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Republicans Shockingly Seek To Lower Farm Worker Pay To Help Agriculture Industry
Another inexcusable proposal by the Trump administration. Maybe our title saying "shockingly" is wrong because what's shocking about Republicans seeking to harm people?
New White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is working with Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to see how to reduce wage rates for foreign guest workers on American farms, in order to help U.S. farmers struggling during the coronavirus...
U.S farmers who say they are struggling... the industry was already hurting because of Trump's tariff war with China.
It's unclear how the reforms would be made, including whether they would be taken through executive action or through the federal regulatory process.
Many farm workers are already vastly underpaid and doing backbreaking work to put food on our tables. They deserve a raise—not a pay cut.
Opponents of the plan argue it will hurt vulnerable workers and depress domestic wages.
The nation's roughly 2.5 million agricultural laborers have been officially declared "essential workers" as the administration seeks to ensure that Americans have food to eat and that U.S. grocery stores remain stocked.
The most recent push to lower wage rates for workers on H-2A visas has drawn pushback from some strange bedfellows: immigrant-rights advocates and immigration hard-liners usually aligned with Trump.
Huh?
United Farm Workers says people who have worked in agriculture for decades are concerned they are going to lose their jobs. And he said vulnerable guest workers are not being provided proper hand-washing facilities and still being forced to live in cramped housing.
Groups on the right fear Trump is succumbing to the will of the agriculture lobby that is demanding lower wages for foreign and domestic farmworkers at a time of record high unemployment in the United States.