You might think a guy with a 29% approval rating and only a few weeks left in his term of office would just keep his head down, do a few photo-ops, and generally run out the clock rather than go out of his way to apply the same failed ideology that got him to 29% in the first place.
Unfortunately, you would be wrong:
The torrent of new rules being issued by the Bush administration as it heads out the door is turning into a regulatory fiasco. The changes have lowered the bar on environmental review across the board, from limiting worker exposure to toxins to ignoring provisions of the Clean Water Act and softening, if not gutting, the Endangered Species Act. Late last week, new rules targeted vulnerable members of the labor force — farmworkers…
The new farmworker regulations are a case in point. Because farmworkers don’t enjoy the protections of the National Labor Relations Act, they have traditionally been prey to abuses that a succession of administrations have tried to correct through Labor Department policy rules. The latest changes don’t augur well for the farmworkers.
Rules that are to be published this week and which would take effect just days before President Bush leaves office would: make it easier to hire foreign ”guest workers” — to the detriment of Americans willing to work in the fields; lower wage standards; and weaken oversight of farm hiring.
This revision will hurt those who can least afford any cuts in pay or erosion of job protections. The changes in hiring rules are particularly egregious because the greatest fear of domestic farmworkers is being displaced by foreign guest workers who are less familiar with their rights and more likely to remain quiet when those rights are abused for fear of being deported.
George W. Bush is not going gently into that goodnight. Instead, he’s using his last days in office to strip away key protections in the H-2A visa program for agricultural guest workers — changes that would make it far easier for growers to displace resident workers with foreign guest workers, reduce existing wage standards for guest workers, and reducing those workers’ housing requirements.
If these changes stand, they will have a negative effect not just for the guest workers they apply directly to, but to all farm workers. A a massively expanded H-2A program and weakened enforcement of standards will mean that resident workers who have won good wages and safe working conditions could be discarded in favor of less-protected H-2A workers.
Thankfully, when President-Elect Barack Obama takes office, he will have the power to reverse these changes. But he needs to hear from you that it’s important that he do so. There will be many issues facing the new Administration when they take office, and it’s critical that reversing Bush’s last-minute attack on farm workers doesn’t get lost in the shuffle.
Our brothers and sisters at the United Farm Workers have an online petition urging President-Elect Obama to make reinstating protections for farm workers one of his first priorities upon taking office. I encourage you to head over there and sign it.
Comments (1)
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I am personally insulted at all who voted and endorsed Bush Jr. and Sr. through all of these years. I was heart sick that my own international union president sat next to Bush during the first inauguration and was further offended when he told the rank and file that Bush was a bad president for the working class in the subsequent years.
Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it and repeat it we did. The two Regan terms, and the three Bush terms have just about destroyed our country and made "American" a very bad name around the world. It was not always so but it is now. How can anyone be surprised that Bush will cut the throats of workers when that's all he's done in the past 8 years?
Those who voted for him should go to the farm workers and not only apologize, but buy anything and everything that they picked.
As for me, I will continue to vote correctly from the results achieved by investigative methodology and not adhere to the cattle call of the pundits. I will continue to teach labor laws to my barns and my local until I can breathe no more.
Posted by Rich Egeland on December 22, 2008 at 11:52 AM
Posted on December 22, 2008 at 11:52 AM