| FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 23, 1999 | |
STATEMENT AGAINST PROPOSED GUESTWORKER PROGRAM I am Mary Finger, International Vice President of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. On behalf of the 1.4 million members of the UFCW, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to speak out today against the expansion of the guestworker program. Last year, there was an effort made, through an amendment to an appropriations bill in the Senate, to allow an unlimited number of so-called "guestworkers" into our agricultural, and our poultry and packing industries. We stopped them last year, and we will stop them again this year. I am proud to be here again with representatives of the United Farm Workers. Together, the members of the UFW and the UFCW put food on the table for America's families. From the field to the factory to the supermarket, if you eat it, somewhere along the line UFW and UFCW members have picked it, processed it and sold it to you at your neighborhood grocery store. We are the American family's food chain. And we are proud of the work that we do. The expansion of the guestworker program is the perversion of an already perverse program. It would expand and debase the existing H-2A guestworker program, and allow employers a virtually unrestricted ability to exploit workers, lower wages and degrade both the working and living conditions of farm and food workers. Under the proposed expansion, employers would no longer be required to provide housing, free or otherwise, to their "guests" and employers would not be required to take affirmative steps to recruit workers in the U.S. Every worker currently employed in the farm and food industry would face the immediate threat of displacement and replacement with a disposable workforce made up of workers without rights, and without any effective means to resist the most ruthless exploitation or to improve the conditions of work. The UFCW represents over 200,000 workers in the packing and poultry industries. These jobs have always been classified as non-seasonal, permanent manufacturing jobs under the Department of Labor's industry classification system. With the stroke of the pen, an expanded guestworker program would redefine these jobs as agricultural work and allow employers, without any independent verification, to simply designate these jobs as seasonal or temporary. Packing and poultry employers could then import an unlimited number of human beings---human beings without any of the rights of U.S. workers---to work the processing lines of their plants. It is human bondage. And an expanded guestworker program would establish a cross-border trade in human flesh. The motivation for the guestworker program is simple: it's greed. There is no labor shortage in the poultry and packing industries. There is a wage shortage. There is a shortage of safe working conditions. There is a shortage of decent benefits. And there is shortage of dignity and respect for workers. There is no profit shortage. There is no productivity shortage. Let me give you two simple facts. From the about the mid-1980's to the early 1990's, wages in the packing industry were cut in half. Twenty years ago, packing workers were the highest paid manufacturing workers in the country. Today, they scrape along the bottom---despite the fact that productivity has increased. In poultry, production is up. Sales are up. Productivity is up. And profits are up about 300 percent. An economist would tell you that wages would also go up. But what happened in poultry? Real wages have fallen. Why has this happened? First, the companies broke the unions. They displaced the existing workforce. And they started importing undocumented workers. Let me explain how this works. At a packing plant, a plant paying $2 an hour less than comparable plants, the UFCW had an organizing campaign. Workers were told that if they supported the union, than the company had---and I quote---"hundreds of illegals in the pipeline ready to take your jobs." Out of fear and intimidation, the workers at that plant did not vote for the union. Wages are still substandard. Injuries still plague from a third to half of the workforce. And turnover is from 50 to 100 percent. And workers live in the state of perpetual poverty. What would an expanded guestworker program do? It would put the U.S. government seal of approval on the degradation of human labor. In the UFCW, we organize workers. We don't ask about their documents. We don't care about green cards. We care about union cards--because we care about people. And where we successfully organize strong unions, we eliminate labor shortages. Because if you raise wages and reduce injuries, you cut turnover. And then there is no labor shortage. If Congress is really concerned about labor shortages in poultry and packing, the most logical step is to pass legislation that would protect the right of workers to organize. That would solve the problem. The UFCW stands ready to fight to stop any proposed expansion of the guestworker program. We look forward to joining with all of here today in that fight | |
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