#Migrant workers

[soberscientistlife]

Immigrants get the job done!!

[odinsblog]

Around 772,000 Florida workers, students, and community members are undocumented. And Governor Ron DeSantis wants to make it a felony for anyone to have them in their home or even give them a ride.

Senate Bill 1718, part of Desantis’s broad repressive legislative agenda this year, targets not just undocumented people but also anyone associated with them. The bill, which passed the Republican-controlled state legislature, criminalizes anyone who transports an undocumented person “into or within this state.” In other words, anyone—co-worker, friend, neighbor, classmate—giving a simple ride to someone they know or care about who is undocumented would be guilty of a third-degree felony.

The bill also criminalizes anyone who “conceals, harbors, or shields” (or “attempts” to do so) an undocumented person in “any place within this state.” Nearly 4 percent of Floridians are undocumented. The bill text, reading like an edict issued in Margaret Peterson Haddix’s Shadow Children series, foments fear about these hundreds of thousands of people. It isn’t hard to imagine law enforcement agencies conflating a house party or simple afternoon cup of tea with a secret migrant-harboring operation.

The bill also has a crackdown on healthcare, saying that hospitals must report the patient's immigration status if they are using Medicare.

(continue reading)

[allthecanadianpolitics]

In the winter of 2020, at the outset of the pandemic, the Immigrant Workers Centre where I’m an organizer brought together a group of migrant workers for a Zoom meeting. It was a snapshot of the precarious lives of those who make Canada’s economy run.  [...] These stories are not an exception but the norm for temporary foreign workers. These racialized workers generate great wealth for the corporate class inside countries like Canada because they’ve been made exploitable through a restrictive immigration regime designed to ensure they remain vulnerable, docile, deportable and disposable.  Capitalists tend not to be fundamentally anti-migrant but rather seek to control and manage migration for the needs of business. They envision migration to be a kind of kitchen faucet that can be turned on and off according to labour market fluctuations. [...] Corporations in critical sectors like logistics, warehouses and distribution rely on the same strategies in the Global South as they do in the Global North: when the industries cannot be offshored, they rely on a precarious workforce of migrants. 

Continue Reading

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[dispatchesfromtheclasswar]

[veganpropaganda]

‘Oppressive’ child labor found at poultry plant’s kill floor after teen’s death, feds say

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article288585497.html

A U.S. chicken producer is again facing child labor accusations after a 16-year-old worker was killed at its poultry plant in Mississippi last July, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

On May 1, four teenagers, including two 16-year-olds and two 17-year-olds, were found working on the kill floor at Mar-Jac Poultry’s processing facility in Jasper, Alabama, federal court filings show.

With three teens’ shifts starting at 11 p.m. — and a fourth teen’s shift starting at 8:30 p.m. — they were each tasked with “hanging live chickens on hooks for slaughter and cutting meat from the carcasses,” according to court documents filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.

This violates federal child labor provisions in place to protect minors from dangerous jobs that have proven deadly.

On July 14, 2023, Duvan Robert Tomas Perez, a 16-year-old migrant from Guatemala, was killed while cleaning a chicken deboning machine at Mar-Jac’s plant in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, according to a wrongful death lawsuit, McClatchy News previously reported.

The Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration found Perez was fatally pulled into the “still-energized” machine because Mar-Jac Poultry MS LLC “disregarded safety standards.”

OSHA cited the company over his death in January, according to a news release.

Now, the Labor Department is seeking a court order to stop Mar-Jac from selling and shipping “poultry tainted by oppressive child labor” from the company’s plant in Alabama, court filings say.

An “urgent” request for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction filed by Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su asks the court to prevent Mar-Jac Poultry of Alabama, LLC, from profiting off products linked to child labor.

Following the request, an evidentiary hearing was held on May 14 and May 15, Mar-Jac said in a May 20 news release provided to McClatchy News in response to a request for comment.

Instead of granting the request, the court ordered Su to submit a brief by May 28 and ordered Mar-Jac to submit a response to the brief by June 4, the release said.

What Mar-Jac says about the child labor accusations

In a response filed May 8, Mar-Jac contends it offered to stop shipping poultry produced on the May 1 shift, when the alleged child labor violations involving the four teens were uncovered by the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division.

However, the Wage and Hour Division “rejected that offer and demanded Mar-Jac not ship goods in interstate commerce for the next 30 days,” the filing says.

This would “would put more than 1000 workers out of their jobs for that 1-month period and disrupt the supply chain, adversely affecting hundreds more workers involved in growing and transporting poultry products,” Mar-Jac said in its news release.

Mar-Jac refused the division’s demand and argues that the company was unaware three of the four minor employees were underage.

According to the Labor Department, Wage and Hour Division investigators learned the four teens “had been working at the facility for months,” a complaint says.

The department has declared all chicken produced by Mar-Jac up until May 31 are “hot goods” that are “tainted by child labor,” according to the complaint.

Mar-Jac maintains three of the four teens showed documents that claimed they were older than 17 and were then verified as over 18, according to the May 8 court filing.

The company says it “immediately discharged” the three minors after learning they were underage and denied that they worked on the Alabama plant’s kill floor, the filing says.

As for the fourth minor, Mar-Jac said federal investigators haven’t identified the teen, “making it impossible for Mar-Jac to end the alleged (child labor) violation,” according to the filing.

On May 14, the Labor Department called Mar-Jac’s response a “misguided attempt to persuade this Court to allow (the company) to flout the inherent dangers of oppressive child labor,” court records show.

Mar-Jac said in the release that the company “will continue to vigorously defend itself and expects to prevail in this matter” and that it is “committed to complying with all relevant laws, including but not limited to the child labor regulations.”

Following the death of Perez at the Mississippi poultry plant, Mar-Jac acknowledged he “should not have been hired” because he was under 18, according to a July 19 news release published online by WDAM-TV.

The company said the employee’s age and identity “were misrepresented” on his hiring paperwork, according to the release.

Seth Hunter, an attorney representing Perez’s mother, who is suing over his death, said in a news release provided to McClatchy News in February that Mar-Jac’s “working conditions have to change.”

He said Chick-fil-A “is one of Mar-Jac’s largest customers” and that Chick-fil-A and other companies “should insist on better working conditions or stop doing business with them.”

At the time, Chick-fil-A didn’t respond to McClatchy News’ request for comment from Feb. 5.

A few months after Perez’s death, the company told NBC News in October that “We are reviewing our own procedures for investigation and response as we pursue the steps necessary to effectively hold all our suppliers to our high safety standards.”

Similar to Perez, a New York Times investigative report published in September found many migrant children and teens are working dangerous jobs, including at poultry plants.

Mar-Jac’s plant in Jasper, Alabama, is about a 240-mile drive west of the company’s headquarters in Gainesville, Georgia.

[reasonsforhope]

"California will begin paying for free legal help with immigration for undocumented farmworkers who are involved in state investigations of wage theft or other labor violations, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office announced this week.

The $4.5 million pilot program will provide qualifying farmworkers with referrals for legal help with their immigration status. 

Roughly half of California’s farmworker population is believed to be undocumented. Fear of deportation and difficulties finding jobs can discourage workers from filing labor complaints or serving as witnesses in cases alleging unsafe work temperatures, wage theft, or employer retaliation for unionizing, officials said...

Respecting immigrant rights

Farmworkers in labor investigations who qualify for the new state program will receive a direct referral to legal services organizations that already offer immigration services, such as the Community Action Board of Santa Cruz County or the United Farm Workers Foundation, which spoke in support of the program. 

The free legal services workers could receive include case review, legal advice and representation by an attorney, according to Newsom’s office...

Deferred deportation

State officials said the pilot program aligns with a new Biden administration policy that makes it easier for undocumented workers who are victims of labor rights violations to request deferred action from deportation. Because the federal Department of Homeland Security can’t respond to all immigration violations, it exercises “prosecutorial discretion” to decide who to try to deport.

State officials said they won’t ask for workers’ immigration status, but noncitizens granted this deferred action may be eligible for work authorization.

This year, California labor department officials began supporting undocumented workers’ requests for prosecutorial discretion or deferred action from federal immigration officials, including when employers threaten workers with immigration enforcement to prevent workers from cooperating with state investigators. 

“The Department of Industrial Relations’ Labor Commissioner’s Office … was the first state agency to request deferred action from DHS for employees in an active investigation, and that request was successful,” Hickey said. “This is an important process for undocumented workers to be aware of.”"

-via CalMatters, July 21, 2023

[cathkaesque]

Yoooo I found a video of a talk I gave at the start of this year about the farmworker organising I do. If you ever wanted to know more about the work I do for Landworkers' Alliance/wanted to see me wave my hands a lot, it's a good watch! You can also read the report here.

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

[soberscientistlife]

As I see it, anyone who decides to walk for weeks even months with children in tow for a better life are not looking to make trouble, they are looking to avoid trouble. Fear and faith have given them the strength to make the journey. If you really think someone would do that just to create a problem in your community you’re mistaken. Some may fall on hard times and resort to breaking laws because desperate people do desperate things. This has nothing to do with the color of their skin, Americans do this as well.

[odinsblog]

Different red state, same old Republican bullshit.

Republicans and Ron DeSantis are on a mission to turn Florida into a shithole state with an oceanfront view.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

The Canadian and Jamaican governments are investigating allegations that an Ontario farm sent a group of Jamaican migrant workers home after they held a one-day strike to protest what they described as substandard living conditions.

Pearnel Charles Jr., Jamaica's minister of labour, says he met four of the five workers in question after a local newspaper reported they'd been expelled from Canada as "payback" for their work stoppage, and for blowing the whistle about their treatment to the media. 

"They expressed to me that they were disappointed with being returned early, which I think is normal and understandable. And they had some questions as to exactly what the reasons were," Charles Jr. told As It Happens guest host Katie Simpson.

Full article

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[probablyasocialecologist]

Last year, during the hottest summer on record, Angel and hundreds of other workers on Dearnsdale fruit farm in Staffordshire were told to pick and sort about 100-150kg of strawberries every day inside polytunnels designed to trap heat. It was so hot that at least one worker fainted, she said. The strawberries they picked ended up on the shelves of some of the UK’s largest supermarkets, including Tesco, Co-op and Lidl.

An investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and VICE World News has uncovered widespread mistreatment of migrants working at more than 20 UK farms, nurseries and packhouses in 2022. Workers reported a litany of problems, from not going to the toilet for fear of not hitting targets, to being made to work in gale-force winds. Some said they would be shouted at or punished for having their mobile in their pocket or talking to work colleagues while on the field. Others said they were threatened by recruiters with being deported or blacklisted.

Many were left in debt and destitution, and some left the UK being owed money by their employers. One worker even had to pull out his own tooth because he could not find appropriate medical care. Our findings expose a poorly enforced government visa scheme that is flagrantly breached by farms and recruiters, and which leaves people vulnerable to exploitation.

At Dearnsdale, those who made mistakes or failed to hit targets were routinely sanctioned. The most common punishment was to have their shift cut short – every day several workers would be sent back to their caravans after only a few hours’ work. That meant that on a day when a worker was hoping to earn money for eight hours of work, they would be paid for only three. The practice is common on farms using the visa scheme.

For workers like Angel, who took on debt to pay for visas and flights to come to the UK, having their earnings cut was devastating. Even after picking fruit and vegetables for five months, she still has not been able to pay off her £1,250 loan.

[...]

Human rights experts and lawyers say that the design of the UK seasonal worker visa puts workers at an increased risk of exploitation. Because these visas tie migrants to their sponsor, a recruiter, workers are then unable to seek work with anyone else, even if they have problems with their employer or their recruiter stops offering them work.

Workers are not only dependent on their recruiter and the farm employing them for work, but also for their housing, transportation and even information about their employment rights. Workers who are this dependent on their employer can find it harder to leave exploitative situations.

[sparksinthenight]

Do you shop at Hannaford? Sign this pledge to stand with migrant diary farm workers as they fight for Milk With Dignity and their labour and human rights!