by Bruce Goldstein

2008 will be a hard year for farmworkers if the Bush Administration has its way. The Department of Labor announced plans to change the agricultural guestworker program in ways that not only fail to solve the farm labor supply problem, but will also severely harm workers.

It began in November when the Department of Labor (DOL) issued new instructions to its staff to allow farm operators to bring in guestworkers without vigorously recruiting qualified U.S. workers (legal immigrants and citizens). The new policy was illegal and unfair to tens of thousands of migrant farmworkers who wanted and needed these jobs.

The Administration also revealed that it would announce a series of more extensive changes to the H-2A guestworker program that would include lowering wage rates, minimizing recruitment of U.S. workers, weakening housing requirements, reducing government oversight and otherwise encouraging the use of cheap foreign labor. If these proposed changes go through, 2008 may prove to be the year in which America returns to the era of rampant farm labor exploitation under the notorious “Bracero” guestworker program during the 1950s and early 1960s.

Under the agricultural guestworker program—called H-2A—an employer may apply to hire foreign workers on temporary work permits to perform seasonal jobs. This visa binds guestworkers to the employer that obtained the visa for them and requires that they return home once the season ends. A guestworker who wishes to return the following season must hope for a new invitation from the employer. With their legal status in this country tied to their employer, guest workers are vulnerable to abuse. This is a system with great potential for creating sweatshops in the fields of America’s farmlands.

In other industries, employers facing a labor shortage compete for workers by improving wages and working conditions. Not agriculture. Instead of raising wages to attract workers within this country, they are asking government to for permission to lower wage rates so they can hire foreign workers instead. If the Labor Department lowers the wage rates, farmworkers in this country have no real chance of winning better pay. Once an employer offers the required H-2A minimum wages and working conditions, it is free to reject a U.S. worker who wants higher wages and can instead hire endless numbers of foreign workers from poorer nations.

Also, enforcement of the inadequate protections that do exist in the current program is severely lacking. The Labor Department is supposed to make sure that H-2A employers comply with the program’s labor standards but often turns a blind eye to employer abuses.

Instead of re-creating a system we know does not work, what we need is a real solution that would reform the guestworker program in ways that would supply employers with the labor they need while also protecting American workers. That solution is AgJOBS. It is a product of hard-fought negotiations between business and labor, and Republicans and Democrats in Congress, that came after years of conflict over federal farm labor policy. All parties made tough concessions to reach a realistic, practical agreement that is consistent with America’s values.

AgJOBS would streamline the H-2A process for employers, modestly lower the wage rates for a period, and provide guestworkers with new legal safeguards for the job terms promised to them. AgJOBS also would allow qualified undocumented farmworkers already in the U.S. to come forward, pay fines and fees, and earn legal immigration status by continuing to work in American agriculture for three to five more years. It would create the strong, stable workforce needed for real food security in this country.

America needs a balanced approach to farm labor and immigration policy that will be good for employers, good for workers and good for the nation. Let’s not regress to a system of inhumane exploitation that we know is not sustainable. The Bush administration should be stopped from issuing one-sided, cheap foreign labor policy changes and should press Congress to pass AgJOBS in 2008.