Bush Administration Seeks to Curtail Labor Protections

From the Guest worker H-2A Program

Washington, DC - The League of United Latin American Citizens, our nation’s oldest and largest Hispanic civil rights organization, is outraged by the Bush Administration’s attempt to modify the H-2A temporary foreign agricultural worker program.

The lengthy proposal calls for a new wage formula that would slash a farmworker’s wage rate, and weaken an employer’s housing requirements by providing a precariously defined ‘housing voucher’. Typically, there is no housing available for agricultural workers therefore a housing voucher would be ineffective. The proposal also removes an employer’s obligation to first recruit US citizens and legal permanent residents before hiring guestworkers.

[b]“The Bush Administration’s H2A proposal is nothing more than stripping away existing labor protections,â€