Labor Secretary Proposes Suspending Farm Rules

[billyoc]

Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis announced Friday that she would suspend regulations that the Bush administration introduced in December to make it easier and cheaper for agricultural employers to use foreign workers in temporary jobs.

Just hours after being officially sworn on Friday morning, Ms. Solis said she would suspend the regulations for nine months. The move could create turmoil for growers who had already applied to bring in temporary farm workers under the new rules.

Last year, tens of thousands of foreign workers were brought in under the temporary agricultural program, known as H-2A, harvesting lettuce, sweet potatoes, tobacco, cucumbers, sugar cane and other crops. The new rules cut the wages that many of these workers will receive and reduced the amount that growers had to reimburse these workers for their travel. They also eased administrative burdens by letting employers simply attest that they had met various program requirements. Ms. Solis, who criticized the rules when she was in Congress, said suspending them was “the prudent and responsible action” to take “because many stakeholders have raised concerns about the H-2A regulations.”

Many farm worker and labor groups had attacked the Bush regulations, saying they would push down wages for H-2A workers and take away jobs from workers in the United States. Growers generally applauded the rules, saying they would reduce red tape in employing foreign seasonal workers who they said did arduous farm jobs that few Americans wanted to do.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/14/us/politics/14labor.html?_r=1&ref=us

By the fall I expect to see lines of Americans going around the block for lettuce picking jobs.

[cali]

1. hurrah for Hilda!

But i doubt you'll see lines of Americans trying to get jobs picking lettuce.

[BeFree]

3. Well

John McCain, (loser), said a $50 bounty on heads of lettuce would keep the ferners out!

[formercia]

2. Americans probably won't apply for jobs

but the foreign workers might get a better salary.

I would be willing to pay a few cents extra for sugar if it meant the workers got decent pay and working conditions.

[L. Coyote]

5. As an American, I'm insulted. I have worked in the fields, not to mention the usage of

Americans! If Mexicans are not Americans, Europeans sure as hell are not!
The "Real Americans" are the ones doing all the work in the fields.

I have spent my days in the fields hoeing weeds by hand, harvesting, etc.
It is work and some of us just do that work! Anyone fit can.

What is wrong today is that an illegal economy keeps the pay too low!!

[formercia]

6. Good Point

I should have said: Norteamericanos. :hi:

[L. Coyote]

8. I think Euro-Americans is a proper term for the English invasion.

There are a lot of different people in "el Norte" now including a few surviving Natives.
With slave importing for centuries and now global migrations, a "norteamericano" can be from anywhere.

[formercia]

11. Native peoples commonly took slaves and exploited other groups.

There are good and bad people in all societies.

[L. Coyote]

12. Name one! British ships plyed the trade non-stop. That's slavery.

[formercia]

13. K

http://www.slaveryinamerica.org/history/hs_es_indians_slavery.htm

Slavery and Native Americans in British North America and the United States: 1600 to 1865
By Tony Seybert

Most Native American tribal groups practiced some form of slavery before the European introduction of African slavery into North America; but none exploited slave labor on a large scale. Indian groups frequently enslaved war captives whom they used for small-scale labor and in ritual sacrifice. Most of these so-called Indian slaves tended to live, however, on the fringes of Indian society. Although not much is known about them, there is little evidence that they were considered racially inferior to the Indians who held power over them. Nor did Indians buy and sell captives in the pre-colonial era, although they sometimes exchanged enslaved Indians with other tribes in peace gestures or in exchange for their own members. In fact, the word "slave" may not even accurately apply to these captive people.

The situation of enslaved Indians varied among the tribes. In many cases, enslaved captives were adopted into the tribes to replace warriors killed during a raid. Enslaved warriors sometimes endured mutilation or torture that could end in death as part of a grief ritual for relatives slain in battle. Some Indians cut off one foot of their captives to keep them from running away; others allowed enslaved captives to marry the widows of slain husbands. The Creek, for example, treated the children born of slaves and tribal members as full members of the tribe rather than as enslaved offspring. Some tribes held captives as hostages for payment. Other tribes practiced debt slavery or imposed slavery on tribal members who had committed crimes; but this status was only temporary as the enslaved worked off their obligations to the tribal society.

Once Europeans arrived as colonialists in North America, the nature of Indian slavery changed abruptly and dramatically. Indians found that British settlers, especially those in the southern colonies, eagerly purchased or captured Indians to use as forced labor in cultivating tobacco, rice, and indigo. More and more, Indians began selling war captives to whites rather than integrating them into their own societies. And as the demand for labor in the West Indies became insatiable, whites began to actively enslave Indians for export to the so-called "sugar islands."

[L. Coyote]

15. By Tony Seybert. ... LOL.Propaganda. Indians were hunted for slaves, that is known for fact.

Just because someone writes something does not distinguish it for the falsehoods.
Case in point "Indian groups frequently enslaved war captives whom they used for small-scale labor and in ritual sacrifice." LOL!

This is like the US saying Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and were going to nuke us! More BS from the damned liars covering up their genocidal crimes.

Here is a fact: Slavers crossed the US SW and sold the captives in the Santa Fe and Los Angeles slave markets, right up until the Republic of Mexico outlawed slavery.

[formercia]

9. Profit and competing with cheap products from countries

that pay their workers squat.

The big corporations want 'free trade' so they can pit workers from one country against workers from another.

I worked for an electronics contract manufacturer that had plants all over the world and each plant had to bid against the others for work. We had to compete against plants in Viet Nam and China.

We still made the products cheaper because of productivity.

[amandabeech]

4. When I was a teenager, before I was old enough for a regular work permit,

I picked cherries in the summer for spending money.

Other kids worked in the spring picking asparagus and in the fall picking apples and harvesting Christmas trees before school, after school and on weekends.

I can see some of that coming back.

[Raksha]

7. That reminds me...that's WHY schools have summer vacations in the first place.

It's because the kids were needed on the farm to get in the harvest. They still are!

[amandabeech]

14. Yes.

That and the fact that kids don't learn well in the sauna that much of our country experiences in July and early August.

I don't think that every school has A/C today.

I also think that kids need time to be just kids, not students.

[espiral]

10. re: OP

I was happy to hear this; at least it is one more stride in
the direction of justice.