[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE H-2B GUESTWORKER PROGRAM AND IMPROVING THE DEPARTMENT OF LABOR'S
ENFORCEMENT OF THE RIGHTS OF GUESTWORKERS
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON DOMESTIC POLICY
of the
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
APRIL 23, 2009
__________
Serial No. 111-8
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/
index.html
http://www.oversight.house.gov
THE H-2B GUESTWORKER PROGRAM AND IMPROVING THE DEPARTMENT OF LABOR'S
ENFORCEMENT OF THE RIGHTS OF GUESTWORKERS
THE H-2B GUESTWORKER PROGRAM AND IMPROVING THE DEPARTMENT OF LABOR'S
ENFORCEMENT OF THE RIGHTS OF GUESTWORKERS
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON DOMESTIC POLICY
of the
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
APRIL 23, 2009
__________
Serial No. 111-8
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/
index.html
http://www.oversight.house.gov
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
51-324 WASHINGTON : 2009
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COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York, Chairman
PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania DARRELL E. ISSA, California
CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York DAN BURTON, Indiana
ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland JOHN M. McHUGH, New York
DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio JOHN L. MICA, Florida
JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana
WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania
DIANE E. WATSON, California JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee
STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio
JIM COOPER, Tennessee LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia
GERRY E. CONNOLLY, Virginia PATRICK T. McHENRY, North Carolina
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California
Columbia JIM JORDAN, Ohio
PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska
CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah
HENRY CUELLAR, Texas AARON SCHOCK, Illinois
PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire
CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut
PETER WELCH, Vermont
BILL FOSTER, Illinois
JACKIE SPEIER, California
STEVE DRIEHAUS, Ohio
------ ------
------ ------
------ ------
Ron Stroman, Staff Director
Michael McCarthy, Deputy Staff Director
Carla Hultberg, Chief Clerk
Larry Brady, Minority Staff Director
Subcommittee on Domestic Policy
DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio, Chairman
ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland JIM JORDAN, Ohio
JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana
DIANE E. WATSON, California DAN BURTON, Indiana
JIM COOPER, Tennessee MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio
PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska
PETER WELCH, Vermont AARON SCHOCK, Illinois
BILL FOSTER, Illinois
Jaron R. Bourke, Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on April 23, 2009................................... 1
Statement of:
Raju, Aby Karickathara, former H-2B guestworker from India
for Signal International LLC, member of the Alliance of
Guestworkers for Dignity; Miguel Angel Jovel Lopez, former
H-2B guestworker from El Salvador for Cumberland
Environmental Resources, Co., member of the Alliance of
Guestworkers for Dignity; and Daniel Castellanos-Contreras,
former H-2B guestworker from Peru for Decatur Hotels LLC,
organizer and founding member of the Alliance of
Guestworkers for Dignity................................... 20
Castellanos-Contreras, Daniel............................ 30
Lopez, Miguel Angel Jovel................................ 26
Raju, Aby Karickathara................................... 20
Soni, Saket, executive director, New Orleans Workers' Center
for Racial Justice; Mary Bauer, director, Immigrant Justice
Project, Southern Poverty Law Center; Catherine
Ruckelshaus, legal co-director, National Employment Law
Project; and Professor Patrick A. McLaughlin, Ph.D.,
Mercatus Center at George Mason University................. 42
Bauer, Mary.............................................. 58
McLaughlin, Patrick A.................................... 366
Ruckelshaus, Catherine................................... 351
Soni, Saket.............................................. 42
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Bauer, Mary, director, Immigrant Justice Project, Southern
Poverty Law Center, prepared statement of.................. 60
Castellanos-Contreras, Daniel, former H-2B guestworker from
Peru for Decatur Hotels LLC, organizer and founding member
of the Alliance of Guestworkers for Dignity, prepared
statement of............................................... 31
Cummings, Hon. Elijah E., a Representative in Congress from
the State of Maryland, prepared statement of............... 381
Kucinich, Hon. Dennis J., a Representative in Congress from
the State of Ohio, prepared statement of................... 4
Lopez, Miguel Angel Jovel, former H-2B guestworker from El
Salvador for Cumberland Environmental Resources, Co.,
member of the Alliance of Guestworkers for Dignity,
prepared statement of...................................... 27
McLaughlin, Professor Patrick A., Ph.D., Mercatus Center at
George Mason University, prepared statement of............. 368
Raju, Aby Karickathara, former H-2B guestworker from India
for Signal International LLC, member of the Alliance of
Guestworkers for Dignity, prepared statement of............ 22
Ruckelshaus, Catherine, legal co-director, National
Employment Law Project, prepared statement of.............. 354
Soni, Saket, executive director, New Orleans Workers' Center
for Racial Justice, prepared statement of.................. 45
Watson, Hon. Diane E., a Representative in Congress from the
State of California, prepared statement of................. 14
THE H-2B GUESTWORKER PROGRAM AND IMPROVING THE DEPARTMENT OF LABOR'S
ENFORCEMENT OF THE RIGHTS OF GUESTWORKERS
----------
THURSDAY, APRIL 23, 2009
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Domestic Policy,
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:20 a.m., in
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Dennis J.
Kucinich (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Kucinich, Jordan, Cummings,
Tierney, Watson, and Foster.
Staff present: Jaron R. Bourke, staff director; Claire
Coleman, counsel; Jean Gosa, clerk; Charisma Williams, staff
assistant; Leneal Scott, information systems manager; John
Cuaderes, minority deputy staff director; Jennifer Safavian,
minority chief counsel for oversight and investigations; Dan
Blankenburg, minority director of outreach and senior advisor;
Adam Fromm, minority chief clerk and Member liaison; Seamus
Kraft, minority deputy press secretary; Christopher Hixon,
minority senior counsel; and Marvin Kaplan and Mitchell
Kominsky, minority counsels.
Mr. Kucinich. The subcommittee will come to order.
Good morning. Buenos dias. Namaste. I want to thank the
witnesses for being here. I am Congressman Dennis Kucinich,
chairman of the Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the Oversight
and Government Reform Committee. I am here with the ranking
member of the committee, Mr. Jordan of Ohio.
The subcommittee's hearing is entitled, ``The H-2B
Guestworker Program and Improving the Department of Labor's
Enforcement of the Rights of Guestworkers.''
We have a panel of witnesses who are prepared to testify.
Today's hearing is going to go into issues of enforcement,
particularly with respect to labor rights for non-agricultural
guestworkers who come to the United States lawfully through the
H-2B visa program.
Now, without objection, the Chair and ranking minority
member will have 5 minutes to make opening statements, followed
by opening statements not to exceed 3 minutes by any other
Member who seeks recognition. Without objection, Members and
witnesses may have 5 legislative days to submit a written
statement or extraneous materials for the record.
This hearing, ``The H-2B Guestworker Program and Improving
the Department of Labor's Enforcement of the Rights of
Guestworkers,'' continues an investigation that this
subcommittee began in 2007, evaluating the adequacy of labor
law enforcement in New Orleans during period following
Hurricane Katrina.
During the course of our investigation and the two hearings
we held on labor law enforcement in New Orleans, the
subcommittee discovered that H-2B visa holders, who are non-
agricultural guestworkers, have been exposed to egregious forms
of abuse by sponsoring employers who brought them to the Gulf
Coast to assist with the cleanup. These abuses include wage
theft, poor living conditions, and threatening actions which
amounted to human trafficking.
Unfortunately, it is clear that the abuse of guestworkers
continues today in New Orleans and across the country. Today we
will hear testimony from three guestworkers, all of whom worked
in different industries that the Department of Labor allows to
hire foreign guestworkers. Take, for example, the case of one
of our witnesses, Aby Karickathara Raju, who came to the United
States from India to work for Signal International LLC at the
Gulf Coast Shipyard. Lured by false promises of permanent U.S.
residency, Mr. Raju, along with hundreds of other Indian
guestworkers, paid tens of thousands of dollars to obtain this
job with Signal, only to have their passports confiscated and
find themselves forced into involuntary servitude, working for
substandard wages and living in overcrowded, guarded labor
camps.
Unfortunately, these cases of worker abuse have gone
largely unprosecuted by the Federal cop on the workplace beat.
The Department of Labor did virtually nothing to protect these
workers. The explanation has two components: First, there are
very limited legal protections in place for H-2B workers.
Unlike H-2A guestworkers, H-2B guestworkers do not have access
to legal services, do not have protection from retaliation or
payment of transportation to the United States.
Second, the Department of Labor has utterly failed to
enforce the rights of H-2B guestworkers. The Department of
Labor has interpreted the Immigration and Nationality Act and
its implementing regulations to preclude Department of Labor
authority to enforce the conditions of H-2B visa petitions in
favor of Homeland Security's enforcement authority.
At our hearing in June 2007, when we questioned former
Department of Labor officials about why the abuse of
guestworkers in New Orleans had gone unchecked, we were told to
ask the Department of Homeland Security. While that is
debatable, Department of Labor itself has acknowledged it still
maintains authority to oversee wage and hour laws which apply
to guestworkers. Based on this subcommittee's scrutiny,
advocacy by labor groups, as well as recent reports by the GAO,
however, it is clear that the Department of Labor's Wage and
Hour Division has failed to do even that.
There is a development in the law that requires mentioning
as well. The previous administration passed a midnight
regulation that weakens, instead of strengthens, protections
for H-2B visa guestworkers. The new regulation is also
extremely harmful to U.S. workers because it makes it easier
for employers to bring in guestworkers for longer periods of
time, increasing the risk that U.S. workers will be overlooked
for a cheaper, less regulated labor source.
Congressman Miller, chairman of the Committee on Education
and Labor, and Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, chairman of the
Immigration Subcommittee of Judiciary, have been working
tirelessly on and will soon be introducing a new bill that will
increase protection for H-2B guestworkers and U.S. workers.
This subcommittee supports and applauds those efforts. The
current weak regulatory framework for the H-2B visa program
cannot be allowed to stand.
The one silver lining in the previous administration's
midnight regulation is the delegation of authority by DHS to
the Department of Labor to establish an enforcement procedure
to investigate compliance with H-2B requirements and to remedy
violations uncovered as a result by imposing fines or
debarment. Many questions remain about the nature of that
delegation and how DOL's oversight and enforcement of the H-2B
visa will be carried out. But the acknowledgment by both
Homeland Security and Labor that Labor has clear authority to
enforce the rights of H-2B guestworkers give this subcommittee
hope that the Department of Labor will finally commit to
investigating and prosecuting H-2B sponsoring employers who are
abusing the program and exploiting workers.
We had hoped to hear from Labor Secretary Hilda Solis today
on the Department of Labor's plans to improve such oversight,
but we understand that the Department is still in the policy
development stage, and the Department asked that it be allowed
to testify at a later date once the Senate has confirmed the
Assistant Secretary for the Employment Standards Administration
and an Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division. We are
hopeful that the Department will consider the testimony
presented in today's hearing as they draw conclusions about
what needs to be done with the H-2B visa program. This
subcommittee certainly intends to see that Secretary Solis's
introductory remarks to the Department of Labor, that ``there's
a new sheriff in town,'' will benefit the lives and working
conditions of guestworkers.
Today, I hope we can better understand the problems faced
by guestworkers and how the Department of Labor, in the past,
has failed them. We are lucky to have a very strong panel of
labor advocates that can shed light on how to create a stronger
Department of Labor that can fulfill its mission of protecting
the rights of all workers.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Dennis J. Kucinich
follows:]
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Mr. Kucinich. I want to thank you again for being here.
Thank my colleagues who are present, and now turn to the
ranking member of this subcommittee, Mr. Jordan of Ohio.
You may proceed.
Mr. Jordan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you
for putting this hearing together and for the great working
relationship I have with you, a fellow Ohioan.
I thank our panel, our first panel and our second panel as
well.
This hearing provides an excellent opportunity to discuss
and debate the existing H-2B guestworker program and the newly
delegated enforcement of H-2B violations to the Department of
Labor. This is an important matter and I look forward to having
a productive discussion on the many issues surrounding the
present H-2B visa program and their economic implications.
We all agree that enforcement of the law and protection of
guestworkers is critical. Many organizations and individuals,
including some that we will hear from later, have advocated for
substantial reforms to the H-2B guestworker program. Indeed,
some of these proposed reforms might be helpful.
But let's also keep in mind today that implementing many of
the suggested policy changes may require Congress to entirely
overhaul the guestworker program. As a result, our discussion
needs to also examine how reforming the current program will
affect the economy and U.S. workers. Being a Representative
from Ohio, a State struggling with economic hardship in the
housing crisis, this is an issue that hits close to home.
In 1986, Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control
Act. The act contained major revisions of the temporary worker
H-2 program. Specifically, it divided the H-2 program into two
separate visa categories, the H-2A program for temporary
agriculture workers and the new H-2B was created for temporary
non-agricultural workers. Today's hearing will focus on the
existing H-2B program.
On January 18, 2009, the Department of Homeland Security
delegated its enforcement authority of H-2B violations to the
Labor Department. I would like to emphasize that prior to this
delegation H-2B violations went largely unenforced by DHS.
Without a doubt, the failure to enforce existing laws is
unacceptable.
Prior to January 18, 2009, Labor's enforcement of H-2B
wages was limited to laws specifically delegated to the
Department of Labor, such as the Fair Labor Standards Act.
However, following the delegation of enforcement by DHS, the
Department of Labor immediately promulgated regulations that
would enforce the H-2B program.
As it now stands, an H-2B employer will have to make
certain guarantees to the Department of Labor regarding their
hiring of H-2B workers. Most relevant to today's hearing, it is
important for this subcommittee to take into consideration that
an H-2B employer must attest and demonstrate that qualified
persons in the United States are not available and that the
terms of employment will not adversely affect the wages and
working conditions of the workers in the United States
similarly employed. These employer attestation requirements for
the H-2B application provide a foundation to prevent employer
violations, while at the same time encouraging employers to use
U.S. workers.
Now that the DHS has delegated to Department of Labor
enforcement authority for the H-2B violations, the Department
of Labor has supplemented U.S. worker protection with new
mechanisms to ensure compliance with H-2B filing and added
attestation requirements, including penalties, debarment,
supervised prefiling recruitment, and post-adjudication audits.
In short, the Department of Labor now has the authority and
capability to enforce the H-2B violations.
Unfortunately, the change in administration and the slow
appointment process has left the Department of Labor with a
limited management staff, and no one who is capable of
testifying on the implementation of the H-2B program is present
today. No accurate assessment of the H-2B regulations can be
made without a representative from the Department of Labor.
But it appears that the Department of Labor has failed to
implement any of the new H-2B regulations laid out above. I
hope to eventually hear, as the chairman indicated in his
opening statement, the administration's perspective on the H-2B
program before this subcommittee. In fact, I think the words
the chairman used were the Department of Labor has utterly
failed in many of the things we are talking about today.
The Department of Labor should be given a chance to enforce
the regulations promulgated on January 18, 2009. To be sure,
once the existing regulations are enforced, Congress and the
Department of Labor will be in a better position to assess the
H-2B visa program. However, before Congress and the Department
of Labor can seriously consider future changes to the H-2B
program, the broader economic implications of the guestworker
program must be thoroughly examined and discussed.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this important hearing
today. These issues not only affect our home State of Ohio, but
also the entire United States, and I look forward to hearing
from our witnesses.
Mr. Kucinich. I thank the gentleman. I just want to say
that I appreciate the chance to work with you. And the one good
thing about this Domestic Policy Subcommittee, as with all
subcommittees of Government Oversight, is that--and this
doesn't relate specifically to the Department of Labor, but to
any Government agency or department--that we generally get
their cooperation, and that is nice. That has nothing to do
with the fact that we have subpoena power, by the way.
Mr. Foster, the Chair recognizes you for 3 minutes.
Mr. Foster. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
While today's hearing will no doubt have wider implications
on labor policy and the economy, this is also an opportunity to
further understand and address the administrative shortcomings
within the Labor Department in this area. In a previous
hearing, this subcommittee has investigated labor law
enforcement and protection of guestworkers by the Department of
Labor in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and has
uncovered cases of abuse by sponsoring employers during the
Gulf Coast cleanup.
Today, however, we may gain a clearer view of nationwide
patterns of abuse and fraud within our guestworker programs and
begin to devise rigorous reporting and accountability measures
to ensure the Department of Labor acts swiftly to uncover abuse
and enforce existing labor laws.
In a recent report, the GAO noted that the Labor
Department's Wage and Hour Division, the body charged with
administering laws like the Fair Labor Standards Act and the
Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act,
insufficiently responds to reports of abuse and fails to
consistently enforce the terms of guestworker labor
certifications which designate wages and work schedules.
Many of today's witnesses will correctly point out the
vulnerability of guestworkers who have no leverage to bargain
for higher wages or better working conditions. The downward
pressure on wages that results from this lack of enforcement is
not only exploitative for the guestworker, but also means that
jobs become increasingly undesirable for U.S. workers.
I look forward to hearing from each of our witnesses on the
ways the bureaucracy can be made more responsive and
accountable, including any proposals for publicizing patterns
of abuse and fraud.
Thank you and I yield back.
Mr. Kucinich. Thank you very much, Mr. Foster.
Does Mr. Tierney have an opening statement?
Mr. Tierney. No, I don't, Mr. Chairman, other than thank
you for having this hearing. As always, you are looking out for
people's rights, and we appreciate that.
Mr. Kucinich. Thank you for being on this subcommittee.
Ms. Watson, do you have an opening statement?
Ms. Watson. I do.
Mr. Kucinich. The Chair recognizes the distinguished lady
from California, Ambassador Watson.
Ms. Watson. I also want to thank the chairman for holding
today's important hearing examining the state of H-2B non-
agricultural guestworker visa program. I sincerely hope that
today's proceedings will reveal the weaknesses associated with
the program and the steps that can be taken to strengthen the
rights and protections for H-2B visa holders.
Previous hearings and investigations conducted by this
subcommittee revealed serious abuse by sponsoring employers in
the Gulf Coast during the cleanup after Hurricane Katrina.
Unfortunately, these practices were not isolated incidents, but
representative of similar abuses which occur across the country
due to the uneven power dynamic between guestworkers and their
employers and an ineffective system within the Department of
Labor to regulate employers who violate labor laws.
Due to the loophole in H-2B regulations and the assertion
that enforcement of labor laws affecting these guestworkers was
outside the authority of the Department of Labor, this program
has operated with essentially no enforcement mechanism or
penalties for employers who violate their guestworkers' rights.
A new Department of Labor regulation on December 19, 2008
solidified the notion that enforcement authority was within the
jurisdiction of the Department of Labor. But while this was a
positive step, its practical application has proven to be
unevenly flawed. According to a March 2009 report by the GAO,
the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division processes for
complaint intake, conciliation, and investigation are so
ineffectual they actually discourage workers from making
complaints.
Healthy immigration and labor policy needs to be based upon
the premise of fair wages for honest work in a safe
environment. Employers who rely upon temporary foreign workers
must operate under this principle with the knowledge if they
are in violation, they will be investigated and penalized by
the Department of Labor.
With the advent of a new administration and a new Secretary
of Labor, this hearing occurs at an opportune moment to assess
current practices and to reveal the actions needed to protect
the rights of all guestworkers.
I would like to thank all of today's panelists for
participating. Sharing your experiences will help us ensure
future guestworkers in the H-2B visa program are empowered with
the proper rights and the necessary infrastructure to protect
you.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back the remainder of my
time, and, again, thank you.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Diane E. Watson follows:]
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Mr. Kucinich. I thank the gentlelady.
If there are no additional opening statements from members
of the subcommittee, the subcommittee will now receive
testimony from the witnesses.
I want to start by introducing our first panel. Mr. Aby
Karickathara Raju is a former H-2B guestworker for Signal
International LLC. Mr. Raju is a structural welder from Kerala,
India. He is a member of the Alliance of Guestworkers for
Dignity.
Mr. Miguel Angel Jovel Lopez is a former H-2B guestworker
for Cumberland Environmental Resources. He came to the United
States from El Salvador and works as a construction laborer. He
is also a member of the Alliance of Guestworkers for Dignity.
Mr. Daniel Castellanos-Contreras is a former H-2B
guestworker for Decatur Hotels LLC. He came to the United
States from Peru, where he is a licensed engineer and formerly
owned a small business. He is an organizer and founding member
of the Alliance of Guestworkers for Dignity.
I want to thank you for appearing before this subcommittee
today.
Now, we also have two interpreters, and I would like the
interpreters, if you would please identify yourself, your name,
where you are from, and if the court stenographer can also take
that information and members of the committee can be aware of
it.
If you would start with Mr. Raju's interpreter, your name.
Ms. Jacob. My name is Bincy Jacob. I work with the New
Orleans Workers' for Racial Justice.
Mr. Kucinich. And would you spell your last name?
Ms. Jacob. Sure. It is J-A-C-O-B.
Mr. Kucinich. OK. Yes, sir.
Mr. Horwitz. My name is Jacob Horwitz. I am also with the
New Orleans Workers' for Racial Justice. And that is H-O-R-W-I-
T-Z. Thanks for having us.
Mr. Kucinich. OK.
Now, it is the policy of this subcommittee to swear in all
witnesses before they testify. Since we have individuals who
are interpreting, we are going to ask that you be sworn as
well. So I would ask that all witnesses please rise and please
raise your right hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Kucinich. OK, let the record reflect that each witness
answered in the affirmative.
I would ask the witnesses now to give a brief summary of
their testimony and to try to keep their summary under 5
minutes in duration. Since we are working with interpreters, we
may have to give a little bit of play to that, but I want you
to keep in mind that your written statement will be included in
the hearing record.
Thank you. Do you have any questions about that, by the
way? Do you have any questions about this procedure?
Ms. Jacob. No.
Mr. Kucinich. No? OK. All set? OK, let's proceed, then,
with Mr. Raju.
STATEMENTS OF ABY KARICKATHARA RAJU, FORMER H-2B GUESTWORKER
FROM INDIA FOR SIGNAL INTERNATIONAL LLC, MEMBER OF THE ALLIANCE
OF GUESTWORKERS FOR DIGNITY; MIGUEL ANGEL JOVEL LOPEZ, FORMER
H-2B GUESTWORKER FROM EL SALVADOR FOR CUMBERLAND ENVIRONMENTAL
RESOURCES, CO., MEMBER OF THE ALLIANCE OF GUESTWORKERS FOR
DIGNITY; AND DANIEL CASTELLANOS-CONTRERAS, FORMER H-2B
GUESTWORKER FROM PERU FOR DECATUR HOTELS LLC, ORGANIZER AND
FOUNDING MEMBER OF THE ALLIANCE OF GUESTWORKERS FOR DIGNITY
STATEMENT OF ABY KARICKATHARA RAJU
[The following testimony was delivered through an
interpreter.]
Mr. Raju. Thank you.
Mr. Kucinich. And please speak into the mic as best you
can, and the interpreter can go back and forth. Go ahead.
Mr. Raju. My name is Aby Karickathara Raju.
Mr. Kucinich. We are going to have to ask you to bring that
mic a little bit closer to both of you and kind of move it back
and forth. Go ahead.
Mr. Raju. I came to this country as a guestworker on an H-
2B visa from India. I am here to share with you the experiences
of what I saw and I heard and I felt in my life as a
guestworker in this country.
In 2008, as a result of the company and the recruiter's
labor trafficking, over 200 of us escaped the labor camps and
found refuge. Signal and the recruiters lied to us and gave us
false promises of H-2B visas with permanent resident visas, and
collected up to $20,000 from each of us. Not only that, when we
came here, we had to live in very poor conditions and work
under very poor conditions. And for those of us who spoke up
against it, they tried to forcibly deport and threaten then.
They used the security guards to hold back the pastor who came
to help us to have a prayer meeting. These are the reasons why
we had to raise our voice and file a lawsuit.
Unfortunately, we have yet to receive justice from any
government agency. Advocates told us that there are laws in
this country to protect workers like us, but we have not
received any justice. We really believe that you in Congress
created these laws to protect us, but the truth is we haven't
received any of the benefits of these laws.
Since coming to this country, I had never heard of the
Department of Labor. Not a single person from this Department
came to where we lived or to our work site and conducted an
inspection.
When we complained about the poor conditions in the camp,
the company told us this camp is under U.S. laws. When the
company used armed guards to lock up workers and tried to
forcibly deport them, the company told us that we are doing
this because Immigration told us. When we filed a lawsuit,
instead of the Department of Justice working with the
Department of Labor to help, Department of Justice worked with
Immigration, and after that we had surveillance over us; and we
are still awaiting the decision of foreign agency.
If a foreign worker comes to this country, the Department
of Labor should directly go and do an inspection. Before the
work even starts, they have to ensure that the living
conditions and working conditions are good enough for them to
stay there. When a worker comes forward and makes a complaint
about what they experienced, the Department of Labor should
work with other agencies to see what the investigation should
be and to move forward correctly. Not only that, for workers
who come forward, the Department of Labor can support them in
finding another employer so that they can be safe in this
country. I truly believe that it is only with these steps that
the Department of Labor can help stop trafficking in this
country.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Raju follows:]
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Mr. Kucinich. Mr. Lopez, you may proceed.
STATEMENT OF MIGUEL ANGEL JOVEL LOPEZ
[The following testimony was delivered through an
interpreter.]
Mr. Lopez. My name is Miguel Angel. I am from El Salvador
and I have come here to share and expose my testimony, what I
have been living and experiencing in the United States.
In order for me to come to this country from El Salvador on
an H-2B visa, I had to indebt myself and my family $4,000, and
I still haven't gotten out of this debt. I am the head of my
household. I have a young daughter, a wife, and four younger
brothers that depend on me, and since I have come here I
haven't satisfied even one of my hopes of coming to the United
States.
I was promised many things in my home country, but, when I
arrived, I realized that they were completely false. Instead of
working in demolition, which is what I was promised, I was put
to work doing asbestos cleanup. The company that I was brought
to work for rented us out to other contractors, including on
government work sites, military bases, hospitals, and
universities, and they paid us a small percentage of what the
work was really worth.
Seeing all these problems, my coworkers and I began to
organize. We went on strike and were fired, and then we put a
complaint in with the Department of Labor in February. We only
wanted to have a meeting with our boss to talk about the
requirements of the contract, but our boss never accepted that
meeting with us. So it has been 2 months since we reported this
abuse to the Department of Labor, and still we have heard no
response at all, and we want the Department of Labor to really
take this case seriously and investigate.
As a representative of this group of the Alliance, I ask
that the Department of Labor investigate these companies, that
they make sure that people who are coming to these companies
are treated in the way that they are supposed to be treated
under the law. I also ask that the Department of Labor offer
immigration protection for workers who report companies, so
that they are not afraid to come forward if they are in a
situation where their rights are being taken advantage of. And
we ask for ourselves and everyone else that the Department of
Labor doesn't take so long to give a response, because we
cannot wait.
Thank you for the opportunity to give my testimony. I hope
that this results in justice and we demand that the Department
of Labor really takes this case seriously and investigates it
so that there is justice for us and for our workers. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Lopez follows:]
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Mr. Kucinich. Gracias, Senor Lopez.
Senor Castellanos-Contreras.
STATEMENT OF DANIEL CASTELLANOS-CONTRERAS
[The following testimony was delivered through an
interpreter.]
Mr. Castellanos-Contreras. Good morning. My name is Daniel
Castellanos. I am from Peru and I come here representing many
guestworkers that are members of the Alliance. Four thousand
dollars, that is what I paid to come to the United States,
leaving my family extremely in debt.
In Peru, $4,000 is what I would make during a whole year of
hard work, and an amount of money that only rich people have on
hand. As an organizer with the Alliance, I have known hundreds
and hundreds of workers, all of whom have suffered and been
oppressed by the huge debt that they have, all in order to come
and work in this country, the United States, workers that sold
their houses, mortgaged land, and sold personal family items in
order to come. The majority of guestworkers continue to be in
debt because their visa terms are very short and they have to
pay for very expensive extensions, which trap them in this
cycle of debt. For this reason, the debt is so important in the
relation between the boss and the worker.
With the current regulations, the way debt plays out is a
clear violation of the minimum wage. Also, the debt is what
keeps workers silent, because, if you protest, you could be
fired, deported, and never be able to pay that money back. So
we believe that the Department of Labor should really take a
clear stance on the law around H-2B workers and publish the
position that the fees and the money that workers pay to come
to this country are the responsibility and are for the benefit
of bosses that bring them to this country, and that they should
reimburse this money to workers during the first 15 days of
their employment.
Also, the Department of Labor should take much stronger
actions in order to enforce this law so that they can fully
eliminate the debt servitude that we live daily. The Department
of Labor should also prioritize the immigration protection of
workers that are in labor disputes with their employers,
because, without having protection, we are completely
vulnerable to retaliation by employers.
We of the Alliance of Guestworkers for Dignity believe that
we are the experts in the H-2B visa because we live the
experience daily, so we demand that we be consulted when there
is improvements to the law. We know that there are many
interests by companies to expand the number of visas, but if
the laws don't change so that the workers can come with more
human conditions, then this is going to just go from bad to
worse.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Castellanos-Contreras
follows:]
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Mr. Kucinich. I want to thank the witnesses. We are now
going to proceed to questions from the committee. I just would
like the staff to take note of this matter. You know, there are
a number of constitutional questions that are being raised by
this testimony, including, I think, one that could present an
unusual 13th amendment case, which amendment prohibits slavery
and involuntary servitude, because there is a condition that we
are talking about here that really reflects being coerced into
a form of involuntary servitude, and I would like staff to take
note of that as a possible course of action that this committee
may want to pursue.
I would like to begin my questions with Mr. Raju.
I understand that the Department of Labor failed to
investigate even the most basic wage violation claims. Has the
Department of Labor, to your knowledge, done anything to
prosecute wage claims since the filing of your lawsuit?
Mr. Raju. From even coming to the camp in the beginning
until this day, I don't believe the Department of Labor has
been involved in any part of our----
Mr. Kucinich. No action whatsoever that you are aware of?
Mr. Raju. I am not aware of anything that they have done.
Mr. Kucinich. OK, staff is also going to have to take note
of that testimony.
I want to assure you, Mr. Raju, and your fellow plaintiffs
that this subcommittee is going to continue to advocate that
the Department of Labor and the Department of Justice
adequately investigate these allegations of trafficking of
guestworkers.
Now, with respect to Senor Lopez, I am going to be
instructing my staff to contact the Department of Labor and
inquire about the status of the complaint that you made in
February to the Office of Inspector General regarding the abuse
that you received by your H-2B employer. It may take longer
than we would all like for this new administration to make
changes, but we are going to hold them to their promise to
protect workers' rights.
What is the single-most important protection you feel would
help ensure guestworkers do not experience the difficulties
that you have had? What kind of protection do you think would
be necessary?
Mr. Lopez. That would be the fact that I belong to one
boss, and the change would be that we would have the freedom to
work for other companies, not just the boss that brought us
here.
Mr. Kucinich. Thank you very much. To Mr. Castellanos-
Contreras, as an organizer for Alliance of Guestworkers for
Dignity, have you ever met with the Department of Labor about
improving its outreach and enforcement of the rights of
guestworkers?
Mr. Castellanos-Contreras. As an organizer, we have gone to
the Department of Labor many times, trying to bring cases to
them in different States, but they always deny taking action on
these cases, saying that it is not their responsibility or
jurisdiction. They have told us that it is the responsibility
of the State Department because we are immigrants, not
nationals, even though, reading the law, I know that, as
temporary workers, we have the same labor rights as any
American.
Mr. Kucinich. I thank you. I want to ask one final
question, and that is did the Department of Labor ever
investigate charges that Decatur violated the Fair Labor
Standards Act by retaliating against you?
Mr. Castellanos-Contreras. No.
Mr. Kucinich. Did you have any contact with the Department
of Labor about that case?
Mr. Castellanos-Contreras. We did have some contact, but
the Department of Labor never----
Mr. Kucinich. Nothing was done. OK, thank you for your
testimony.
We are going to now move to questions from the ranking
member, Mr. Jordan. You may proceed.
Mr. Jordan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank all of you for your testimony. Let me just
ask a couple basics, first. How long have each of you been in
the United States?
Mr. Castellanos-Contreras. We have been invited to discuss
improvements to the laws of the H-2B program, and as a policy
of the Alliance, we don't really think that is an appropriate
question.
Mr. Jordan. OK. Well, let me ask you this. Have you or
would you reapply for the H-2B visa?
Mr. Castellanos-Contreras. As an organizer, I have seen
guestworkers that reapply many times to come and work here,
because in the very short time that they are given the visa
for, they don't have the ability to recuperate the money that
they paid to come. So it creates a vicious circle where people
are forced to continue to pay to come back to the country.
Mr. Jordan. I understand, I understand. The question is did
any of the witnesses on this panel, have any of you reapplied
or would you consider reapplying, based on the experience you
have had and the experience that you have testified to.
Mr. Castellanos-Contreras. Again, we are just going to have
to say, as a policy of Alliance, we don't comment on individual
immigration status.
Mr. Raju. If you are asking me will I apply again, if it is
this same way that I am coming, I have no more homes to sell or
nothing else left in my life. I would not come here under this
circumstance again.
Mr. Jordan. If you could--and I don't care which of the
witnesses takes this question--talk to me more about this
recruitment process; who the recruiter is. It sounds to me like
they are getting compensated basically from both sides, the
potential employers are compensating the recruiter to find
workers, you are having to pay to come to the United States.
I know there have been some changes there, but talk to me a
little bit more about that. And I know we are going to explore
this issue with the second panel, but I was interested on your
thoughts on the recruitment process. And we have the general
gist, but if you could go into it a little bit more, I think
that would be helpful. And I don't care whichever one of our
witnesses wants to answer. But my time is running, so one of
you jump in there. [Laughter.]
Mr. Raju, go ahead, if you would like to. It doesn't
matter.
Mr. Castellanos-Contreras. I have personal experience and
also the experience that we see daily as organizers. We have
seen that the recruitment process is totally a business----
Mr. Jordan. This is a guy who is somewhat naive in all
this. Is the recruiter an organization in your home country,
the country you came from, your native country, or is the
recruiter a company here in the United States? How is it
typically done?
Mr. Castellanos-Contreras. It is really a chain that starts
in the United States and then comes to our countries. There are
local recruiters in our home countries, and everybody is taking
money from us and we are unable to recuperate anything. I
repeat, it is a business.
Mr. Jordan. No, I understand that.
OK, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Kucinich. I thank the gentleman for his question.
Actually, that is something that this subcommittee thinks is
worth of a little bit closer look, because you raise an
interesting point; are people raising money from both sides
here.
Mr. Jordan. They definitely are.
Mr. Kucinich. Thank you, Mr. Jordan.
The Chair recognizes Mr. Foster.
Mr. Foster. This would be for Mr. Raju. Did you have
difficulty contacting the Department of Labor? Is there an 800
number? Do most people in your situation have a cell phone, or
is there an impediment to even making contact with anyone who
will help you?
Mr. Raju. Since coming to this country, we had no idea of
the laws or the ways of this land. When we came here, the
living conditions were horrible, and we asked for it to be
improved and they said this is the living condition of this
land, it is according to the laws of this land that you are
living this way. We did not even know which departments exist
to protect us, and we didn't have the number or information, so
we were unable to contact them.
Mr. Foster. Did you receive any information at all about
what your rights are as a worker?
Mr. Raju. No, we never got any papers or anything that said
it. Sometimes in companies they say if you are harassed, you
can call this number, but we never got any information like
that even hanging up in the companies.
Mr. Foster. One last question. Mr. Raju, can you weld
aluminum?
Mr. Raju. Aluminum, carbon steel, stainless steel.
Mr. Foster. All right, you have my respect. Particularly
aluminum. One of the most humiliating experiences of my life
was trying to weld aluminum. [Laughter.]
Mr. Kucinich. If the gentleman would yield, I know you are
speaking not only as an amateur aluminum welder, but also as a
physicist.
Mr. Foster. Mr. Lopez, are you aware of any labor brokers
that actually do a good job and treat their workers fairly?
Mr. Lopez. I only know my own boss, and I know how he has
treated me and what he has done to us. I actually only know him
by name, not by face. I don't know any other bosses that have
treated workers well.
Mr. Foster. Mr. Castellanos-Contreras, how are these debts
enforced? Are they enforced against your families back home?
Are they enforced in the United States? Do you have to put all
the money up front so that you become indebted to third
parties? How exactly does the debt enforcement work?
Mr. Castellanos-Contreras. In terms of the debt that
happens to workers, you have to pay everything up front. Many
in our poor countries, we don't have this kind of money, so we
sell our things, we borrow money from banks, or the more common
and worst case is when you get loans from loan sharks that
charge huge interest rates; and all because the recruiters
promise you that you are going to recuperate this money very
quickly. But when you find that what the recruiter told you was
a lie, your debt is growing hugely, and that is what prevents
you from protesting or from raising your voice against the
abuses that your boss is doing to you.
Mr. Foster. Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Kucinich. Thank you, Mr. Foster.
I want to thank the witnesses for taking time to share your
experiences with this subcommittee. It is clear that the
Department of Labor failed to adequately protect your rights.
When people come to this country and use a legal process to get
here, they should be entitled to the protections of law. You
were not. The recommendations you have provided for how the
Department of Labor can better ensure guestworkers' rights are
insightful, and this committee will continue to press the
Department of Labor to take actions that will protect the
rights of workers.
In many ways, I believe workers' rights are human rights.
Yo creo es muy importante para los derechos de los trabadores.
So I thank you very much for being here and the first panel is
dismissed.
Let's go to the second panel.
Mr. Castellanos-Contreras. Thank you. It is time to hope.
Mr. Kucinich. As the second panel is getting into place, I
would like to begin the introductions of the second panel.
We have Mr. Saket Soni, co-founder and organizer for the
New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice and a member of
the Advancement Project, the Workers' Justice Center for Racial
Equality and the New Orleans Workers' Justice Coalition, which
is an independent community-based organization advocating for
and organizing workers in post-Katrina New Orleans. Mr. Soni
also works to bring together immigrant Latinos and displaced
New Orleaneans. He is co-author of a book called ``And
Injustice For All, A Comprehensive Documentation of the
Conditions for Workers in Post-Katrina New Orleans.''
Ms. Mary Bauer is the director of the Southern Poverty Law
Center's Immigrant Justice Project, now located in Atlanta, GA.
The Immigrant Justice Project represents guestworkers and other
low-wage immigrant workers in high-impact cases in nine States
in the south. Ms. Bauer is the author of ``Close to Slavery:
Guestworker Programs in the United States,'' published in 2007,
and ``Under Siege: Life for Low-Income Latinos in the South,''
published in 2009. Prior to joining the Southern Poverty Law
Center, she was legal director of the Virginia Justice Center
for Farm and Immigrant Workers and legal director of the
Virginia ACLU.
Catherine Ruckelshaus is legal co-director at the National
Employment Law Project in New York City. Her primary areas of
expertise on behalf of low-wage workers are the labor and
employment rights of contingent and immigrant workers. Ms.
Ruckelshaus co-founded the National Wage and Hour Clearinghouse
dedicated to advancing labor standards for all workers. Among
recent cases, Ms. Ruckelshaus was lead counsel in the class
action Ensumana v. Crestedas, a Fair Labor Standards Act case
brought on behalf of nearly 1,000 West African immigrant
grocery delivery workers against the contracting services who
hired them and stores who employed them. That case netted over
$6 million in unpaid wages for the workers.
Patrick A. McLaughlin is a Ph.D. research fellow at the
Mercatus Center at George Mason University, which he joined in
the summer of 2008. He was previously a graduate research
fellow at the Property Environmental Research Center. Dr.
McLaughlin's research interests include environmental and
homeland security regulations. Some of his current research is
particularly focused on the consequences of regulatory actions
on small business, foreign direct investment, and trade flows.
He has been published in World Economy and Regulation Magazine.
I want to welcome this distinguished panel of witnesses. It
is the policy of the Committee on Oversight and Government
Reform to swear in all witnesses before they testify. I would
ask that you now rise and raise your right hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Kucinich. Let the record reflect that each of the
witnesses answered in the affirmative.
Thank you for being here. Mr. Soni, let's start with your
testimony. I would again remind the witnesses that your entire
testimony will be included in the record of this hearing. I ask
that you try to keep your testimony to around 5 minutes or
under 5 minutes. That would be appreciated.
Please proceed, Mr. Soni.
STATEMENTS OF SAKET SONI, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NEW ORLEANS
WORKERS' CENTER FOR RACIAL JUSTICE; MARY BAUER, DIRECTOR,
IMMIGRANT JUSTICE PROJECT, SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER;
CATHERINE RUCKELSHAUS, LEGAL CO-DIRECTOR, NATIONAL EMPLOYMENT
LAW PROJECT; AND PROFESSOR PATRICK A. MCLAUGHLIN, PH.D.,
MERCATUS CENTER AT GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY
STATEMENT OF SAKET SONI
Mr. Soni. Chairman Kucinich and members of the
subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to speak about how
the exploitation of guestworkers continues to be a critical
building block of the post-Katrina reconstruction. I also want
to thank you for this opportunity to talk about how this
exploitation has been directly enabled by the inadequate
response and, indeed, the abject absence of the Department of
Labor Wage and Hour Division.
My name is Saket Soni. I am the executive director of the
New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice. In 2007, we
founded the Alliance of Guestworkers for Dignity, the only
organization in theUnited States that is membership driven,
that brings guestworkers together on H-2B visas across many
industry sectors and countries. Our members come from around
the globe, including the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Peru, El
Salvador, Brazil, Bolivia, and India.
In the last 3 years, we have had hundreds of consultations,
conversations, and interviews with guestworkers facing severe
labor exploitation in a vacuum of Federal worker protections.
Our members have organized and exposed exploitation within this
program.
Since Hurricane Katrina, hundreds of our members have also
brought four major lawsuits against employers whose abuse is
exemplary of the realities of this guestworker program.
Earlier, on the last panel, you heard the testimonies of three
of our members. I would like to start by sharing with you some
of the stories of our members that illustrate the severe
exploitation that they face and that expose the pattern of
abuse that is pervasive in the guestworker program.
You all know, of course, the story of Decatur Hotels.
Decatur imported workers from Peru, Bolivia, and the Dominican
Republic to come to the United States. These workers arrived
heavily in debt and faced exploitative conditions. They also
faced threats for raising their voice. Patrick Quinn, the
luxury hotelier who brought these workers from these countries,
did it at a time when hundreds of thousands of American
workers, African-American workers were displaced from the
region and when hundreds of unemployed African-American
survivors of Hurricane Katrina were living in his hotels.
At this time, the Department of Labor certified him to
bring guestworkers, agreeing with him that he couldn't find a
single U.S. worker willing or able to take these jobs. If Mr.
Quinn had wanted to hire U.S. workers, all he would have had to
do would be to go to one of the floors of any one of his hotels
and knock on the door. Instead, he brought workers to do $14
and $12 an hour jobs at just above $6 or $7 an hour from Latin
America on H-2B visas.
Meanwhile, guestworkers in Mississippi and Texas who were
brought from India escaped a situation of severe labor
exploitation and, along with other organizations, brought legal
suit in Louisiana against Signal International and an
international recruitment chain that plunged these workers into
debt, brought them here, and exposed them to exploitative
conditions.
In Tennessee, while an economic crisis engulfed families in
the south, a company called Cumberland Environmental Resource
defrauded both the U.S. Government and guestworkers to bring
them here. They said there would be work in Tennessee. The
workers were brought and for 3 months there was no work. The
workers were then leased across the south in several States,
astonishingly, even at military bases. Meanwhile, Cumberland
represented to the U.S. Government that local workers had
applied for the jobs, but, when they had been offered the jobs,
had turned them down.
When we interviewed the local workers who had applied for
these jobs, every one of the interviewees said that they were
in a state of economic desperation when they applied and they
would have gladly taken those jobs. Every one of our
interviewees said that, if the jobs had been offered to them,
they would have taken them. The reality is, though, that these
U.S. workers could not have taken the jobs at the wage rate
offered and on the terms and conditions offered by the company.
These stories reveal a pattern of abuse and they illuminate
a structure of exploitation, and I would like to unpack a
little bit what hundreds of our members have reported as the
salient features of exploitation within the guestworker
program.
Mr. Kucinich. The gentleman's time has expired.
Mr. Soni. OK.
Mr. Kucinich. Your complete testimony will be included in
the record of this hearing, and we thank you for being here and
for making this presentation. But I will assure you that
everything that you present to this committee is going to be
analyzed and followed up on.
Mr. Soni. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Soni follows:]
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Mr. Kucinich. Ms. Bauer.
STATEMENT OF MARY BAUER
Ms. Bauer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of this
committee for inviting me to speak about DOL's role in
protecting H-2B guestworkers.
You have heard substantial testimony today about the abuses
endemic in this program. I have personally represented and
interviewed thousands of guestworkers over the course of my
career and can certainly confirm that our experiences
representing H-2B workers reveal that the program is deeply
flawed. Further, it is clear that the flaws in this program are
not the product of a few bad apple employers, but are the
product of the very structure of the program and the utter
failure of the Department of Labor to take action to protect
these workers.
None of the significant protections that have existed, at
least on paper, for H-2A workers, for example, have been
adopted relative to H-2B workers, as the Department of Labor
has never promulgated substantive labor protections for H-2B
workers. So there is no requirement for free housing in the H-
2B context, no requirement that housing be decent, and when
they are abused on the job, H-2B workers are not even eligible
for federally funded legal services. Under this system, workers
lack the real ability to combat exploitation.
Historically, the Department of Labor has taken the
position that it could not enforce the H-2B contract. Thus, in
their view, if a worker was promised a prevailing rate wage of
$12 an hour, but paid only the Federal minimum wage, the DOL
would take no action. We believed that this analysis was simply
wrong, but we are heartened that there has been a formal
delegation from DHS to DOL to permit DOL to enforce the H-2B
provisions.
Nonetheless, we should acknowledge the inadequate job DOL
has done historically in protecting guestworkers under the
statutes, such as the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Migrant
and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act, where it has
always conceded that it did have the authority. In recent
years, for example, when DOL has asked how many investigations
of H-2B employers they have conducted, they simply cannot
answer that question, respond they don't keep records in those
ways. Our experience is that they undertake very few
investigations, and when they do they tend to be limited in
scope, with little relief for workers.
In our written testimony we laid out some of these examples
where the Department of Labor conducted an investigation,
issued a modest civil money penalty, waived that penalty in its
entirety when the company promised to comply with the law. We
came along several years later, filed a class action lawsuit,
got that class action certified, won a summary judgment
decision, and obtained an expert evaluation of the records that
found that major discrepancies were apparent on the face of
those records and that workers had been cheated out of
something like $20 million. All of this would have been
apparent to the Department of Labor had they conducted a full
investigation of that company.
Unfortunately, the poor track record of protecting H-2B
workers is not limited to one administration or to one party.
For example, the Department of Labor has historically taken the
position that the one-time travel and recruitment costs of
migrant workers cannot cut into workers' wages in such a way
that caused them to earn less than the minimum wage in the
first week of work.
This has been the position of the Department of Labor since
before 1970. This is an incredibly important rule under the
Fair Labor Standards Act to protect guestworkers. However,
during the 1990's, the DOL announced that, while this was still
the stated position of the administration, they were adopting a
non-enforcement position and the Department would decline to
enforce this critical part of the law.
Worse, the Bush administration tried to actively subvert
the law by attaching a preamble to midnight regulations which
went into effect in January 2009. This preamble purported to
undue more than 30 years of policy and law in one fell swoop
and was never subjected to notice and comment. The regs that
were enacted by the Bush administration eviscerated the very
few protections which did exist for H-2B workers. Those regs
should simply be repealed and the Department should promulgate
true substantive labor protections which would serve to protect
guestworkers and U.S. workers in the industries which employ H-
2B workers.
This deeply troubled program requires oversight by
Congress. Specifically, we would ask that Congress hold
additional hearings on the issue related to the administration
of the guestworker programs, and we are heartened that the
Secretary of Labor will be back to testify about plans for this
administration.
In conclusion, the abuses of these programs are too common
to blame on a few bad employers; they are the foreseeable
outcome of a system that treats foreign workers as commodities
to be imported, without providing them adequate legal
safeguards.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Bauer follows:]
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Mr. Kucinich. Thank you very much, Ms. Bauer.
Ms. Ruckelshaus.
STATEMENT OF CATHERINE RUCKELSHAUS
Ms. Ruckelshaus. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the
committee. I appreciate the opportunity to speak today and
thank you for holding this hearing. My name is Cathy
Ruckelshaus. I am the legal director at the National Employment
Law Project. We are a nonprofit that specializes in access to
and keeping good jobs for all workers. We work closely with low
wage and immigrant workers, community-based organizations and
their advocates, in addition to State labor departments to
promote good models for enforcement of labor standards.
In our basic work, two trends have emerged recently which
touch upon my recommendations today. First, in light of the
moribund Federal Department of Labor Enforcement, State
departments of labor and State attorneys general have stepped
into the void. They have launched innovative and effective
enforcement programs, including State departments from both
Ohio and Illinois, and the models they have enacted I think are
good models for us to tap into for Federal reforms.
Second, following the virulent last 18 months of the Bush
administration's workplace immigration raids, immigrant workers
and other low wage workers have virtually stopped coming
forward to complain. There is so much fear out there that the
complaints simply aren't coming in. Because we have a
complaint-driven system in our society, that means enforcement
cannot happen because workers are not coming forward to
complain.
My brief remarks this morning are in more detail in the
written prepared testimony, but they will reflect these two
trends.
For 20 years, I have worked with communities of low income
workers in dozens of job categories to ensure that they get the
basics. More and more, immigrant workers are not coming forward
to complain, and there is no one to complain to.
The testimony we have heard this morning is just a handful
of examples of a larger trend that affects not only the
guestworkers and their families, but other workers in the same
job categories, and other employers who have to compete with
these same employers who are perpetuating these sub-par jobs.
The problem is so deep-seated, it touches jobs you see
everyday: the janitors who clean this building; the
housekeepers, home care and child care workers who tend our
homes and our loved ones; servers in the cafeteria in this
building; housekeeping staff in hotels; construction workers
who build and repair these buildings; and the landscapers I
passed this morning on my way to the hearing. These jobs do not
have to be bad jobs with low pay. They are growth service
sector jobs that could be helping create a new middle class,
with good pay and benefits. We can restore the promise of
economic opportunity for these workers and their families by
making sure these jobs pay.
The Department of Labor. Three GAO reports in less than 1
year make the point loud and clear the Wage and Hour Department
of the U.S. Department of Labor is not effective. A decade of
declining resources has not, surprisingly, resulted in a
decrease in enforcement by one-third, while the number of
covered businesses has increased to over 8 million. Wage and
Hour Division has recently relied almost exclusively on worker
complaints to conduct its enforcement. When this strategy
exists in the context of immigration raids in the workplace, it
comes as no surprise to us that the complaints didn't come and
enforcement didn't happen.
Some other highlights from these recent GAO reports I think
are worth noting. These are basic problems. The Wage and Hour
Division did not consistently log in worker complaints, in some
regions didn't even log in a complaint until there was a
successful resolution of a complaint. There is no way to
measure progress or hold the Department accountable if that
information is not available. Delays for workers who did manage
to come forward and complain were common and sometimes lasted
as long as 6 months. Some offices only had voice mail, and some
didn't even have voice mail. These are all detailed in the GAO
reports that have come out in the last year.
Another problem is that the Wage and Hour Division did not
seek any liquidated damages or extra penalties, so that if it
did capture a complaint and get an employer to pay, the
employer just paid what it would have paid the employee had it
paid her correctly in the beginning.
So now what about a DOL renaissance? If only employers were
as afraid of the DOL as we are of the IRS, then we would get
some traction. Much of the reform proposals listed in my
prepared testimony have been enacted by the Department of Labor
in the past. They are very simple and they can send an
important and strong message. Secretary Solis recently noted
there is a new sheriff in town. Well, here is how we think she
can enact that message to employers:
First, don't just rely on worker complaints. Department of
Labor has done this before; it has targeted problem industries
with audits and investigations. Department of Labor had a salad
bowl initiative that looked at agriculture; it looked at
nursing homes, affirmatively auditing and investigating. This
was very effective and it can do it again easily.
It should use its joint employer powers to go up the food
chain when there are multiple subcontractors, as there are in
guestworker programs, and it has done it in the past in
agriculture and garment cases, where it holds other employers
and subcontractors accountable for the abuses.
It can share information on violations with State and
Federal partner agencies, including the Internal Revenue
Service, who cares about independent contractor and off-the-
books payments. It also can share with State Departments of
Labor. Maryland, Illinois, Ohio, and New York are among some of
the States that are already doing this. Any sharing of this
information has to include a firewall between the ICE, the
Immigration Service and Department of Labor. We heard this
morning that----
Mr. Kucinich. The gentlelady's time has expired, but what I
would like to do is if you would just wrap it up in a couple of
sentences.
Ms. Ruckelshaus. OK, sorry. OK, sure.
I have a long list and I am not through it, but what I will
just say is that guestworkers and other immigrant workers
cannot police their work forces alone. The Department of Labor
is the front-line agency charged with making work pay, and
together we can work to make this happen. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Ruckelshaus follows:]
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Mr. Kucinich. I thank the gentlelady. Your entire testimony
will be included in the record. Also, staff is going to take
note of your suggestions, and we are preparing a memo to the
Department of Labor, which will include not just the
suggestions, but some suggestions from our staff about how we
can be more effective in protection of the rights of
guestworkers.
Ms. Ruckelshaus. Thank you.
Mr. Kucinich. The Chair recognizes Professor McLaughlin for
5 minutes. Thank you for being here, and you may proceed.
STATEMENT OF PATRICK A. MCLAUGHLIN
Mr. McLaughlin. Chairman Kucinich, Ranking Member Jordan,
and distinguished members of the committee, it is a privilege
to be asked to testify in this forum today regarding the H-2B
guestworker program and consideration of the Department of
Labor's enforcement of policies related to guestworkers.
My name is Patrick McLaughlin, and I am a research fellow
at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. I have been
invited to share my opinion of what economic effects we should
expect if the United States mandated that employers must pay
certain employee benefits for H-2B workers.
I have two main points to make on this topic. First,
mandating benefits for H-2B workers, while well intended, will
have unintended consequences. Second, if the goal is to help H-
2B workers avoid possible exploitation, then a free agent model
that empowers H-2B workers to switch employers can accomplish
this goal while avoiding those unintended consequences.
Consider the possibility of mandating that employers pay
some benefits for H-2B workers. Regardless of the specific
nature of the mandated benefit, the effect is always that
employers are forced to pay more for each worker they hire.
Some or all of these costs may be shifted onto the employee in
the form of lower wages. There are two possible scenarios that
could result from mandating benefits for H-2B workers that I
will discuss. To make these scenarios somewhat more concrete,
suppose that the mandated benefit in question is inbound
transport costs, that is, what would occur if employers were
required to pay the cost for the employee to travel to the work
site.
First consider those employees being paid more than minimum
wage or the required prevailing wage. The papers I examined on
mandated benefits consistently present the same message: the
beneficiaries of the mandated benefits mostly end up paying for
the benefits in the form of lower wages. This scenario can only
occur, of course, if wages can't be lowered. Minimum wage or
prevailing wage requirements may prevent this.
The second scenario is this: employers are legally
prevented from offering lower wages to H-2B workers. If minimum
wage or prevailing wage requirements mean that wages cannot be
lowered, then the results are fairly straightforward from an
economic perspective: firms will seek out workers with lower
benefit costs. Wage rigidity such as minimum wage decrease the
ability of the firm to pass along the cost of mandated benefits
to employees and can lead to greater unemployment.
As Larry Summers put it, ``Suppose that there is a binding
minimum wage. In this case, wages cannot fall to offset
employers' costs of providing a mandated benefit, so it is
likely to create unemployment.'' In the second scenario, the
effect would be that potential employees that are
geographically distant would be less likely to be hired
compared to potential employees that are physically closer or
compared to employees who circumvent legally mandated benefits,
such as illegal immigrants. This suggests two implications of
mandating benefits.
First, while those workers who receive the mandated
benefits will be made better off, some employers may opt to
hire fewer H-2B workers because they now cost more. As a group,
it is not clear that H-2B workers are made better off. While
those lucky enough to get jobs with benefits may be better off,
there will be less jobs to go around. Second, employers may
choose to replace them with native workers or illegal immigrant
workers. So while one consequence of mandating benefits for H-
2B workers may be to make native workers relatively more
competitive, another presumably unintended consequence would be
to increase demand for illegal immigrant workers.
Finally, if the goal is to extend more benefits for H-2B
workers or to at least avoid exploitation, one other policy
that should be explored is the free agent model, that is,
allowing H-2B workers to transfer their H-2B visa from one
employer to another. This would encourage employers to compete
for their services.
If demand for H-2B workers is greater than the available
supply which is constrained by the H-2B visa cap, a free agent
model would allow employers to bid for employees' services so
that employees will end up in the job that is highest value to
the economy and highest paying to the employee.
I thank you again for inviting me here today.
[The prepared statement of Mr. McLaughlin follows:]
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Mr. Kucinich. We thank you very much for being here.
We are going to move to questions of our second panel. I
would like to start with Mr. Soni. Have you seen any
improvement in the amount of staff and resources available to
the Department of Labor's New Orleans office and Gulf Coast
region since our hearings in 2007?
Mr. Soni. We have not seen any significant increase or
improvement in staff capacity, and we have certainly not seen
any improvement in staff outreach or staff contact with the
community since the last hearing, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Kucinich. Ms. Bauer, given your work on guestworker
issues nationally, the testimony that you heard today, do you
think that it reflects the problems in the guestworker program
nationally or are these aberrations and just sensational
stories that do not really reflect the conditions that are
going on?
Ms. Bauer. I think there is no doubt that these are
problems that are the product of the structure of this program.
The cases we have been involved in, many of them are national
class actions, workers working not just in the south, but the
northwest, all over the country, and they report the identical
kinds of problems that flow from this program.
Mr. Kucinich. In your testimony, you attached as an exhibit
an article and study by the Economy Policy Institute which
found that in seven occupations with the most H-2B workers,
unemployment was higher and had risen faster than the national
average, while wages were lower and risen more slowly than the
national average. Now, the Institute attributes this to the H-
2B program, allowing employers to look overseas for workers who
are willing to take lower wages.
Do you agree with this conclusion and what are the steps
that the Department of Labor needs to take in its certification
process to ensure that the H-2B program does not lower wages
for U.S. workers?
Ms. Bauer. I do agree with that conclusion, and I think EPI
did an excellent job in showing very concrete examples where
workers were being paid and getting certified at dramatically
less than the prevailing wage rate. One of the problems I think
that we are looking at is that, in 2005, the Department of
Labor changed the methodology for determining the prevailing
wage rate and wages plummeted $2 to $3 per hour, sort of in a
typical case, as a result of that change in methodology.
The Department of Labor needs to look at the way--and I
would suggest Congress needs to provide oversight for that
process--at the way the prevailing wage is being calculated. We
have seen many examples where people are earning significantly
less than the minimum wage, and the jobs are getting certified
just at the minimum wage when workers are being paid on a piece
rate system.
Mr. Kucinich. Thank you.
Ms. Ruckelshaus, do you believe the lack of enforcement of
rights of guestworkers had contributed to low wages?
Ms. Ruckelshaus. I think the lack of enforcement generally
has contributed to low wages. I think guestworkers are a
microcosm of the problem that are endemic in all of these low
wage service sector jobs where there just isn't any
enforcement. So I guess the answer is yes, but it is not
specific to guestworker problems.
Mr. Kucinich. Well, in your written testimony you state
that the abuse of guestworkers is bad for the economy at this
moment in time. Certainly, everyone here is concerned with
improving the economy. Can you explain this statement and give
us a better understanding of how improving the treatment of
guestworkers helps all workers?
Ms. Ruckelshaus. Yes. What I meant by that statement was
that if we don't have a wage floor, it means that employers
have to compete against other employers with sub-par jobs. That
hurts other workers in the same sector, and even in related
sectors. It is bad for the workers and their families because
they can't make ends meet.
The minimum wage in this country is ridiculously low and
the annual income that it generates simply isn't enough to live
on. Third, it hurts our State and Federal coffers because there
are payroll taxes not being paid, there are all sorts of other
insurance not being paid. So it is a vicious cycle. It is not
bringing anybody out of poverty.
Mr. Kucinich. Thank you.
Just a final question to Professor McLaughlin. I noted that
you sat here and heard the testimony of the previous panel. Do
you have any opinion on the Department of Labor's failure to
curb the abuses of guestworkers that we have heard testimony
about today? How does that sound to you as you were just
sitting there in the audience? Does it make you feel one way or
another about the plight of these workers?
Mr. McLaughlin. I am sure that everyone in the audience,
including myself, felt some sympathy for the plights of the
workers. However, I am not certain whether the fundamental
problem here is the Department of Labor's enforcement or lack
of enforcement. What I think is the fundamental problem is the
inability of the H-2B worker to be able to quit one work when
he is in a situation he doesn't like and go work for another
employer.
Mr. Kucinich. Well, we appreciate your being here to
testify. We really do.
I am going to now turn to Mr. Jordan, the ranking member,
for 5 minutes of questioning. You may proceed, Mr. Jordan.
Mr. Jordan. Mr. Soni, one of the things I want to get clear
from your testimony that I thought was interesting, you talked
about, after Katrina, many displaced residents at the hotel,
and yet the Department of Labor approved the owner of the hotel
bringing in guestworkers when there were lots of unemployed
people--I think that was maybe your exact words--right there in
the facility that the individual owned. To your knowledge, was
the Department of Labor even asked the question why don't we
start employing the folks who are right here, displaced people?
Was that even brought up?
Mr. Soni. Well, to my knowledge, the Department of Labor
did not really play a role for 3 years post-Katrina, and from
enforcing the most basic wage and hour violation laws to asking
the bigger questions that you are pointing to, why is one group
of workers being locked out of post-Katrina New Orleans jobs
while another group of workers is brought in and exploited.
That was certainly not a question that was asked by the
Department of Labor. It was certainly a question asked by
hundreds of workers living unemployed in the hotels, as well as
a question asked by hundreds of guestworkers brought to those
hotels.
Mr. Jordan. I think you have all testified, and the first
panel certainly, about the failure--the chairman's words in his
opening statement were utter failure--of the Department of
Labor. I think Ms. Ruckelshaus talked about over 10 years. So
we are talking about the Clinton administration, the Bush
administration, and the current administration, at least for 3
months. Yet, some of you say you think it is a good move that
DHS is moving that portion of the program to the Department of
Labor. Do you really think, at the Department of Labor, things
are going to get better?
Ms. Ruckelshaus. I will start. I think what we need to do
is smart enforcement. So assuming there is always going to be
not enough resources to do enforcement, the strategies have to
be smart and make an impact. So collaboration, partnering,
leveraging what we have, that is what I think has to change;
and it seems there is a glimmer of hope in this administration
that can start to happen.
Mr. Jordan. Let me go quickly to one other thing. I want to
bring up the professor's point, the free agent concept. To me,
that does seem like, when you talk about worker empowerment,
putting aside the problems that have been outlined here and
experienced with the recruiters and the lack of enforcement
from the Department of Labor, your thoughts on that concept,
the free agent concept that the professor has brought up.
Mr. Soni. Well, I would say that there are four levels at
which intervention has to be made in order to empower
guestworkers and make the Department of Labor relevant to the
lives of guestworkers. First of all, there has to be an
intervention at the level of debt. Whether or not workers are a
free agent, if they come to the United States indentured to a
large debt, it will not help them move from one shipyard to
another.
Second, there has to be intervention at the level of
workers being tied to one employer, which is what the gentleman
is addressing. That, however, can easily break down in the
present state that shipyards, the service industry, and other
industries across the south exist. There would have to be a
real compliance with that rule.
The third thing I would say is that workers at the moment
are very clear that their legal status is tied to their
employment. During periods of unemployment, for example, what
is a worker to do? He can't come forward and report labor abuse
if he doesn't have the next employer to go to.
Mr. Jordan. Obviously, if there was a change, there would
have to be an education component involved.
Ms. Bauer, you haven't spoken yet. Go ahead.
Ms. Bauer. Well, we agree that having a visa be portable to
another employer would be an incredible improvement in this
program, and if that is coupled with a serious regulation of
recruitment and travel costs, that would make an enormous
difference.
Mr. Jordan. Do you really think we can get at the
recruitment issue? Because it strikes me as we can say the
individual seeking to come here can't--someone can't collect a
fee from them, but there is going to be that incentive, it
seems like to me, for folks in their native country wanting to
unfortunately exploit them and take some money.
Ms. Bauer. Well, that happens. There is no doubt that
happens. The question is is the employer who chooses that
recruiter responsible. If that happened in the United States,
there is no doubt that if an employer's workers are demanding
kickbacks from other employees, that the employer is going to
be on the hook for that.
Mr. Jordan. Let me ask one other quick question. I have 30
seconds. And any of you can grab this. This is just a general I
don't know kind of thing. What kind of background check is done
on the H-2B applicants? Because in the earlier panel we heard
that one--and I forget, maybe it was Mr. Lopez--worked on a
military base. So what kind of background checks are done for
these individuals, how extensive?
Ms. Bauer. It is very minimal. People have to submit--the
thing that the State Department is largely concerned about is
to make sure that people do not overstay visas. That is the
level of inquiry. So the question is have you overstayed visas
in the past. That is the inquiry that is going on.
Mr. Jordan. OK. Thank you.
Mr. Kucinich. If I may, to my colleague, it seems that the
only qualification is someone's willingness to work for cheap
wages, or maybe to put themselves in a position where they are
not even going to get paid, which is abhorrent.
The Chair recognizes Mr. Foster.
Mr. Foster. When I listen to the descriptions of the
problems with the wage nonpayment and cheating, as well as tax
fraud and minimum wage violations, this sort of stuff, I wonder
if there is any merit or if it has ever been considered to have
a third party hold the wages in escrow or perhaps post a bond
so you know the wages will be actually there, or maybe have a
third party perform the payments so that actually there is some
record of this.
Are there any initiatives along those lines that would at
least guarantee--it seems to me that would have two merits, one
of which would be it would prevent a deal from getting struck
which relied on the employer's intention to not really pay
these people properly, that would just discourage it from the
start. I wonder if there are any sort of initiatives along
those lines that have been contemplated. Anyone.
Ms. Bauer. I do not believe such initiatives exist. We
suggested in our report that employers should be required to
post a substantial bond to guarantee that there would be money
to pay workers. I know of no serious proposals at the national
level that would make that happen.
Mr. Foster. OK. In regards to this discussion of the free
agent model, is there a way that any of you see to prevent an
abuse from having people basically have some determination that
there is a shortage of workers in some area, in some region,
and then if you really have free agents, they will immediately
jump to some other region, some other industry, and it won't be
two equivalent shipyards interchanging. Isn't that a real
complication with this? That when you said, OK, I want to go to
this other employer, you would have to say, OK, now, is this
employer in a similarly situated labor market.
Ms. Ruckelshaus. I think if you do have visa portability,
you have to change some of the fundamental premises of the
program, because then it is not necessarily no longer this
employer who needs guestworkers who can't find other workers
here in this country.
Mr. Soni. There really needs to be an industry assessment
and a geographic assessment of industry sectors and geographies
that need temporary workers. There would probably be a way to
construct the ability of workers to move back and forth within
those sectors. The thing that hundreds of members of our
organization will testify to, though, is that without the
ability to change from one employer to the other, they have no
ability to negotiate and they have no leverage with their
employers.
Ms. Bauer. If I might, former Secretary of Labor Ray
Marshall has suggested the creation of a kind of independent
agency to determine need in just this kind of circumstance.
That would not be an employer-driven agency, but that would be
a U.S. agency that would evaluate whether seasonal workers were
really required and where.
Mr. McLaughlin. If I may also comment on that briefly. It
seems like it is fundamentally an engineering and information
problem that you are addressing. The incentives for both the
employers and employees are obviously well addressed when the
free agent model is adopted. Now, the complications of adopting
that model I think have been, to some degree, addressed
previously, how do you get the information about where free
agent employees are to potential employers. But I don't think
that changes the fundamental incentives.
Mr. Foster. Well, I must say I found your attraction for
this free market concept, that somehow we have agents with
perfect information and perfect language skills and everything
else that would be necessary for that to happen sort of
interesting.
I was wondering, in terms of the--I was disturbed by the
failure to even log in complaints that was mentioned, I guess,
by Ms. Ruckelshaus, and I was wondering if some sort of
daylight or public scrutiny is relevant there. I don't know if
these have to be private complaints, or would it be all right
with the typical complainee if they actually just sat there and
dumped it on the Internet so that this was visible to everyone
that this was an unresolved complaint?
Ms. Ruckelshaus. I think it is deeper than that because
there is nothing even there to post up on the Internet right
now, because the offices aren't collecting the most basic
intake information. That is the first step, is just to get them
to log in what the complaint is and what the claim is. Then
there would be a question of how much--there are proposals to
put employers scoff law employers up on the Web so that
employees can see, oh, I am owed money or he has already paid
money for me. So I think there are privacy concerns, but those
can be dealt with. Government agencies get data. Your offices
have constituency data coming in all the time from calls from
constituents. We are talking about really basic simple stuff
that I think shouldn't be a problem.
Mr. Foster. Do you know if the Department of Labor
maintains a publicly searchable data base of debarred employers
or people who have abused or defrauded employees?
Ms. Ruckelshaus. The prevailing wage section of it does,
but the other parts do not because the data is not there.
Mr. Foster. OK. Thank you.
I yield back.
Mr. Kucinich. I want to thank the witnesses on this panel.
Your testimony is something that each member of this
subcommittee will take careful note of. Our staff will pore
over it to come up with recommendations to the Department of
Labor. I want to thank each and every member of this panel for
their presence here and for their thoughtful testimony. I would
like you to know that this subcommittee will retain
jurisdiction over this.
I have talked to the ranking member, and we are going to
look for ways that we might be able to make joint
recommendations to the Department of Labor. I also want to say,
as the chairman of this subcommittee, the people who were
involved in the offenses, who have apparently not yet been
called to legal accounting, this subcommittee will continue to
look at the process that has caused them to escape
accountability.
I am Dennis Kucinich, chairman of the Domestic Policy
Subcommittee of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
I am joined by the ranking member of the committee,
Representative Jordan of Ohio, and, of course, we are with Mr.
Foster from Illinois, who has been here throughout this
hearing. This has been a hearing of the subcommittee on the H-
2B Guestworker Program and Improving the Department of Labor's
Enforcement of the Rights of Guestworkers. This is one of a
series of hearings by this subcommittee on this subject.
I want to thank each and every one of the members of the
panel and the previous panel for their testimony. I thank you
very much for your presence here today. This subcommittee
stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:04 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
[The prepared statement of Hon. Elijah E. Cummings
follows:]
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