Crystal Ball
New York Times today...
Graft Mars the Recruitment of Mexican Guest Workers
By ELISABETH MALKIN
Published: May 24, 2007
TAMPAMOLÓN CORONA, Mexico — Cástulo Benavides, a union organizer, came to this forgotten mountain town to tell its men how to get legal jobs in the tobacco fields of North Carolina.
But this year he introduced them to a change in a longstanding practice: the men will not have to pay anyone to get those jobs.
“That’s something that we won with the union,” Mr. Benavides explained to the workers in the sweltering municipal auditorium here. “We are stepping on some people’s toes, and we’re doing it hard.” ... Before planting and harvest time in the United States it has been common for local recruiters to fan out across Mexico’s parched countryside to sign up guest workers. The recruiters charge the Mexicans hundreds of dollars, sometimes more, for the job and the temporary visa that comes with it.
"Silicon" Jack Epstein in Latin Trade, May 2007...
The New Underclass
Expanding an abusive U.S. guest-worker program is great business—and borderline slavery.
When was the last time you paid to work? Latin Americans seem to be doing just that under the current U.S. guest-worker program. Some are even paying with their lives.
Eighty-two workers from Peru, Bolivia and the Dominican Republic have filed a class-action lawsuit against Decatur Hotels in New Orleans, a luxury hotel operator. The employees say hotel recruiters promised them 40-hour weeks and plenty of overtime. Instead, they claim, they received only 25 hours or less and quickly fell into debt since they couldn’t pay back hefty recruiting fees of between US$4,000 and $5,000. It’s the kind of employment scam more often associated with the poorest of developing world economies, and usually seen among rings of sex workers or field hands, not carpenters at luxury hotels.
Graft Mars the Recruitment of Mexican Guest Workers
By ELISABETH MALKIN
Published: May 24, 2007
TAMPAMOLÓN CORONA, Mexico — Cástulo Benavides, a union organizer, came to this forgotten mountain town to tell its men how to get legal jobs in the tobacco fields of North Carolina.
But this year he introduced them to a change in a longstanding practice: the men will not have to pay anyone to get those jobs.
“That’s something that we won with the union,” Mr. Benavides explained to the workers in the sweltering municipal auditorium here. “We are stepping on some people’s toes, and we’re doing it hard.” ... Before planting and harvest time in the United States it has been common for local recruiters to fan out across Mexico’s parched countryside to sign up guest workers. The recruiters charge the Mexicans hundreds of dollars, sometimes more, for the job and the temporary visa that comes with it.
"Silicon" Jack Epstein in Latin Trade, May 2007...
The New Underclass
Expanding an abusive U.S. guest-worker program is great business—and borderline slavery.
When was the last time you paid to work? Latin Americans seem to be doing just that under the current U.S. guest-worker program. Some are even paying with their lives.
Eighty-two workers from Peru, Bolivia and the Dominican Republic have filed a class-action lawsuit against Decatur Hotels in New Orleans, a luxury hotel operator. The employees say hotel recruiters promised them 40-hour weeks and plenty of overtime. Instead, they claim, they received only 25 hours or less and quickly fell into debt since they couldn’t pay back hefty recruiting fees of between US$4,000 and $5,000. It’s the kind of employment scam more often associated with the poorest of developing world economies, and usually seen among rings of sex workers or field hands, not carpenters at luxury hotels.
posted by Greg Brown at 1:23 PM
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