plan
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Today, Sen. Barack Obama
of Illinois, sent a letter to Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao in
which he criticizes the Department of Labor's proposal to change
the H-2A agricultural guestworker program.
In the letter, Sen. Obama
presses Secretary Chao to support the labor-management, bipartisan
compromise in Congress, known as AgJOBS. He calls on the Administration
to either withdraw the proposal to change the H-2A program or, at a
minimum, extend the time period for the public to comment on the
extensive proposed changes. (She has set a 45-day comment period that is
utterly inadequate due to the scope of the proposed changes.)
We thank Sen. Obama for his
commitment to farmworkers and for taking time out of his busy schedule
to address an issue of such great importance to the nation's farmworkers.
Read Obama's letter here
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February 20, 2008
Immigration
Coalition Seeks Withdrawal of Bush Plan to Overhaul H-2A Guestworker
Program
A major national immigration
coalition urges Secretary of Labor Chao to withdraw proposal to
change H-2A temporary foreign agricultural worker program due to
its anti-worker bias, and supports passage of the AgJOBS
legislation. The coalition is FIRM,
Fair
Immigration Reform Movement.
Read the
letter from FIRM here.
Below is the list of organizations on the FIRM steering committee.
African Resource Center
(Washington, DC)
CAUSA (Oregon)
Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of
Los Angeles (California)
Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition
Florida Immigrant Coalition
Gamaliel Foundation (National)
Hate Free Zone (Washington)
Idaho Community Action Network
Illinois Coalition for Immigrant
and Refugee Rights
Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee
Advocacy Coalition
Michigan Organizing Project
Michigan Organizing Strategy to
Enable Strength (MOSES)
National Capital Immigrant Coalition
Nebraska Appleseed
New Jersey Immigrant and Policy
Network
New York Immigrant Coalition
Northwest Federation of Community
Organizations (Washington, Idaho, Montana, Oregon)
Pineros y Campesinos de Noroeste
(Oregon)
Sunflower Community Action (Kansas)
Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee
Rights Coalition
Voces de la Frontera (Wisconsin)
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February 20, 2008
Farmworker
Advocates Request Extension on Public Comment Period
A coalition of organizations that
plan to submit comments on the Bush Administration’s proposal to
eliminate major labor protections in the H-2A agricultural
guestworker program has submitted a letter to Secretary Chao
asking her to extend the time frame for public comments from 45
days to 90 days. The letter is attached. The DOL’s complex
proposal contains numerous changes, some blatant and some not
obvious, that require extensive review and analysis that is not
reasonably possible in a 45-day period.
The groups that signed on to the letter
appear below. Thanks very much to those working on the comments and on
these efforts.
Farmworker Justice
AFL-CIO
California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation.
California Rural Legal Assistance, Inc.
Centro Campesino, Inc. (MN)
Change to Win
Farm Labor Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO
(continued on following page)
Farmworker Legal Services (Bangor, Michigan)
Florida Legal Services, Inc.
Friends of Farmworkers
International Brotherhood of Teamsters
League of United Latin American Citizens
MAFO, A Partnership of Farmworker Organizations
Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF)
National Council of La Raza
National Employment Law Project
National Farm Worker Ministry
Northwest Workers Justice Project
Organización en California de Líderes Campesinas, Inc.
Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN, Oregon)
Service Employees International Union
Student Action with Farmworkers
Texas RioGrande Legal Aid
UMOS (Wisconsin)
United Farm Workers
United Farm Workers Foundation
United Food and Commercial Workers International Union
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February 13, 2008
DOL announces sweeping
changes to H-2A Program
(WASHINGTON DC)—
The Bush administration has published their plans to substantially cut
the wages of agricultural workers in the U.S. and weaken the modest
labor protections of the H-2A guestworker program. These
administrative policies, announced today by the Department of Labor
(DOL) as a proposed change to regulations, would drastically lower
protections and minimum housing standards for the farmworkers who
harvest our nation’s crops. The changes also would allow employers
to hire foreign workers without having to first recruit U.S. workers
effectively and without meaningful government oversight. The
proposal should be withdrawn.
“Farmworkers face the most devastating
policy changes since the end of the abusive Bracero program in the
early 1960s” said Bruce Goldstein, Executive Director of Farmworker
Justice. “The White House and Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao are
heartlessly slashing wage rates and removing labor protections for
United States agricultural workers. The administration is
encouraging agricultural employers to hire cheap foreign labor thus
lowering the wages for all U.S. workers,” he continued. “Employers
should offer wage rates based on America’s labor standards, not
those of developing nations.”
The Department of Labor will allow 45 days for the public to comment
on the proposal before finalizing it. DOL plans to reduce
government oversight of the application process by which employers
petition for foreign workers, by changing from a “labor
certification” process to a so-called “labor attestation” process,
which means that employers need only promise to comply with the
law.
The DOL proposal will also change the
wage formula for the H-2A program by using different statistics to
set the wage rate. Previously these rates were calculated based on
surveys performed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. For
example, the 2008 rates (based on 2007 wages) include: California,
$9.72 per hour; Georgia, $8.53; New York, $9.70; North Carolina,
$8.85 (down from $9.02 last year); Ohio, $9.90. Now the DOL wishes
to use flawed surveys by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) that
result in substantially lower wage rates. The
complex proposal would involve large numbers of individual wage
rates in numerous geographic areas and would allow employer
manipulation of the wage system.
In addition, many H-2A employers would no
longer need to provide workers with housing; they will be permitted
to provide a housing “voucher.” Frequently, there is no housing
available for farmworkers so a voucher is essentially worthless.
Farmworker Justice supports a solution to our farm labor needs that
was negotiated by the United Farm Workers and major agribusiness
employers called AgJOBS --the Agricultural Job Opportunities,
Benefits and Security Act.
“We already have hundreds of thousands of
farmworkers in this country who need better wages and working
conditions,” said Goldstein. “AgJOBS has broad bi-partisan support
in Congress. The Bush Administration should work with Congress to
pass AgJOBS, not lower wage rates and labor standards to enable
agricultural employers to bring in vulnerable guestworkers to
harvest America’s fruits and vegetables,” he concluded.
Download an MS
Word
version of this One Page Statement by Farmworker Justice
See also the
United
Farm Workers' statement/Action-Alert page and the
AFL-CIO's statement on their website.
[Back to Top]
Bush Administration Makes One-Sided Changes to the H-2A Agricultural Guestworker Program
IN November 2007 Memo
Context:
On August 10,
President Bush announced that the Administration would consider
changes to the H-2A agricultural guest worker program to streamline
the program while retaining labor protections.
In early October
2007, the Los Angeles Times reported on letters sent by the
National Council of Agricultural Employers (NCAE) to the Bush
Administration demanding extensive changes to the H-2A program. On
October 14th, the New York Times published an
editorial criticizing the Bush Administration’s plan to make one-sided
changes to the H-2A program and urging passage of AgJOBS. Click here to
see more media coverage.
On November 6, 2007,
the Department of Labor issued a memo that drastically limited H-2A
employer obligations to recruit US workers for the agricultural
employment. The memo also imposes the obligation on state workforce
agencies to verify employment eligibility of any US workers referred
to employers in response to an H-2A job order with a “strong
recommendation” to use the highly flawed E-Verify program. Farmworker
Justice and the UFW alerted Congress and issued press statements
condemning the DOL’s actions against farmworkers (click here to see
FJ’s press statement and here to see
UFW’s
press statement). On November 14, 2007, the DOL rescinded
the Nov. 6 memo but issued an equally illegal replacement.
Please see our bulletin
for more information. Through these illegal policies, the Bush
administration is enabling agricultural employers to hire cheap
foreign labor and helping to lower the wages for all U.S. workers.
The
Administration’s resources would be better spent cooperating on the
passage of AgJOBS and on enforcing the labor protection in the H-2A
program. These changes to the H-2A
program would not address the reality that the majority of
farmworkers already in the United States are undocumented.
The bipartisan AgJOBS legislation offers a
balanced approach that both employers and farmworkers can live
with and that will serve America well.
Q. How did Congress Respond to the Administration’s Illegal Actions against Farmworkers?
A. Congressional members
wrote letters and press releases to
President Bush and Secretary Chao, click on the links below to read
them:
Q. What did Advocates Do in Response to the Administration's
Announcement of Plans to Change the H-2A Program?
A.
Farmworker Justice met with high-level officials from the DOL to
discuss changes to the H-2A program and submitted a
letter with recommended changes to the H-2A program.
FJ also is
working closely with the United Farm Workers union and other
farmworker, labor and immigration advocates around the country stop
these one-sided changes to the H-2A program. A
coalition of labor groups and a
coalition of Latino groups have sent letters to the
Administration opposing one-sided changes to the H-2A program.
In January of 2008, more than a dozen farmworker advocacy organizations, including
Farmworker Justice, released a letter to the Department of Labor (DOL) criticizing the agency for its recent and
illegal policy changes to the H-2A agricultural guestworker program as
outlined in a November 14th memo.
The groups are demanding that Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao immediately
retract the policy memo.
Press Release
Letter to DOL
and attachments:
November 14th DOL memo
[Back to Top]
Commentary: Bush
Administration Aims for Cheap Foreign Labor in '08
January 2008
by Bruce Goldstein, Executive Director
2008 will be a hard year for farmworkers if the Bush
Administration has its way. The Department of Labor announced plans to
change the agricultural guestworker program in ways that not only fail
to solve the farm labor supply problem, but will also severely harm
workers.
It began in November when the Department of Labor (DOL)
issued new instructions to its staff to allow farm operators to bring in
guestworkers without vigorously recruiting qualified U.S. workers
(legal immigrants and citizens). The new policy was illegal and unfair
to tens of thousands of migrant farmworkers who wanted and needed these
jobs.
The Administration also revealed that it would
announce a series of more extensive changes to the H-2A guestworker
program that would include lowering wage rates, minimizing recruitment
of U.S. workers, weakening housing requirements, reducing government
oversight and otherwise encouraging the use of cheap foreign labor. If
these proposed changes go through, 2008 may prove to be the year in
which America returns to the era of rampant farm labor exploitation
under the notorious “Bracero” guestworker program during the 1950s and
early 1960s.
Under the agricultural guestworker program—called
H-2A—an employer may apply to hire foreign workers on temporary work
permits to perform seasonal jobs. This visa binds guestworkers to the
employer that obtained the visa for them and requires that they return
home once the season ends. A guestworker who wishes to return the
following season must hope for a new invitation from the employer. With
their legal status in this country tied to their employer, guest workers
are vulnerable to abuse. This is a system with great potential for
creating sweatshops in the fields of America’s farmlands.
In other industries, employers facing a labor
shortage compete for workers by improving wages and working conditions.
Not agriculture. Instead of raising wages to attract workers within
this country, they are asking government to for permission to lower
wage rates so they can hire foreign workers instead. If the Labor
Department lowers the wage rates, farmworkers in this country have no
real chance of winning better pay. Once an employer offers the required
H-2A minimum wages and working conditions, it is free to reject a U.S.
worker who wants higher wages and can instead hire endless numbers of
foreign workers from poorer nations.
Also, enforcement of the inadequate protections that
do exist in the current program is severely lacking. The Labor
Department is supposed to make sure that H-2A employers comply with the
program’s labor standards but often turns a blind eye to employer
abuses.
Instead of re-creating a system we know does not
work, what we need is a real solution that would reform the guestworker
program in ways that would supply employers with the labor they need
while also protecting American workers. That solution is AgJOBS. It is
a product of hard-fought negotiations between business and labor, and
Republicans and Democrats in Congress, that came after years of conflict
over federal farm labor policy. All parties made tough concessions to
reach a realistic, practical agreement that is consistent with America’s
values.
AgJOBS would streamline the H-2A process for
employers, modestly lower the wage rates for a period, and provide
guestworkers with new legal safeguards for the job terms promised to
them. AgJOBS also would allow qualified undocumented farmworkers already
in the U.S. to come forward, pay fines and fees, and earn legal
immigration status by continuing to work in American agriculture for
three to five more years. It would create the strong, stable workforce
needed for real food security in this country.
America needs a balanced approach to farm labor and
immigration policy that will be good for employers, good for workers and
good for the nation. Let’s not regress to a system of inhumane
exploitation that we know is not sustainable. The Bush administration
should be stopped from issuing one-sided, cheap foreign labor policy
changes and should press Congress to pass AgJOBS in 2008.
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