MIDWESTERN MARX
  • Home
  • Online Articles
    • Articles >
      • All
      • News
      • Politics
      • Theory
      • Book Reviews
      • Chinese Philosophy Dialogues
    • American Socialism Travels
    • Youth League
  • Dr. Riggins' Book Series
    • Eurocommunism and the State
    • Debunking Russiagate
    • The Weather Makers
    • Essays on Bertrand Russell and Marxism
    • The Truth Behind Polls
    • Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century
    • Lenin's Materialism & Empirio-Criticism
    • Mao's Life
    • Lenin's State and Rev
    • Lenin's LWC Series
    • Anti-Dühring Series
  • Store
    • Books
    • Merchandise
  • YouTube
  • Journal of American Socialist Studies (JASS)
  • Contact
    • Article Submissions
    • The Marks of Capital
  • Online Library
  • Staff

7/25/2021

‘Modernization’ Act Good For Growers, Not For Workers. By: David Bacon

0 Comments

Read Now
 
Picture
A woman and man cutting endive lettuce in the Imperial Valley. (David Bacon)
​If the Senate passes, and President Biden signs, the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, U.S. growers and labor contractors will benefit, but most farmworkers will not.

There should be no question that undocumented farmworkers need and deserve legal status in this country.  They have fed us, not just during the pandemic, but for as long as we’ve had wage labor in agriculture.

But farmworkers, along with all other undocumented families, need and deserve a bill that provides legal status without imposing the notorious H-2A and E-Verify programs as the price.  Growers need labor, but farmworkers need a sustainable future that promises dignified and well-paid work, not just for this generation, but for generations to come.

The Farm Workforce Modernization Act passed the House once under Trump, and then again this spring.  With no discussion of its possible negative impact, every Democrat in Congress voted for it, except for Maine’s Representative Jared Golden.  Yet this bill, presented as a legalization program for undocumented farmworkers, will likely lead to the replacement of as much as half of the nation’s farmworkers by workers brought into the U.S. by growers using the H-2A guest worker program.  That, in turn, will cement in place the existing deep poverty in farmworker communities, and make it much more difficult for farmworkers to change this.

Rosalinda Guillen, director of the women-led farmworker organization Community to Community in Washington State, has a long history pushing for equitable opportunities for farm workers and their families to build community.
​“The nation’s farmworkers,” she says, “should be recognized as a valuable skilled workforce, able to use their knowledge to innovate sustainable practices.  Most are indigenous immigrants and have the right to maintain cultural traditions and languages and to participate with their multicultural neighbors in building a better America.  This bill instead treats farm workers as a disposable workforce for corporate agriculture.”
​Last year growers were certified to bring in 275,000 H-2A workers.  That is over 10% of the farm workforce in the U.S. and a number that has doubled in just five years and tripled in eight. In states like Georgia and Washington, this program will fill a majority of farm labor jobs in the next year or two.

This program has been studied in many reports over the last decade, from “Close to Slavery” by the Southern Poverty Law Center to “Ripe for Reform” by the Centro de Derechos de los Migrantes to “Exploitation or Dignity” by the Oakland Institute.  All document a record of systematic abuse of workers in the program, and the use of the program to replace farmworkers (themselves immigrants) already living in the U.S.

In 2019 the Department of Labor only punished 25 of the 11,000 growers and labor contractors using the program despite extensive violations, and the punishments were small fines and suspension from it for three years.  The Farm Workforce Modernization Act continues this abuse and will accelerate sharply the replacement of the existing workforce.

The bill freezes the minimum wage for H-2A workers, already close to minimum wage, for a year, and opens the door to abolishing the wage guarantee entirely.  This will not only hurt H-2A workers themselves.  It will effectively push down the wages of all farmworkers.

A long record documents the firing, deportation, and blacklisting of H-2A workers who organize or strike. Familias Unidas por la Justicia, the new union for Washington farmworkers, has helped those workers protest, but seen them forced to leave the county over and over again as a result.  Growers are currently permitted to violate anti-discrimination laws by refusing to hire women or older workers.  The Farm Workforce Modernization Act does not protect them.

The bill, however, does have a provision making it mandatory that growers use the notorious E-Verify system to check the immigration status of workers, and refuse to hire anyone undocumented.  This provision will have an enormous impact. Half of the nation’s 2.4 million farmworkers are undocumented.  While some will qualify for the bill’s tortuous legalization program, many will not.  Denying jobs to hundreds of thousands of farmworkers will cause immense suffering for their families. This would be a bitter reward for feeding the country through the COVID crisis.

Those who qualify for legalization will be required to continue working in agriculture for a period of years.  Losing employment will therefore mean losing their temporary legal status, making it extremely risky for them to organize unions or strike.  Growers, meanwhile, will use the H-2A program to replace domestic workers who can’t legalize or who leave the workforce for other reasons, including local workers who organize and strike.  There are no protections in the bill at all for farmworkers’ right to organize – either for H-2A workers or workers who are living here.

This is a very threatening scenario for farmworker families. Ramon Torres, president of Familias Unidas por la Justicia, says, “In Washington State, we have fought with labor contractors and growers for years to protect farmworker rights, of both H-2A and resident workers.  Our lived experience tells us what the impact of this bill will be.”

Author

​David Bacon is a California journalist covering farm labor and immigration. His latest book is In the Fields of the North (University of California, 2017).


This article was republished from People's World.

Archives

July 2021
June 2021
May 2021
April 2021
March 2021
February 2021
January 2021
December 2020
November 2020
October 2020
September 2020
August 2020
July 2020

Share

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

Details

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020

    Categories

    All
    Aesthetics
    Afghanistan
    Althusser
    American Civil War
    American Socialism
    American Socialism Travels
    Anti Imperialism
    Anti-Imperialism
    Art
    August Willich
    Berlin Wall
    Bolivia
    Book Review
    Brazil
    Capitalism
    Censorship
    Chile
    China
    Chinese Philosophy Dialogue
    Christianity
    CIA
    Class
    Climate Change
    COINTELPRO
    Communism
    Confucius
    Cuba
    Debunking Russiagate
    Democracy
    Democrats
    DPRK
    Eco Socialism
    Ecuador
    Egypt
    Elections
    Engels
    Eurocommunism
    Feminism
    Frederick Douglass
    Germany
    Ghandi
    Global Capitalism
    Gramsci
    History
    Hunger
    Immigration
    Imperialism
    Incarceration
    Interview
    Joe Biden
    Labor
    Labour
    Lenin
    Liberalism
    Lincoln
    Linke
    Literature
    Lula Da Silva
    Malcolm X
    Mao
    Marx
    Marxism
    May Day
    Media
    Medicare For All
    Mencius
    Militarism
    MKULTRA
    Mozi
    National Affairs
    Nelson Mandela
    Neoliberalism
    New Left
    News
    Nina Turner
    Novel
    Palestine
    Pandemic
    Paris Commune
    Pentagon
    Peru Libre
    Phillip-bonosky
    Philosophy
    Political-economy
    Politics
    Pol Pot
    Proletarian
    Putin
    Race
    Religion
    Russia
    Settlercolonialism
    Slavery
    Slavoj-zizek
    Social-democracy
    Socialism
    South-africa
    Soviet-union
    Summer-2020-protests
    Syria
    Theory
    The-weather-makers
    Trump
    Venezuela
    War-on-drugs
    Whatistobedone...now...likenow-now
    Wilfrid-sellers
    Worker-cooperatives
    Xunzi

All ORIGINAL Midwestern Marx content is under Creative Commons
(CC BY-ND 4.0) which means you can republish our work only if it is attributed properly (link the original publication to the republication) and not modified. 
Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • Online Articles
    • Articles >
      • All
      • News
      • Politics
      • Theory
      • Book Reviews
      • Chinese Philosophy Dialogues
    • American Socialism Travels
    • Youth League
  • Dr. Riggins' Book Series
    • Eurocommunism and the State
    • Debunking Russiagate
    • The Weather Makers
    • Essays on Bertrand Russell and Marxism
    • The Truth Behind Polls
    • Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century
    • Lenin's Materialism & Empirio-Criticism
    • Mao's Life
    • Lenin's State and Rev
    • Lenin's LWC Series
    • Anti-Dühring Series
  • Store
    • Books
    • Merchandise
  • YouTube
  • Journal of American Socialist Studies (JASS)
  • Contact
    • Article Submissions
    • The Marks of Capital
  • Online Library
  • Staff