Scott Walker’s recall election survival in Wisconsin last week was tough to swallow mainly because of his stance against workers rights. Hopefully it’s not a sign of things to come for workers rights, especially in the Deep South where organized labor has rarely ever been welcome, leaving the door wide open for exploitation, especially for immigrants seeking opportunity in the U.S.
We saw an unfortunate example of that near New Orleans last week, where eight seafood processors, working under H-2B guestworker permits, went on strike against alleged brutal, “slave”-like conditions imposed upon them by their employer C.J.’s Seafood. The workers were a fraction of some 40 workers working under similar oppressive conditions, said the protestors, most of them from Mexico. Michael Leblanc, the chief executive of C.J.’s Seafood, and also president of the Crawfish Processors Association, has been named in a legal complaint the workers have filed with the Department of Labor. At a protest in front of Sam’s Club, the bulk retail store that buys most of the seafood that guestworkers process, the workers testified that they had been abused long enough. (Read the full legal complaint here.)
Bridge the Gulf staff were there and reported that the workers complained of having to work 24-hour shifts with no overtime pay, having their wages stolen, suffering un-air conditioned living quarters with rats, enduring badgering if they attempted to leave their squalid housing area for leisure, and being threatened with violence or deportation if they complained or spoke up for their rights. And yes these immigrants have rights, and not only because they’re here on a federal work permit. Employers who’ve recruited massive immigrant labor dating back to Katrina have worked actively, though, to ensure that these workers have no rights that any company should respect.
Following a pattern of complaints from immigrant workers about being exploited and threatened with violence, arrest or deportation (or all three), the US Department of Labor instituted new guestworker program rules and regulations that protect immigrants from the kind of abuse testified about C. J.’s Seafood. You’d think that people who were devastated by hurricanes and failed levees, whose homes and businesses were built back in large part thanks to immigrant labor, would support rules that protect these workers. That’s not been the case, though.
Leblanc himself is suing the Department of Labor over the rule changes. Apparently a status quo of exploitation is good for the bottomline, especially at a company that brings in upwards of $20 million annually and has Walmart as its primary client. He’s just part of a small army of businesses, though, that are fighting DOL in court over the new worker protection regs, including the Louisiana Forestry Association and Bayou Lawn and Landscape. But it’s no surprise that business is trying to protect dollars at the expense of human lives. What is surprising is that government officials and the media are protecting business interests.
