Plaintiffs: Comité de Apoyo a los Trabajadores Agrícolas,
Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste,
Alliance of Forest Workers and Harvesters, and
Salvador Martinez Barrera
Defendants: Elaine L. Chao, in her official capacity as United
States Secretary of Labor; United States Department
of Labor; Alexander J. Passantino, in his official
capacity as Acting Administrator of the Wage and
Hour Division of the United States Department of
Labor; Michael B. Chertoff, in his official capacity
as United States Secretary of Homeland Security;
and United States Department of Homeland
Security
Co-Counsel:
Friends of Farmworkers, Inc.
(http://www.friendsfw.org)
Edward Tuddenham
Northwest Workers' Justice Project
(http://www.nwjp.org)
Migrant Rights Center
(http://www.cdmigrante.org)
North Carolina Justice Center
(http://www.ncjustice.org)
Date(s) of Disposition:
none.
Documents
: H-2B_Complaint_Filing_2009-01-18.pdf
New regulations for the nation's H-2B guestworker program threatened to weaken worker protections and make it easier to replace U.S. workers with temporary foreign labor. The SPLC and a coalition of immigrant rights organizations filed a federal lawsuit challenging these regulations on behalf of several farmworker organizations and a Mexican guestworker who would be harmed by them.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, claimed the new regulations would expand the definition of temporary jobs to include jobs lasting up to three years – increasing the type of jobs eligible for the program. The existing regulations allowed foreign guestworkers to be hired for no more than one year.
The new regulations allowed employers wishing to use the guestworker program to simply vouch that they were unable to find enough U.S. workers for these positions. The existing regulations required employers to obtain certification from the Department of Labor that there is a shortage of U.S. workers.
