Obama Administration Appeals Injunction on Guestworker Program
Written by Bruce Goldstein Thursday, 06 August 2009 17:39
The Bush-Chao Adminsitration made major changes to the nation's agricultural guestworker program, slashing wages, removing labor protections, reducing government oversight, and made them effective January 17, 2009, just before President Obama took office. Farmworker Justice working with other farmworker advocates, including the United Farm Workers, filed a lawsuit and pressed the Administration to reverse these horrible changes. Shortly after taking office, Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis announced her plans to rescind the Bush-Chao rules and reinstate the former regulations. But a group of agricultural employers, including the North Carolina Growers Association, filed a lawsuit in Greensboro, NC and got an injunction, preventing Secretary Solis from reinstating the old regulations. The judge said that the law had not been followed for making regulatory changes.
Now the Department of Labor has filed an appeal. We are pleased that the Administration recognized the importance of seeking a reversal of this erroneous court decision and the terrible impact of the $2.00 per hour wage cut and other effects of the Bush-Chao changes.
Our lawsuit in federal court in Washington, D.C. seeks, for now, to hold the Bush-Chao wage system illegal and to give almost all the roughly 75,000 workers under the H-2A program a wage increase. Farmworker Justice and our co-counsel represent the United Farm Workers, the Farm Labor Organzing Committee, PCUN (Oregon's farmworker union), and individual farmworkers. The case is before Judge Urbina. We have asked for an expedited decision.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
