Posted on 09/06/2009 11:36:59 AM PDT by BGHater
LABOR DEPARTMENT SEEKS TO REVERSE CHANGES MADE DURING BUSH ADMINISTRATION
The Labor Department is trying again to roll back Bush administration regulations that made it easier for farmers to hire temporary foreign farm workers.
The agency Thursday said it is proposing new rules that would boost wages and increase safeguards for thousands of seasonal workers brought in each year to help farmers pick their crops. It also would require that growers make greater efforts to fill those jobs with American workers.
If the rules are adopted, they largely will reverse regulations finalized shortly before President George W. Bush left office and return to a framework that had been in effect since 1987.
Labor and immigrant rights groups claim the Bush regulations would slash farm wages and make it harder for domestic workers to get those jobs.
The Labor Department briefly suspended the rules earlier this year, but were forced to reinstate them after farm groups successfully challenged the decision in federal court.
"Every worker deserves to be treated and paid fairly,” Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said. "That is especially true of agricultural workers, who often perform backbreaking work for very low wages.”
Solis said the new rules would let the Labor Department take a more active role in protecting farm workers from mistreatment and keeping domestic workers from being unfairly displaced.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsok.com ...
Unionizing temporary labor?
...because farmers don't have enough friggin' bureaucrats to worry about.
I assume this will depress the value of farmland, drive more production to Mexico and elsewhere, etc....
The government needs to just get the h#%% out of the peoples lives.
and of course raise the price of the items picked and all associated products. Just what is needed - higher food prices. Bound to make every one just peachy happy. /sarc
Illegal aliens out now!
Yea right. As if we really need cheap illegal labor for these "poor' massively subsidized farmers. While I don't like the idea or organized labor getting involved in seasonal farm labor, They should have to hire Americans, and not import illegal slave labor, who get drunk and drive without drivers licenses, insurance, and over our kids.
Depress the value of farmland? Yea right.
I say ALL farm subsidies should be stopped. Markets should reflect the actual cost of producing food in this country, not the massive subsidies that keep the commodity markets depressed. I'm sick and tired of billions of dollars a year going to farm subsidies, Millions of illegal aliens sucking even more tax dollars out of my pocket to pay for educating their illegal kids, paying for free medicare, subsidized housing, mortgage scams, all the drug problems that come over the border with them, the crime.
It's about time people paid for what food costs to grow, instead of ME subsidizing their groceries.
You can't claim to be a conservative, then at the same time cry for farm subsidies, cheap illegal labor that doesn't pay a cent of income tax.
Just yesterday here in Ohio i passed a farmer with no less than 9 Mexicans in the back of a pickup truck and two big loads of tabacco peing pulled behind with 2 Mexicans on each one .
The farmer did not like my dispaly of the flying eagle emitted from my drivers side window i don’t think the Mexicans did either !
Oh, I agree with you 100%. But while we're awaiting the Rapture...
Problem is that the leftists have bunched conservation payments in with crop subsidies. Conservation payments are where the feds pay a farmer to manage riparian, wetland or other lands for uses other than growing a crop or grazing. The long term contracts pay the farmer for not growing a crop on the land, but instead planting trees or some other management for the public’s benefit. These are not subsidies.
What we will see is layoffs by the farmers who can't compete with imported agricultural products, and no Americans will be hired at higher wages.
This is unionization efforts and that's the bottom line.
The minimum "living wage" bullshit results in our unemployment rates in excess of 10%, and teenage unemployment rates in the 25% range right now.
We can't compete with imports, who have low-wage workers and flood our markets with their product.
Unions do not care if everyone is un-employed, so long as they are "Union dues-paying members".
The govt has smothered agriculture under a kudzu of insane and contradictory rules. Anyone farming today has to deal with the situation as it is. I know not all of the rules constitute handouts/subsidies.
But the real point is that with farmers being forced to pay more for labor means small farmers will be bought out by corporate farms - not a good thing unless you like eating foods grown from GM seeds.
If people were forced to pay what it actually costs to grow food and provide the small farmer a health return on his investments in seeds and very expensive equipment, a return for the huge risks of running a farm and, with as good a living as you likely have, then nothing in the grocery store would be less than - pick a high number say $50 a pound.
This is actually nothing more than a land grab which has been repeated throughout the natural resource industry for decades.
The growers and the UFW union negotiated a settlement to reform the H2A ag worker visa and it was in place in fall 2003. It was called AgJobs and was part of comprehensive immigration reform.
Unfortunately, the republicans killed comprehensive reform.
Only after reform was dead did Bush make the attempts to make some superficial changes to DOL regs.
Surely you jest!
Moving offshore to enhance profits, escape regulation, and escape Union extortionists is why there is no manufacturing left in the USA.
Between greenies, NIMBY's, and socialists who penalize capitalism at every turn, there's no keeping jobs in the USA where they're easy pickin's for Unions.
The Unions now have taken over the public sectors (AFSME, SEIU, etc.), where they can extort ad infinitum with a willing socialist Congress and Marxist POTUS. The economy reflects the investors' confidence in socialism and over-regulation forcing handouts that can't be funded with income taxes. We've been taxed and regulated into Banana Repulic status.
BINGO !
But, the subject was H2A ag guest workers, which are difficult to organize.
Also, as part of reform, there was a very large non-ag guest worker program, and they are also difficult to organize.
But that was then and then was based on the congressional balance of power at that time.
The compromise of the time was the dems got their amnesty and the GOP got their guestworkers, but the GOP killed all that over the amnesty part.
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