Trump admin looks to cut farmworker pay to help industry during pandemic: report
Source: The Hill
BY BROOKE SEIPEL - 04/10/20 09:16 PM EDT
The Trump administration is reportedly working on plans to reduce the wages of foreign workers on U.S. farms, a move they think would help farmers facing economic uncertainty during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a report by NPR.
Farmers have struggled during the pandemic, as schools, restaurants and other businesses that buy their products close. The blow from the pandemic follows economic hardship for some farmers already created by the tariff war with China.
According to NPR, President Trump's new White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has been working with Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to consider a policy reducing pay for foreign guest workers. Those workers, on the H-2A seasonal guest-worker program, make up about 10 percent of farm laborers.
"The administration is considering all policy options during this unprecedented crisis to ensure our great farmers are protected, and President Trump has done and will do everything he can to support their vital mission," a White House official told NPR.
Read more: https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/492320-trump-admin-looks-to-cut-farmworker-pay-to-help-industry-during-pandemic
sakabatou
(42,174 posts)iluvtennis
(19,871 posts)DENVERPOPS
(8,844 posts)for all the U.S. farmers that he drove into bankruptcy with his Chinese tariffs......
Hell, why doesn't he just release all the so called illegal immigrants he has imprisoned, and auction them off to the farmers......
oh, wait, then the private prison industry would be out 800 bucks a day for keeping each of them in their gulags........
iluvtennis
(19,871 posts)pandr32
(11,611 posts)Why not just enslave them and have them work for their food scraps and sleeping mat? This is what the GOP wouldn't mind. They all feel so superior and entitled.
iluvtennis
(19,871 posts)olddad65
(599 posts)LiberalFighter
(51,084 posts)Dan
(3,579 posts)First you deport a bunch of workers that may have crossed over from the southern border illegally, of course, maybe something that has been going on for a long time. Now, these same illegal workers worked on the farms for low pay. Considering that a lot of the farmers voted for Trump had to have known that his policies would impact their work force.
So, now these farm workers H-2A seasonal workers - that I assume are legal have to have their pay cut, not because they are making too much, but because we want the farmers to retain more.
That damn supply and demand - just doesn't work when it interferes with the owners profit.
Why not just get rid of the H-2A seasonal workers and let the MEGA workers work at the farms and take over the jobs that the illegals were wrongfully taking from them. And that way, the farmers can pay the MEGA workers this new wage that they want to pay, and they don't have to shaft the H-2A seasonal workers.
Everybody happy now!
gab13by13
(21,402 posts)Like the vineyard in Virginia.
Bengus81
(6,932 posts)These people are not here working illegally,tell Trump to go FUCK himself. Where the HELL does this end?
denbot
(9,901 posts)They all dream of the antebellum south, as the model of making America great again.
iluvtennis
(19,871 posts)Journeyman
(15,038 posts)so the farmers won't lose out, they'll just need to distribute their food in a slightly different way.
This plague has unleashed all sorts of evil on the earth, much of it just exceptionally greedy people looking to profit off other's misery.
Lock him up.
(6,941 posts)... successfully bankrupted 4 casinos, one airline business and one steak-delivery corp.
Orangevirus still thinks he's the best businessman that ever walked the face of the earth...
riversedge
(70,299 posts)volume would be about the same.
Nacht Owl
(66 posts)Trump's going to back the bosses over the workers every time.
h2ebits
(645 posts)NoRoadUntravelled
(2,626 posts)At the worst possible time he wants to take more from those who have little to begin with.
iluvtennis
(19,871 posts)BlueIdaho
(13,582 posts)Then what? Slave labor?
TeamPooka
(24,254 posts)that won't be good for Big Ag profits either.
gab13by13
(21,402 posts)Bayard
(22,149 posts)mpcamb
(2,875 posts)It's just red meat for his followers and a poke in the eye to Dems,
like opening up wildlife refuges to hunting and oil drilling.
KY_EnviroGuy
(14,494 posts)One would think that in the GOP's free market world, that decision would be up to the farmers who pay those wages, based on the market and their competition.
Is this simply changing a minimum wage they are required to pay these workers?
I guess I just don't understand the GOP underworld............
Scarsdale
(9,426 posts)of EVERY gop member, since they are doing NOTHING that is helpful with this disaster. They do not need an army of "aides". If Stephanie Grisham makes $138,000 a year (plus benefits) for not doing her job, what are the rest of them making? Overpaid flunkies do not deserve large paychecks.
Firestorm49
(4,037 posts)Now, in addition to farmers dumping tons of milk down the drain because the market is restrained, we can have food rotting in the fields because we dont want to pay those willing to work for peanuts to receive even fewer peanuts.
This country, under Republican so called leadership, has no clue other than how they can enrich themselves at someone else's expense.
C_U_L8R
(45,020 posts)Absolutely depraved.
Leghorn21
(13,526 posts)Been waiting for that to happen, maybe this is the perfect time
Hotler
(11,445 posts)All businesses will use the pandemic to cut wages. and those wages will not go back up.
KPN
(15,650 posts)with nearly half of all Americans amped up about the need to build a wall by these fuckers and they turn around and want to make bringing in foreign workers legally as cheap -- if not cheaper than hiring "illegal" immigrants.
They don't give one fuck about American workers. Workers are disposable tools to these assholes. The blatant hypocrisy is mind numbing as is the stupidity of far too many Americans who accept, defend or even applaud this stuff. When the fuck are people going to wake up?
Illegitimate immigrants aren't the enemy, they -- tRump and the GOP -- are. Labor isn't the enemy, they are. Socialism isn't the enemy, they are.
Chainfire
(17,636 posts)of recruiting critical workers I guess. The beatings will stop when the production increases.
stillcool
(32,626 posts)what about all those kids, home from school. Why not farm them out to the farm? They can work from sun-up to sunset...and you can pay them pennies on the dollar.