Protecting Workers
While your July 26 article about agricultural labor (“North Carolina wary of possible farm labor shortage”) accurately conveyed the agenda of many growers, it’s disheartening to read an article about farm work that lacks a discussion of the workers themselves.
Many growers favor either an expansion of the H-2A agricultural guestworker program or the creation of a new guestworker program. Current guestworker proposals contravene our core beliefs and values by taking advantage of economically desperate foreign workers and depriving them of economic freedom and political representation.
The H-2A program is inherently flawed and characterized by rampant abuse of both domestic and foreign workers. The H-2A visa ties the workers to their employers, making it hard for workers to quit or report labor violations or abuse. Further, employers who use the program tend to favor H-2A guestworkers over U.S. workers because they will work to the limits of human endurance for low wages.
The most important solution is for Congress to provide America’s experienced, hard-working agricultural work force with improved labor protections and a roadmap to citizenship to stabilize the farm labor force, ensure that farmworkers are treated fairly and assure our nation a safe and sustainable food supply.
By Bruce Goldstein
August 8, 2012
NewsObserver.com, North Carolina.