Guestworkers Who Suffered Horrific Conditions At McDonald’s Bring Grievances To Congress

The group's lodging consisted of cots on the floor of a boiler room

When a group of young Latin American students arrived in the United States to work as guestworkers at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s, they thought they were in for an amazing experience — a chance to see the US up close, and to experience the culture that defines the country. But that’s not what they got at all.

Instead, Jorge Rios of Argentina, Fernando Accosta from Paraguay, Luis Fernando Suarez Mendosa of Peru, and Rodrigo Yanez of Chile say they saw the worst of American culture: The exploitation of low-wage workers with no voice.

At the McDonald’s where they were sent to work, they report that they were shoved into a basement room with six cots, and forced to pay for the inadequate lodging out of their meager wages — made all the more meager by the fact that their boss wouldn’t give them the 40 hours a week promised.

They also say they had to walk a dangerous highway to get to work:

Adding insult to injury, each student had paid $3,000 just to get into the guestworker program.

But now, in coordination with the broader National Guestworkers Alliance, those students and others have filed complaints with the State Department and Department of Labor. McDonald’s says it is investigating the complaints, which are against a single franchise owner and not the company as a whole.

The students also brought their grievances to the apex of the immigration debate, Capitol Hill, on Wednesday. They told their personal testimonies to legislators, trying to convince them that any immigration overhaul must include the language in the guestworker protections.

“When we asked for solutions, the sponsor didn’t solve our problems. When we asked for help, the Department of State didn’t assist us. I feared losing everything I had spent to come here,” said Jorge Rios, who originally contacted the Guestworker Alliance to report the abuses he experienced, “I feared being devoid of the opportunity to travel around the country. I feared suffering the humiliation of being sent back home. I feared being blacklisted and losing the chance to re-enter the US in the future. I was paralyzed by fear.”

Republicans have insisted that if they are going to consider any immigration reform legislation, a guest worker program must be a part of the package. Such programs generally bring in low-wage workers to do jobs Americans won’t, and those workers remain in the country on a J1 visa for some number of months before returning to their country of origin.

But story after story reveals that such programs have become exploitative, and the Southern Poverty Law Center has refered to the work as “close to slavery.” If an expanded guestworker program does become part of the larger immigration reform package, questions about the guestworker program and its treatment of young students are bound to come up.

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Senate Democrats Air Grievances With Rollout Of Healthcare Law

Democrats who supported President Obama’s healthcare law grilled a top Health and Human Services official Thursday over what they see as holes in the implementation effort and the White House’s political bargaining.

Gary Cohen, the director of the HHS office overseeing the bulk of the healthcare law’s implementation, fielded tough questions from several Democrats.

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) hammered HHS for inviting Congress to cut funding for a new nonprofit insurance model. Funding for healthcare co-ops was eliminated in the year-end tax deal, and Nelson said officials offered up the program as a place Congress could cut.

“Why was that negotiated away at the 11th hour?” Nelson asked.

Cohen didn’t have an answer.

Nelson noted that the co-ops funding was axed while applications for new co-ops were still in the pipeline. HHS had already approved a few new of them.

“I want somebody to be accountable for this, and if it was a mistake, for somebody to own up to it,” Nelson said.

Cohen also took hits from Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), who criticized the administration for delaying implementation of the Basic Health Program — an option for states to provide cost-efficient health coverage outside of Medicaid and the law’s new insurance exchanges.

HHS has said it will not have the Basic Health Program ready until 2015 — a year behind schedule. State officials have balked, and Cantwell echoed their criticisms Thursday during the Senate Finance Committee hearing on the status of the implementation effort.

“We’re very concerned about the approach by the agency in trying to thwart this effort,” she said. “Are you artificially raising the cost to all taxpayers by trying to lure them onto the exchange?”

Cantwell warned that many members of the Finance Committee are familiar with state-based cost-control efforts and would not look kindly on HHS subverting them. She said the department has sidelined the Basic Health Plan in order to focus on the exchanges — which will provide subsidies from the federal government.

“What I’m very concerned about is the agency seems to think the technology of the exchange is the holy grail, and you’re trying to lure states” into the exchanges, she said.

Cohen said the Basic Health Plan has simply had to take a backseat to other priorities.

“I don’t think we’re trying to lure people into the exchange,” he said.

Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) was also skeptical about both the co-ops and HHS’ work on exchanges — specifically, integrating the complex and often outdated computer systems of the multiple federal agencies that will have a role in providing or assessing health coverage.

And Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) criticized the administration for not extending the law’s definition of “affordable” coverage to family plans.

The health law makes subsidies available to people who cannot buy affordable coverage from an employer, and defines an affordable plan as one that costs less than 9.5 percent of the employee’s salary. But that standard only applies to an individual policy.

So if an employee could insure herself for less than 9.5 percent of her income, but couldn’t afford to cover her whole family through her employer’s plan, she wouldn’t be eligible for subsidies and healthcare would remain unaffordable.

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