Guest Workers Exploited, Forgotten

by James Parks, Nov 27, 2007

As the debate over the nation’s guest workers remains unresolved, our political leaders should take a look at the reality that thousands of guest workers are routinely abused and forced to live in squalid, slave-like conditions, activists working with migrant workers say.

Every year, 160,000 guest workers are permitted to enter the United States, supposedly to fill in gaps in our labor force. More than 25,000 of them work in the fields of North Carolina, harvesting tobacco, sweet potatoes, cucumbers and Christmas trees, according to the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC).  

Leticia Zavala, an organizer for FLOC, says the health conditions for guest workers in the fields is a major problem, especially for those who harvest tobacco (see video).

The nicotine we hear about people getting addicted to and having negative side effects is also in the plant. So when a worker is in plain daylight in 105 degrees and a plant of tobacco that’s five feet tall, you’re swimming in a cigarette. A worker’s day in the field is like smoking huge amounts of cigarettes because the nicotine is being sucked into your pores.

In the past several years, nine farm workers died working the fields of North Carolina. Thousands more suffered work-related sicknesses from heat and chemicals from the tobacco, FLOC reports. Last month, hundreds of tobacco workers rallied in front of headquarters of the giant tobacco company R.J. Reynolds to demand safer working conditions and fair treatment.  

Yet, despite such problems, Stephen Franklin and Darnell Little report in the Chicago Tribune that guest workers are in fact “ghost workers” who exist

in a nether world beyond the public’s radar, and often beyond the government’s as well.

When Franklin and Little examined federal records and lawsuits and interviewed farmers, workers and advocacy groups, they found:

• Some guest workers have been treated like modern-day slaves, cheated out of their wages and shifted from job to job with little control over their fate.
• Some are forced into dangerous and lethal jobs or stranded financially as a result of broken promises made by U.S. labor contractors and employers. One common tactic is to promise good-paying jobs but then dump workers into hazardous low-paying jobs.
• Many guest workers have been taken advantage of by unscrupulous foreign recruiters who charge them hefty fees that put them into severe debt. The debts keep the workers in line; they need the jobs to pay their bills. Once in the United States, some of these same workers are underpaid.
• The lack of communication between various governmental agencies in charge of the guest-worker programs is one reason problems have lingered for years. Another is the failure of government officials to heed complaints of worker abuse from federal auditors, state officials, attorneys and even fellow officials.

Until we can protect the basic rights of guest workers already in the United States, Congress should not consider expanding that program, FLOC President Baldemar Velasquez told the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee last summer. Half of FLOC’s members are guest workers, he says.

Velasquez said expanding the current program would increase the corruption that plagues the program. He cited the longstanding problem of brokers extorting large amounts of money from workers to obtain visas. 

To ensure guest workers receive fair treatment, Velasquez told the committee it is important that all workers’, including farm workers’ rights are protected, including the freedom to join a union.

President Bush’s immigration reform proposal, which would have expanded the guest worker program, collapsed in the Senate in late June.

 The solution to the guest worker crisis will require a new approach, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and Pablo Alvarado, executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said in a Los Angeles Times opinion piece in April. Key reforms should include: 

• Everyone who is admitted to work must immediately be on a track toward permanent residency.
• Employers who can prove that they tried and failed to find U.S. workers should be able to hire foreign workers, but not under abusive conditions that have a negative effect on the wages and working conditions.
• Caps on the number of employment-based visas issued each year should be set by  the U.S. Department of Labor based on economic indicators that establish the needs of particular industries, not by political compromise.
• Employers should not be allowed to recruit abroad, a practice that invites bribes, exorbitant fees and potential abuse. Instead, employers should be required to hire from applications filed by workers in their home countries through a computerized job bank.
• Foreign workers should enjoy the same rights and protections as U.S. workers, including freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life.

Zavala, who is profiled in the AFL-CIO Now  “Heart of the Movement” says it is critical for migrant workers to be free to join unions:

We need to organize in the fields and communities. As immigrants, we need to demand respect. We basically are feeding the country and are not being respected for it.          

FLOC, based in Toledo, Ohio, with offices in North Carolina and Mexico, includes thousands of immigrant farm workers seeking to gain decent wages and respect in the fields where they harvest crops ranging from tobacco to tomatoes. Last year, FLOC won union recognition and decent benefits for nearly 7,000 migrant farm workers in North Carolina. In May, more than 15,000 migrant farm workers in North Carolina moved a big step closer toward achieving fair treatment in the workplace. 

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