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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (May 7, 1998)
CONTACTING US NEWSROOM: (541)346-5511 E-MAIL: ode@oregon. uoregon.edu ADDRESS: Oregon Daily Emerald P.0. BOX 3159 Eugene, Oregon 97403 ONLINE EDITION: www.uoregon.edu/~ode WMM&M EDITOR IN CHIEF Sarah Kickler EDITORIAL EDITOR Mike Schmierbach NIGHT EDITOR Mike Schmierbach Plowing down migrant workers A new proposal for 'guest workers’ would lower wages and hurt all farm workers Guest worker. Has there ever been a more troublesome phrase in the history of U.S. im migration policy? Immigrants of all nationalities have faced racist slurs and insults for generations, but the new language of migrant labor masks all that hatred behind smil ing pro-agribusiness rhetoric. Guest worker programs are noth ing new. In the 1980s and 1990s, Congress passed legislation that al lowed tens of thousands of immi grants into the United States solely for the purpose of working as farm laborers. Nor are the justifications for such proposals new: labor short ages. Business leaders, who remain convinced that because they don’t want to work in the fields no American does, complain that farms face a labor shortage. What is new is the latest bill to allow 40,000 “guest workers" into the United States. The bill, advo cated by Oregon Rep. Bob Smith in the U.S. House and Oregon Sen. Gordon Smith in the Senate, has drawn little media attention. It has, however, drawn the wrath of alert politicians, farm labor ac tivists and Latino groups. Some of these groups rallied last Friday in downtown Eugene to protest the proposal. The bill is, admittedly, small in scale. Unfortunately, because it is being touted as a pilot program, it has the potential to quietly slip into something much larger after the two-year test run is over. There are a number of reasons that people such as state Sen. Su san Castillo, state Rep. Tony Corco ran and a spokesman for U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio showed up at the ral ly to speak against the bill. Fore most is the way it tilts the scale against farm labor and in favor of agribusiness. As Mark Stricherz pointed out in the May 11 issue of The Nation, many of the areas considered for guest worker programs have high levels of unemployment, often reaching into the double digits. While those unemployed may be unwilling to work for the paltry wages farm owners hope to pay im migrants, local laborers would cer tainly take a job that provides rea sonable compensation. Of course, reasonable compensa tion has never been the goal of most business owners. Importing farm labor, just like the proposed importation of high-tech workers that has received more recent me dia attention, is simply a way to flood the labor market and keep profit margins high. There are other problems with the bill that would further damage workers, both immigrants and lo cals. As Stricherz notes, the bill would not guarantee workers hous ing, full-time work or even a set contract. By not ensuring housing, the bill would draw migrant workers away from their families and into com munities already full of laborers unable to afford housing, leading to homelessness and a drain on the area’s social services. (Of course, with federal repeal of most services for even legal aliens, many immi grants may simply starve or die from disease.) The lack of a guarantee of full time work could allow agribusi ness to push wages even lower. By inviting hundreds of workers north and then making them compete for a far smaller number of jobs, grow ers can select only the most obedi ent workers — rejecting those who might report labor abuses or at tempt to join a union. By not having a clear contract, workers are at even greater risk of abuse and mistreatment by farm owners. Workers with a thin paper trail vanish back south easily when they don’t behave or challenge poor labor practices. They also have a hard time holding growers to verbal agreements that recruited the workers in the first place. Anyone who is concerned about the fair treatment of workers, both in the United States and elsewhere, should worry about many of the pro visions of the guest worker proposal. By flooding the labor market and crippling worker protections, agribusiness — like many other types of corporations — will increase its profit margins at the cost of the com munities it ought to be a part of. This editorial represents the opinion of the Emerald editorial Ixxird. Responses may he sent to ode@oregon.uorepon .edu letters to the editor Bartel best choice The citizens of Eugene pride themselves on be ing liberal and progressive. Evidence of this is everywhere around town, from recycling pro grams to tree plantings. Simply put, Eugene is a unique city. Therefore, it shouldn’t be surprising that a unique city such as Eugene has its own water and electric utility. What is surprising is that no body really seems to pay attention to the actions of the Eugene Water and Electric Board. In an area so concerned with the environment, it is ironic that the elected board that deals with many environmental issues is also the one that generates the least attention. I write today to say that in the upcoming pri mary election, one candidate for the board stands out. If you live in the South Eugene/cam pus area, I urge you to vote for Peter Bartel. Bar tel has been a Eugene small-business owner for 15 years, in addition to serving on the Lane County Budget Committee and as an aide to for mer County Commissioner Jerry Rust. But above anything else, Bartel is a long-time Eugene area resident who cares about the community. In the May election, vote for dedication, re sponsibility and commitment. Vote Peter Bartel for E WEB. Robert Ackley Bartel Campaign Volunteer Thumbs TO CONTINUED ANTI-MISSILE DEFENSE RE SEARCH: In late April, the administra tion granted Boe ing a $1.6 billion contract to devel op an anti-mis sile system. In 2000, Clinton will decide whether to implement the system, which could mean at least $3 billion for the Seattle based aerospace company. Given that earlier anti missile programs have performed miserably, spending almost $2 billion to de velop another that might not even be used seems absurd. Worse, if the pro gram is imple mented, it would represent a seri ous threat to global security. Such programs could easily be converted into space-based weapons sys tems, could po tentially misfire and could cause malfunctions of land-based weapons track ing systems, leading to acci dental firings of nuclear weapons. Correction ln“Cinco de Mayo is celebration of tradition” (ODE, May 5), MEChA should have been referred toasaChi cano student orga nization. In “Protesters say bills exploit farm workers” (ODE, April 4), Amy Casso is the co-di rector of MEChA. In “Next year’s ASUO plans for changes" (ODE May 6), the ASUO Exec utive coordinator will be replaced next year by an Ex ecutive organizer. The Emerald re grets these errors.
