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New rules provide measure of fairness for farmworkers
By
Bill Maxwell, Times
Correspondent
For the first time in years, the nation's 1 million or so farmworkers
will get a real measure of fairness in how they are hired, paid and
treated on the job.
Last week, U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis outlined new rules for the
temporary immigrant farmworkers program known as H-2A for the type of
visa that foreign workers are issued. Solis said these changes would
boost wages and tighten protections for American and foreign laborers.
With these changes, growers will be required to prove they first tried
to find American workers to fill jobs that routinely are given to
migrants. In the past, they could claim they looked for American
workers. They now must prove they conducted legitimate job searches. To
this end, the Labor Department will establish a national electronic
registry of farm jobs.
Growers nationwide are fuming over the new rules, calling them
cumbersome and costly. Migrant advocates are mostly pleased, saying the
rules will, at the very least, prevent many egregious abuses.
One cautious supporter of the rules is Greg Asbed of the Coalition of
Immokalee Workers.
"Our position is that the changes are good, but not sufficient," he
wrote in an e-mail response. "The central, defining problem with the
H-2A visa is that it is not portable, i.e., it is employer specific, and
workers cannot change employers. As such, it puts workers in a decidedly
weak position in relation to their employers, who can send them home
and, as it often happens, blacklist them if they don't conform to
whatever conditions they encounter."
Many of the new regulations restore procedures that were revised or
tossed out during the final days of George W. Bush's presidency.
Bush's most devastating change was the method of calculating wages for
H-2A workers. Farmworker organizations objected at the time, arguing
that the change would drastically lower wages. They were right,
according to a New York Times analysis. During the year the Bush
calculation was in place, farmworkers' wages were reduced by an average
of a dollar an hour. The new calculation, which restores wages to their
previous levels, takes effect March 15.
Solis said the new rules also would return power to state work force
agencies to inspect farms that request migrants. The agencies also
regained the authority to inspect the housing that growers are required
to provide.
Another major change is that growers will have to deliver contracts to
migrant guest laborers before they leave their native countries. This
requirement will help protect workers from recruiting abuses.
The coalition's Asbed cautions: "It is our hope that, if we are to
continue having a guest-worker visa, that it be industry, not employer,
specific, at the very least. If an industry can demonstrate that it is
experiencing a shortage of domestic workers, then it can as an industry
apply for X number of guest-worker visas, which workers can use to work
for any qualifying employer in the industry. That alone would help
redress the untenable imbalance of power between workers and employers
in the current formulation of the guest-worker visa."
In
This is a major reversal for the FTGE. For more than three years, it
vigorously fought the Coalition of Immokalee Workers' Campaign for Fair
Food. The campaign's goal is to raise pickers' annual earnings from
about $10,000 to between $16,000 and $17,000 with a penny per-pound
increase.
Reggie Brown, FTGE's executive vice president, testified against the
campaign at congressional hearings, arguing that a third party had no
legal authority to mandate the terms of its labor practices. The
organization, which represents 90 percent of the growers in the state's
$400 million industry, threatened to fine growers $100,000 if they paid
the extra penny. FTGE dropped the policy last year and has since devised
its own payment plan, along with a "social accountability" code.
"This is an opportunity to partner with our customers and meet their
social accountability needs," Brown told the Miami Herald on
behalf of the growers. Under the FTGE's plan, in addition to releasing
the penny-per-pound funds that have been held in escrow, a growers' code
would prohibit violence or threats, ban discrimination and accept
third-party audits.
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers argues that the FTGE is moving in the
right direction but has not gone far enough: It did not seek input from
workers or their representatives.
"In the end, the growers' code leaves the foxes squarely in charge of
the henhouse," coalition member Lucas Benitez said. "And sadly,
While the Labor Department's new guest-worker rules and the FTGE's
reversal will improve the lives of farmworkers, more needs to be done at
federal and state levels to give these long-neglected people the same
rights and protections the rest of us take for granted.
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