Bush Administration Wants to Take Away Guest Workers’ Rights

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/02/08/bush-administration-wants-to-take-away-guest-workers-rights/

by James Parks, Feb 8, 2008

In another lame-duck effort to put its anti-worker agenda into practice for years to come, the Bush administration is proposing to strip a number of rights from workers here under the H-2A agricultural guest worker program. H-2A and H-2B visa programs bring agricultural and other seasonal workers into this country to pick crops, build houses and process seafood, among other jobs.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says the proposal:

will hurt both immigrant and U.S.-born workers alike. 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 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 this country and further erode government oversight, Sweeney says.

Guest workers typically are deeply in debt by the time they arrive in the United States. Companies that hire them often exploit them and charge them additional fees for boarding, food and expenses. Last year, President Bush proposed expanding the guest worker program, a move that unions and civil rights advocates opposed. A study by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in the United States, relates that it is not unusual for guest workers to pay more than $2,500 in fees to obtain a seasonal guest worker position, about a year’s worth of income in a country like Guatemala. And Thai workers have been known to pay as much as $10,000 for the chance to harvest crops in the orchards of the Pacific Northwest. Interest rates on loans brokers charge to get them into the country are sometimes as high as 20 percent a month. Homes and vehicles are required as collateral.

FULL story at link.

[Benhurst]

1. Wouldn't it be a lot easier to just reintroduce slavery?

[madrchsod]

2. he just did....