Dept of Labor announces intent to strip worker protections guestworker program...

[Ichingcarpenter]

Move threatens to worsen already deplorable farmworker conditions...

The Bush administration's Department of Labor announced plans to gut regulations governing the nation's agricultural guestworker program today. The proposed changes threaten to significantly cut farmworker wages, lower the bar on farmworker housing, and diminish government oversight of what is already a troubled program.

The agricultural guestworker program has long been criticized by labor economists as an unnecessary and exploitative sop to the powerful agribusiness lobby, designed to provide farm employers with a steady supply of low-wage, docile labor. Decades of stagnant farm labor wages fly in the face of growers' perennial claims of labor shortages (the logic of labor markets dictates that shortages result in upward pressure on wages, as employers are obliged to increase wages to attract and retain workers). Yet despite the lack of any substantive evidence of labor shortages, the growers' lobby has found an opportunity in today's immigration debate to push its longstanding goal to "streamline" guestworker regulations and so expand the use of H2-A workers to harvest the country's crops.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said of the proposed changes:

"The Department of Labor will hurt both immigrant and U.S.-born workers alike if it goes ahead with its plans to strip a number of workers’ rights from the H-2A agricultural guest worker program. The Bush Administration has shown once again that it will go to any extreme to cater to the interest of corporations at the painful expense of workers, and that it is not serious about real fixes to our nation’s broken immigration system.

The Department of Labor’s proposal will strip the H-2A agricultural guest worker program of necessary wage protections, undermine other essential worker protections, weaken efforts to recruit workers from the U.S., and further erode government oversight.

In short, it is a policy the will do nothing to solve the problem at hand –the need for a fair immigration policy that protects all workers—and instead will ensure a deterioration of working conditions in the agricultural sector and make our nation’s employers even more reliant on the importation and exploitation of foreign workers."

http://www.ciw-online.org/news.html

[mediaman007]

1. They* turn my stomach...

they won't be happy until its 1890 again.

[bluestateguy]

2. This is why corporate conservatives want a "guest worker" immigration policy

And that's why the Kennedy/McCain immigration bill was a streaming pile of shit that deserved to be defeated.

Corporate conservatives and Chamber of Commerce types just want a fresh poll of immigrant labor who are desperate to work for low wages, who will have no labor rights, who can't or won't unionize, who will keep their mouths shut and not agitate, and will drive down wages for the whole labor force.

This rubbish about "jobs Americans won't do" is Chamber of Commerce propaganda. Pay living wages with benefits and Americans will dig ditches, clean toilets and lay bricks.

[thunder rising]

3. Those are the folks that enter legally and still get no protection

If we (the US) would quit supplying arms to death squads and undermining progressive reform in South American, I'll bet we would have to pay them a wage up here.

I firmly believe the illegals know they are disliked, and did not leave home because of too much opportunity in their country. These folks are not sophisticated or educated, they are driven from their homes to survive. The US supplies arms and training (and probably personnel) to handle the wet work necessary to keep South America enslaved to the United States. This is a despicable as Abu Graib (sp?) and Guantonimo. We cause (if not actively participate in) the slaughter of those people.

[thunder rising]

4. That will teach to get "uppity"...get back on your knees.

:sarcasm:

[acmavm]

5. Cruelty is uncalled for and that's all this administration has up its sleeve.

There is no way that ensuring that these people have no basic human rights is helpful to anyone. This just degrades us all.

I'm against illegal immigration, but let us be honest here. I am NOT for mistreatment of fellow human beings. I am not for making them slave labor. In a lot of cases they are being forced to stay and work for big farm/ranch owners who make them pay OUTRAGEOUS amounts of money for basic necessities and then top of those obscene charges with usurious interest fees. No, this cannot stand. We cannot let it stand.

These people DO need protection from the blood suckers that hire/use them. This shit will also punish those here legally who deserve all the rights and protections that citizens have. And as for those who are just poor American citizens, well it goes without saying. They're screwed.

This is just justification for creating as goverment mandated slave labor workforce fog big agriculture. And it will spread to all areas of the labor force.

edit: This pissed me off so badly that I was practically incoherent.

[Ichingcarpenter]

6. If we don't look out and protect the weakest

We will surly be next.