Union Seeks Role in Guest-Worker Program
Immigration reform advocates and President Bush alike consider a new guest-worker program integral to any attempt to reform America's immigration laws. The details, however, have been vague about how such a program would be implemented and how temporary workers would be matched with employers in the United States.
U.S. News has learned that the Service Employees International Union, a 1.8 million-member union and key supporter of the controversial "grand bargain" legislation debated in Congress, has talked with the Mexican government over the past month about such a program.
Under current law, America is home to 120,000 guest workers each year in agriculture, food processing, and construction jobs, among other industries. U.S. labor unions have been concerned about the current system and any new system Congress might enact.
Atop their list of worries is the role of "labor contractors," individuals or firms that match temporary workers in foreign countries with American employers. It's a shadowy world of middlemen, according to a recent Southern Poverty Law Center report. In some cases, those middlemen charge thousands of dollars to workers to help them find jobs in the United States.
Kawana Lloyd, a spokeswoman for SEIU, confirmed that the union has talked with the Mexican government in recent weeks. "There was a trip, a delegation," she said. She declined, however, to discuss the specifics of the talks. Eliseo Medina, SEIU's executive vice president, could not be reached for comment.
Other unions are also interested in better regulating labor contractors, says Ana Avendano, associate general counsel for the AFL-CIO and director of its immigrant worker program. SEIU is not part of the AFL-CIO, which has argued that an expanded guest-worker program would hurt Americans' wages. Still, Avendano said, SEIU had contacted her union within the past month about steps to better regulate the labor contracting industry, including efforts on the Mexican side of the border. Avendano thinks that SEIU's discussions with Mexico might not translate into strong oversight of the labor-contracting industry because they may not affect the local laws in Mexico's disparate provinces.
"It seems like a very good idea but is just not practical," she says. "They're hoping the relationship with Mexico helps workers coming here and cuts the recruiters out of the mix."
SEIU has been expanding its reach, most recently sending a delegation to China in May.
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