Farmworker Organizations Challenge Bush’s H-2A Worker Rule “Deform”

In January, the United Farm Workers union, PCUN and other organizations filed suit to challenge the Bush Administration's last minute gutting of worker protections for H-2A "guest" workers.

New rules took effect January 17th--just three days before Bush's term expired--and gave growers everything they'd failed to achieve legislatively: slashing wage rates, minimizing recruitment of U.S. workers, reducing transportation cost payments by employers to workers, creating loop holes in housing safety requirements, decimating the job preference for U.S. workers, allowing employers to pay some U.S. workers less than they pay H-2A workers, and changing the "labor certification" process to a "labor attestation" process that means minimal government oversight in a program rife with abuse.

The litigation, ably orchestrated by Farmworker Justice in Washington D.C., is one of dozens of similar efforts to rollback the Bushites' multi-faceted ravaging of labor, environmental and health rules on their way out of power. Because the H-2A rule took effect January , incoming Labor Secretary Hilda Solís could not simply rescind it. Instead, the Labor Department published a notice proposing to suspend the rule. Grower associations are seeking to intervene in our litigation, hoping to salvage their regulatory windfall.

It's likely that the lawsuit and the regulatory process will take months to complete. It's already consumed time and effort that could have been devoted to proactive, pro-worker reforms. We are optimistic that, at least in this case, we'll succeed in undoing most, if not all of the harm perpetrated by the Bush Administration, and prevent a wholesale looting of workers' rights.