Modern day slavery legislation

Not since the days of slavery have so many residents of the United States lacked the most basic social, economic, and human rights.”

The management of entirely unregulated trans-border labor force of millions of workers with low formal education, including recruitment and employment, has been driven by corporate employers in agriculture, textiles, and meat processing. From the early decades of the 20th Century, whole sectors of the American economy have been staffed by persons with to legal status. Their employers have defeated efforts to normalize the employment relationship. Programs to coordinate the North American economy, including NAFTA, left this trans-border workforce unrelated. Corporate employers have essentially kept the world’s largest trans-border workforce out of government oversight.

Rather than to regulate in a way consistent with 20th Century standards of worker protections and of dispute resolution, the United States practiced benign neglect on these employment relations, with some exceptions, and  tried and consistently failed to influence them indirectly by Mexican border control.

Immigration restrictionists have to come to terms with those employers who depend on these workers. Goodlatte’s Agricultural Guest Worker Act (H.R. 4092) would regulate the workforce by formally recognizing guest workers as persons of sharply diminished rights.

The bill would arm employers with overwhelming control over employment conditions, including mandatory arbitration, reporting within 72 hours if a worker quits, mandatory periodic return to country of origin with no obligation of the employer to pay for transportation, barring family members to accompany the worker, and barring of access to common supports for low wage workers such as SNAP food stamps, federal community health center care, and federally funded legal aid. The bill would essentially close of much of the farming workforce from U.S. citizens and create a closed pool of vulnerable temporary workers.

Farmworker Justice is at the forefront of tackling this bill.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *