by David Bacon

7/21/21 – If the Senate passes, and President Biden signs, the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, U.S. growers and labor contractors will benefit, but most farmworkers will not.

There should be no question that undocumented farmworkers need and deserve legal status in this country. They have fed us, not just during the pandemic, but for as long as we’ve had wage labor in agriculture.

But farmworkers, along with all other undocumented families, need and deserve a bill that provides legal status without imposing the notorious H-2A and E-Verify programs as the price. Growers need labor, but farmworkers need a sustainable future that promises dignified and well-paid work, not just for this generation, but for generations to come.

The Farm Workforce Modernization Act passed the House once under Trump, and then again this spring. With no discussion of it’s possible negative impact, every Democrat in Congress voted for it, except for Maine’s Representative Jared Golden. Yet this bill, presented as a legalization program for undocumented farmworkers, will likely lead to the replacement of as much as half of the nation’s farmworkers by workers brought into the U.S. by growers using the H-2A guest worker program. That, in turn, will cement in place the existing deep poverty in farmworker communities, and make it much more difficult for farmworkers to change this.

Rosalinda Guillen, director of the women-led farmworker organization Community to Community in Washington State, has a long history pushing for equitable opportunities for farm workers and their families to build community. “The nation’s farmworkers,” she says, “should be recognized as a valuable skilled workforce, able to use their knowledge to innovate sustainable practices. Most are indigenous immigrants, and have the right to maintain cultural traditions and languages, and to participate with their multicultural neighbors in building a better America. This bill instead treats farm workers as a disposable workforce for corporate agriculture.”

Last year growers were certified to bring in 275,000 H-2A workers. That is over 10 percent of the farm workforce in the U.S., and a number that has doubled in just five years, and tripled in eight. In states like Georgia and Washington, this program will fill a majority of farm labor jobs in the next year or two.

This program has been studied in many reports over the last decade, from “Close to Slavery” by the Southern Poverty Law Center to “Ripe for Reform” by the Centro de Derechos de los Migrantes to “Exploitation or Dignity” by the Oakland Institute. All document a record of systematic abuse of workers in the program, and the use of the program to replace farmworkers (themselves immigrants) already living in the U.S.

In 2019 the Department of Labor only punished 25 of the 11,000 growers and labor contractors using the program despite extensive violations, and the punishments were small fines and suspension from it for three years. The Farm Workforce Modernization Act continues this abuse, and will accelerate sharply the replacement of the existing workforce.

The bill freezes the minimum wage for H-2A workers, already close to minimum wage, for a year, and opens the door to abolishing the wage guarantee entirely. This will not only hurt H-2A workers themselves. It will effectively push down the wages of all farmworkers.

A long record documents the firing, deportation and blacklisting of H-2A workers who organize or strike. Familias Unidas por la Justicia, the new union for Washington farmworkers, has helped those workers protest, but seen them forced to leave the county over and over again as a result. Growers are currently permitted to violate anti-discrimination laws by refusing to hire women or older workers. The Farm Workforce Modernization Act does not protect them.

The bill, however, does have a provision making it mandatory that growers use the notorious E-Verify system to check the immigration status of workers, and refuse to hire anyone undocumented. This provision will have an enormous impact. Half of the nation’s 2.4 million farmworkers are undocumented. While some will qualify for the bill’s tortuous legalization program, many will not. Denying jobs to hundreds of thousands of farmworkers will cause immense suffering for their families. This would be a bitter reward for feeding the country through the COVID crisis.

Those who qualify for legalization will be required to continue working in agriculture for a period of years. Losing employment will therefore mean losing their temporary legal status, making it extremely risky for them to organize unions or strike. Growers, meanwhile, will use the H-2A program to replace domestic workers who can’t legalize or who leave the workforce for other reasons, including local workers who organize and strike. There are no protections in the bill at all for farmworkers’ right to organize – either for H-2A workers or workers who are living here.

This is a very threatening scenario for farmworker families. Ramon Torres, president of Familias Unidas por la Justicia, says, “In Washington State we have fought with labor contractors and growers for years to protect farmworker rights, of both H-2A and resident workers. Our lived experience tells us what the impact of this bill will be.”

by: Ramon Tomey

July 22, 2021 – A California appeals court ruled that a state law punishing care home workers for “misgendering” their elderly wards was unconstitutional. The California Third District Court of Appeal’s July 16 decision sided with First Amendment speech protections – with all three judges in the panel ruling unanimously. Because of the July 16 ruling, care home staff no longer needed to worry about being penalized for using pronouns that were inconsistent with elderly residents’ claimed gender identity.

The court’s decision pertained to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Long-Term Care Facility Residents’ Bill of Rights, which was signed into law by former California Gov. Jerry Brown in 2017. It banned long-term care facilities from discriminating based on people’s sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression or HIV status. The California Legislature added it to the state’s Health and Safety Code in the same year.

Democratic State Sen. Scott Wiener said in 2017 that he wrote the bill due to reports of elderly LGBT people being mistreated. He added that LGBT seniors face special challenges that were not covered by existing nursing home laws.

“We have a number of advocacy organizations that are very excited about the bill that helped us get it passed. [They] are definitely putting the word out that people living in long-term care facilities have these protections and should be aware of them,” Wiener said.

However, an informal group of state taxpayers calling themselves Taking Offense challenged the law. They challenged a provision in the California Health and Safety Code that banned staff members from “willfully and repeatedly referring to a facility resident by other than [their] preferred name or pronoun when clearly informed.”

According to Taking Offense, the said provision violated care home staffers’ right to free speech, free exercise and religion and freedoms of thought and belief. The group added that the said provision is vague and overbroad. (Related: Federal appeals court rules in favor of professor who refused to use preferred pronouns of transgender student.)

Penalizing people who misgender is a “restriction of speech”

In its 46-page decision, the court said “it recognized the [California] Legislature’s legitimate and laudable goal of rooting out discrimination against LGBT residents of long-term care facilities. However, it agreed with the argument of Taking Offense that “the pronoun provision is a content-based restriction of speech that does not survive strict scrutiny.”

The decision elaborated: “The pronoun provision – whether enforced through criminal or civil penalties – is over-inclusive in that it restricts more speech than is necessary to achieve the government’s compelling interest in eliminating discrimination, including harassment, on the basis of sex.” Furthermore, it added that the law “criminalizes even occasional, isolated, off-hand instances of willful misgendering … without requiring that such occasional instances … amount to harassing or discriminatory conduct.”

The Epoch Times reached out to California Attorney General Rob Bonta for comment about the ruling. However, it did not receive a reply by press time.

Many have disputed the concept of gender identity as it went against the long-established truth of male and female being the only two genders. However, social media platforms have contributed to the promotion of the concept. Facebook permitted users to select from a list of 58 genders to display on their profiles. Meanwhile, Twitter banned users for “dead-naming” transgender people or calling them by their names prior to their gender transition. (Related: Social Justice Warriors want students to wear name tags that describe their “preferred gender pronoun.”)

Other areas have also implemented laws similar to that of California. New York City passed such a law in 2016 that banned gender discrimination. According to a New York Post report from May 2016, violators could face fines of up to $250,000 for simply failing to use a person’s preferred pronouns.

The guidelines issued by the New York City Commission on Human Rights (CHR) said employers and landlords must use individuals’ preferred pronouns. It explained that some transgender individuals prefer to use other pronouns other than the traditional ones used to refer to males and females. Examples of these other pronouns included the third person singular “ze” and the third person plural “hir.”

Former CHR Spokesman Seth Hoy said that time: “The commission issued this guidance … so that employers and individuals understand what the law says and to ensure that every transgender individual in New York City is treated with the respect and dignity they deserve.” However, later guidance clarified that people accidentally misgendering a transgender person’s preferred pronoun would not be penalized.

Shared from Banking Rates by Vance Cariaga

Lawmakers continue to urge the White House to approve a fourth stimulus check for Americans who are struggling financially, with some proposing that future relief be tied to economic conditions, meaning stimulus checks might hit bank accounts automatically.

See: Your Third Stimulus Check Could Be Eligible for a Bonus Payment
Find: $1400 Stimulus May Be on the Way — This Time from Your State

As Newsweek reported, the White House has been sent two letters, signed by 26 Democrats, pushing for the enactment of so-called “automatic stabilizers” for expanded unemployment and stimulus checks. They say this will help prevent the kind of partisan gridlock that stalled relief packages during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Automatic stabilizers would help lawmakers avoid negotiations tied to each relief package. One possibility is to use unemployment as the stabilizer, though any economic indicator might work.

With legislation that includes unemployment as an automatic stabilizer, the number of jobless Americans who fell below a predetermined level would trigger a relief payment. When the unemployment rate rises above that level, the relief would be automatically pulled back.

See: Child Tax Benefits Will Start Hitting Accounts July 15
Find: How To Go Back To Work And Still Keep Unemployment Benefits

A growing number of Democrats continue to push more financial relief in the form of a one-time payment or recurring payments, CNET reported. President Joe Biden has not committed to a fourth payment, and his latest stimulus plans don’t call for one. Instead, the focus has been on tax credits for child-care expenses and other costs.

But many Americans say more stimulus money is needed to help those who keep struggling financially. Even though the U.S. economy has shown strong growth of late – it ticked up at an annualized rate of 6.4 percent during the first quarter – many Americans remain in tough economic straits. About four in 10 say their income remains below its pre-pandemic levels, CBS News reported, citing data from TransUnion.

See: Millions of Americans Are About to Get $3,600 in New Stimulus — Are You One of Them?
Find: A Petition With Over 2 Million Signatures Calls for $2,000 Monthly Stimulus Checks for Every American

As of Friday, over 2.3 million people had signed a Change.org petition urging lawmakers to pass legislation for recurring $2,000 monthly payments. Initially, 21 senators, all Democrats, signed a letter to President Biden in late March supporting recurring stimulus payments

At the state level, millions of Californians might be in line for a fourth payment through a proposal by Governor Gavin Newsom to send $600 stimulus checks to residents under a multibillion-dollar spending plan unveiled last month. Roughly two-thirds of Californians might get a stimulus payment under his plan.

Meanwhile, many Americans are still receiving their third stimulus payments. According to the U.S. Department of the Treasury website, more than 169 million payments of up to $1,400 per person have been sent out as of Wednesday, June 9. Over 1.2 million direct deposits valued at over $2.2 billion have been sent out in the last two weeks, with the remainder being paper checks. The IRS will continue to make Economic Impact Payments weekly.