Agribusiness Pushes To Lower Farm Workers’ Wages May Undermine Deal On Immigration Reform

As lawmakers prepare to release legislative language for proposals that would allow an estimated 11.2 million undocumented immigrants to earn a path to citizenship, a small bipartisan group of senators is struggling to reach a deal for how to create a steady supply of labor for farmers and growers, threatening to undermine the newfound momentum for comprehensive reform.

Lawmakers agree that the roughly 1 million individuals currently working without legal status in the agricultural industry are essential to maintaining America’s food supply and should be able to achieve legal status through an expedited legalization process. But the parties remain deeply divided over how to treat future flows of farm workers. Four senators — Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Marco Rubio (R-FL), and Michael Bennet (D-CO) — are currently involved in tense negotiations between growers and advocates for farm workers, represented by United Farm Workers of America. The talks, which hinge on the wages workers should earn and the number of new visas that should be issued, are close to a standstill, sources involved in the negotiations tell ThinkProgress, as the growers refuse to make concessions and are insisting on paying future farm workers less than they are earning now.

Under current law, growers can legally bring foreign agricultural workers into the United States under the H-2A visa program after making an active effort to recruit U.S. workers in areas of expected labor supply. Employers must pay the higher of the state or federal minimum wage, a local prevailing wage rate or the adverse effect wage rate (AEWR), a Reagan era formula based on the USDA Farm Labor Survey of the average wages of nonsupervisory field and livestock workers. Growers who import labor are prohibited from paying their agricultural workers less than the average of the wages in their region and are exempt from paying Social Security and Medicare taxes on H-2A compensation. As a result, foreign workers cost growers an average of 11 percent less than American workers.

Lax enforcement of H-2A standards, however, has allowed growers to routinely circumvent protections, including advertising requirements and the hiring of illegal international recruiters to import even cheaper labor from Mexico. Workers on H-2A visas, advocates say, are abused by employers, cheated out of pay, and lack basic labor protections like occupational safety standards. Farm workers are paid some of the lowest wages in the country and are more likely to live in poverty and lack basic access to health care than salary employees.

Groups representing farm workers argue that the H-2A system is rifle with abuse, while growers complain that red tape, mass delays, and overregulation serve as barriers to importing needed labor. Both sides have now agreed to establish a new visa program outside of the H-2A structure that would be included in a broader immigration reform deal — but are very far apart in the details of that plan.

Individuals involved in the negotiations say that growers are demanding wage standards that would amount to a significant reduction from the current AEWR formula, allowing employers to import cheap foreign labor while significantly undercutting American workers and lowering the earning potential of future streams of workers. Growers, whose opening offer would have paid workers just 10 percent above the federal minimum wage, have proposed numerous pay formulas, one person directly involved in the negotiations told ThinkProgress, but appear uninterested in compromising with labor groups. Kristi Boswell, Director of Congressional Relations at the American Farm Bureau — the organization representing growers — pushed back against that formulation, saying that while the discussions are “ongoing,” the growers’ proposals would “increase wages” for farmers and would better represent market conditions. The current AEWR average is $10.80, while grower proposals would pay workers less than $8.

“It must take incredible willpower for growers to utter the words ‘farmworkers are overpaid’ with a straight face,” Marshall Fitz, Director of Immigration Policy at the Center for American Progress, said. Farm workers “are the most difficult and physically demanding jobs in America and are performed by workers making barely above the minimum wage.”

A policy analyst close to the negotiations told ThinkProgress that growers may be refusing to give ground during Senate negotiations in hopes of securing a more favorable agreement in Republican-controlled House. But GOP senators taking part in the talks are growing frustrated, and immigration reform advocates fear that without a clear deal governing future flows of immigrants, comprehensive reform may be in trouble.

“Agribusiness lobby power has kept farm workers excluded from every major labor law for decades,” said Maria Machuca, spokeswoman for the Keene, California-based UFW, in an e-mail. “It would be a grievous mistake to allow agribusiness to use the debate over immigration reform to further reduce wages of the poorest workers in the country.”

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As GOP Seeks Cuts To Child Nutrition Programs, Democratic Rep. Pushes To Expand School Lunches

Republican budget proposals have included deep cuts to social safety net programs, including those that are aimed at ensuring that needy children have access to nutritional food at school. Last year’s House Republican budget, for instance, would have kicked 280,000 children out of the program, and spending cuts that have been enacted have targeted it too.

Amid those efforts, though, Democratic Rep. Dina Titus (D) is pushing in the opposite direction. School lunch programs provide breakfast and lunch to children when they are in school, but they leave many children without food options on weekends and holidays during the school year. Titus wants to fix that by expanding the program through the Weekends Without Hunger Act, which she introduced last week and rolled out in her Las Vegas district Thursday.

That the Republican budget seeks to cut such programs is a statement of “how out of touch it is with our nation’s needs and priorities,” Titus told ThinkProgress in an email.

“With 50.1 million American living in food insecure households, including 16.7 million children, it is our responsibility to protect programs such as free and reduced school lunches, SNAP, and WIC that these families rely on every day just to get by,” Titus said. “The federal budget is a statement of our national priorities, and providing funding for nutritious meals to ensure that vacation from school does not mean hunger for children is one of my top priorities.”

The legislation is co-sponsored by Reps. Marsha Fudge (D-OH), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), and Terri Sewell (D-AL) and is one of several efforts to expand child nutrition programs. Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin (D) has introduced a bill that would expand those programs to child care centers in an effort to get food to more low-income children.

The Great Recession drove up the number of children living in poverty, adding to the number of children who live without enough food. Nearly 15 percent — more than 17 million in total — American households were food insecure in 2011, meaning they had difficulty providing food at some point in the year. There are 20 million students who benefit from free and reduced lunches at school, and another 10.5 million who are eligible but don’t receive the benefits.

The school lunch program gets food to children during the week, but weekends and holidays create gaps that leave many hungry. “While school meals help keep children healthy and ready to learn during days that school is in session, there is currently no targeted Federal child nutrition program available to provide these children with food during the weekend or extended holidays when they do not have access to school meals,” a release from Titus’ office said when the bill was introduced. “Vacation from school should not mean hunger for children.”

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Michael Bloomberg Pushes To Make New York City Cigarettes Cost At Least $10.50 Per Pack

During his tenure as New York City mayor, Michael Bloomberg (I) has had no qualms about cracking down on products that pose a public health risk, tackling everything from sugary sodas, to salt in snack foods, to illegal guns. Now, the three-term executive has his sights set on the tobacco industry, pushing legislation that would raise cigarette pack prices in the city to at least $10.50 and end tobacco companies’ ability to offer coupons or special discounts on their products.

The recently-announced initiative comes at the heels of another Bloomberg-endorsed plan to limit cigarette makers’ ability to publicly advertise their products in city store fronts. Combined, the two proposals would constitute something of a public health coup for Bloomberg, targeting smokers’ bad habit where it hurts the most: their wallets. And as the New York Times reports, the effort is targeted at teens and low-income Americans:

“This is kind of a landmark set of proposals here,” said Kurt Ribisl, a professor of public health at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, whose research on tobacco control influenced Mr. Bloomberg’s proposal. “For someone like me, who’s spent 18 years studying point-of-sale issues, this is kind of big.”

Dr. Ribisl studies what happens at the retail counter, where a customer at a typical convenience store sees a colorful array of signs, packaging and “shelf talkers” — the small tags that flutter from shelves — promoting two-for-one, dollar-off and other types of deals. According to a Federal Trade Commission report issued last year, the tobacco industry spent $6.5 billion on discounts in 2010, and Dr. Ribisl said they are one of the major ways cigarette makers encourage price-conscious customers like teenagers and low-income smokers to buy.

New York’s price-regulation bill would, in effect, close off the remaining means of access to cheap cigarettes and little cigars, which make it easier for teenagers to experiment with smoking, and progress to smoking regularly, said Brett Loomis, a researcher at RTI International, a nonprofit institute that offers research and technical services to governments and businesses.

Poor Americans are more likely to smoke, but less likely to be able to afford the habit and its associated health care costs. In fact, one study showed that low-income New York City smokers spend as much as a quarter of their income purchasing cigarettes — Bloomberg’s initiatives have the potential to price them out of the deadly habit altogether. While encouraging poor people to stop smoking is undoubtedly good from a public health standpoint, doing so through a commodity-based financial regulation has the potential to further drain their disposable incomes.

And Bloomberg’s legislative push won’t address all aspects of the problem. As cigarette prices rise nationwide and smoking rates plummet in the aggregate, studies have shown that low-income Americans — particularly, low-income women — are still smoking at higher rates than average, and turning to less costly alternatives such as loose leaf tobacco to get their fix on the cheap. Raising cigarette prices even further could propagate even more of that kind of behavior.

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Dem Senator Pushes For Change In Military Response To Sexual Assault

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) is bringing the ongoing crisis of sexual assault in the military into the spotlight, hoping to use a recent outrageous case as a springboard to change.

The Senate Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Personnel, chaired by Gillibrand, met on Wednesday to begin the process of reforming the military justice’s handling of sexual assault cases, speaking to panels of both survivors of sexual assault in the military and top military law experts.

Gillibrand appeared on MSNBC on Thursday to present the hearing’s findings, leaving host Andrea Mitchell stunned. Over 19,000 allegations of Military Sexual Trauma (MST) were made in 2011 alone, but as Gillibrand informed Mitchell there were only 2,400 cases where action was taken. The disparity, according to Gillibrand, comes from fear of retaliation and “not being able to stay in the military and having no ability to be promoted.”

Both women shared their disbelief that the military justice system could take such a lax approach to a clear problem:

MITCHELL: I don’t understand the Military Code of Justice, in that it was a reason for dismissal for expulsion from the military until last year, if you violated Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Yet, if you were found guilty in a military court of a criminal assault, of rape, you could go back to your unit. How is that possible?

GILLIBRAND: It’s outrageous and it’s something that should outrage every American. When we look at our best and bravest, our strongest, our most courageous. When you enter the military, you may expect to lose a limb. You may expect to lose your life. But no one should be expecting to be assaulted or raped by one of their colleagues.

Watch their exchange here:

The permissive culture towards sexual violence Gillibrand described was underscored by the testimony of former Sgt. Rebekkah Havrilla. Havrilla told the subcommittee of the U.S. Army’s failure to provide proper assistance following several instances of alleged sexual assault and rape. At one point, an Army chaplain told Havrilla “that the rape was God’s will and that God was trying to get my attention so that I would go back to church.”

“Rape and assault are violent, traumatic crimes, not mistakes, leadership failures or oversights in character,” Anu Bhagwati, Co-Founder of the Service Women’s Action Network told the panel. Bhagwati offered a series of possible reforms to the military criminal justice system to the senators, including opening civil courts to military sexual assault victims.

Currently, the Uniform Military Code of Justice features an article that allows a commanding officer through his or her “convening authority” to overturn the conviction of a jury in courts-martial. Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin used that ability last week to overturn Lt. Col. James Wilkerson’s conviction of sexual assault, waive the one-year prison sentence, and reinstate Wilkerson in the Air Force. Under the law as written, Franklin’s decision can’t be overturned by the Secretary of Defense or the Secretary of the Air Force.

Wilkerson’s reinstatement has sparked outrage from both houses of Congress and prompted a review of the statute in question by the Department of Defense’s top lawyers. A bill has already been introduced in the House of Representatives related to the Wilkerson case. Reps. Jackie Spiers (D-CA), Bruce Braley (D-IA), and Patrick Meehan (R-PA) put forward the bill on Tuesday to strip commanders of their ability to overrule juries and lessen sentences.

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House GOP Pushes Full repeal Of Obama’s Health Care Law

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House GOP pushes full repeal of Obama’s health care law _ 37th vote to scale back or kill it

(Molly Riley/ Associated Press ) - House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio gestures toward a stack of paper representing the 20,000 pages of Affordable Health Care Act regulations during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, May 16, 2013.

CAPTION By Associated Press, Associated PressMay 16, 2013 10:48 PM EDT

AP

WASHINGTON — One more time, with feeling! The Republican-led House voted yet again Thursday to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care law, knowing full well that won’t stop it.

Only months away from the rollout of coverage for uninsured Americans, it was the 37th attempt in a little more than two years by House Republicans to eliminate, defund or partly scale back the Affordable Care Act. The Democratic-led Senate and the president will simply ignore the House action, which came on a virtual party line vote, 229-195.

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But in a Congress where spin often trumps legislation, Republicans see a political advantage to keeping the pressure up as the administration tries to get all the moving parts of the law finally working.

Starting this fall, uninsured people who can’t get coverage through their jobs will be able to sign up for government-subsidized insurance that takes effect Jan. 1. The rollout promises to be bumpy because about half the states are still resisting the law, and congressional Republicans won’t provide the administration with funds it says are needed for a smooth implementation.

Democrats said the House vote was a pointless exercise. They noted that the ACA — as the law is known — has been upheld by the Supreme Court, and millions are already receiving some benefits, from young adults able to stay on a parent’s insurance until age 26, to seniors on Medicare whose high prescription drug bills have been reduced.

Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California said the vote was “a waste of the public’s time.”

Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., called it an “obsession ... bordering on the absurd.”

But Republicans see a soft target in a costly program that continues to divide the country.

They’re hoping that implementation problems next year will help the GOP take control of the Senate in the midterm congressional elections and build on its House majority. Part of the political strategy behind Thursday’s vote was to give freshmen Republicans a chance to vote on full repeal of what they dismiss as “Obamacare.”

“Republicans will continue to work to scrap the law in its entirety so we can focus on patient-centered reforms that lower costs and protect jobs,” said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

What that alternative would look like, no one really knows, because Republicans have not presented a plan of their own since Obama’s law was debated in Congress more than three years ago.

Boehner said a GOP approach would include medical malpractice reforms, risk pools for people with pre-existing medical problems, and letting individuals buy coverage from out-of-state insurers to spur competition. But nothing has been finalized.

Boehner also pointed out that not even Obama believes the health care law is perfect. On seven previous occasions GOP efforts to scale back parts of the law were eventually accepted by the president and signed into law. They included a Medicaid formula that would have allowed thousands of middle-class people to qualify for nearly free coverage, a long-term care insurance plan likely to go belly-up, and paperwork requirements protested by small businesses. The administration sees those as relatively minor changes.

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