The NTUI congratulates the members of the National Guestworkers Alliance (NGA) and workers of the Hershey Chocolate Company (HCC) for forcing the Government of USA to take action and recognise responsibility in the exploitation of students-guest workers under J-1 cultural exchange visas. The NGA protest of August 2011 was successful in forcing the State Department to set off an investigation of contractor Council for Educational Travel, USA (CETUSA), accelerate a review of the program, and forcing the United States Department of Labour to announce new rules for “foreign labour” that are a step ahead towards the protection of guest-workers’ as well as local workers’ rights.
The new H-2B visa rules for foreign workers, announced by the US Department of Labour on 10 February 2012, contain provisions that echo NGA denunciation of the J-1 visa as a strategy to create captive workers without rights. Guest workers stay in USA is conditional to their employment contract, and threats of firing were used by employers to repress workplace complaints, in the knowing that workers would face deportation into debt they could not repay back home. The NTUI appreciates the fighting spirit of the NGA that lead to the new rules on foreign labour to include the prohibition of charging exorbitant recruitment fees and the prohibitions to employers and contractors from retaliating against workers who file a complaint, exercise their rights, or help other workers to do so. These are steps towards effective labour rights for guest workers.
The NTUI welcomes the ban of contractor CETUSA from the J-1 program by the State Department on 1 February 2012, as recognition of the role of contractors in the exploitative implementation of the program. CETUSA is one of the leading contractors who hired participants to then offer them as cheap and exploitable workers to malicious companies, such as Hershey. While the NTUI welcomes the new rules that bar contractors from the program, the NTUI also calls for caution in the possible misuse of the “exceptions” provided for in the rules.
Both the Government and HCC have used the emerging complex contracting system to deny responsibility for the complaints raised by students-guest workers. The NTUI supports the NGA in its demand for companies’ and Government accountability to guest workers. We recognise the breakthrough in the new foreign labour rules which compel obligations on the part of companies to fulfil the work promise given to guest workers, although the provision that the company can forego 25% of its employment commitment without compensation to the workers is unacceptable.
The NTUI will continue to support the NGA demand that jobs at the Hershey factory – which were once union jobs – are turned back into living wage jobs for local workers. HCC and other companies have intentionally used the J-1 student-guest workers to undercut wages for local workers and pitch local workers against guest worker. The NTUI denounces such strategies aimed at turning dignified living wage jobs in USA into temporary work.
The NTUI celebrates the strength and determination of the workers at HCC and the members of the National Guestworkers Alliance in your struggle for the rights of local and guest workers, and against the replacement of unionised and good quality employment by temporary work, and welcomes the support of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations and the Service Employees International Union.