H-2B Workers Sue in California
Two guest workers from Mexico filed a lawsuit in a California federal district court last week alleging systematic exploitation. The workers claim that during the seven years they worked for Butler Amusements, the largest carnival company in the western United States, they were “consistently underpaid” for their work “setting up, breaking down, transporting and maintaining machinery and equipment” at numerous fair sites in California, Arizona, Nevada and Idaho, as In These Times labor reporter Michelle Chen writes.
The workers, identified in the suit simply as John Doe 1 and John Doe 2 out of their fear of retaliation from labor recruiters, say they typically worked 10- to 14-hour days, earning about $5 an hour. As a recent report by the migrant worker advocacy group Centro de los Derechos del Migrante (CDM) shows, this and other forms of abuse against guest workers are commonplace in industries that rely on foreign workers legally brought to the country on H-2B visas.
As Chen writes:
CDM’s research shows that employers often pay guest workers below the ‘prevailing wage’ that is federally mandated in order to prevent the erosion of industry pay standards. The systematic violations thus aggravate the already poor working conditions across the hospitality sector, turning the industry’s justification for hiring migrant workers—that Americans are simply unwilling to endure the harsh labor conditions —into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
As the U.S. House of Representatives grapples with several immigration reform proposals that would “reportedly boost guest worker visas to about 400,000 per year,” the role played in the carnival and other industries by labor visa programs like the H-2B program gain prominence in national politics, and the attention of worker advocates like CDM.
“The case of the H-2B workers of Butler Amusements reveal the real price of our summer escapades, and how the economy of leisure is subsidized by the politics of migrant exclusion,” Chen writes. “Behind the fantasy worlds we rent for a day are countless John Does who pay dearly for a shot at an American Dream and get tricked into a nightmare.”
