EEOC Finds that Ga. Farm Favors Foreign Over U.S. Workers; Ga. Rep. Responds by Trying to Defund LSC
Legal Services E-lert
Bibliographic Info:
Jeremy Redmon, “Feds; South Georgia farm favors foreign laborers over U.S. workers,”Atlanta-Journal Constitution, August 5, 2011
The Atlanta Journal Constitution writes: “A large South Georgia vegetable farm has been favoring foreign guest laborers over U.S. workers, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has found. In a decision released last month, the EEOC said Hamilton Growers/Southern Valley Fruit and Vegetable Inc. engaged in a ‘pattern or practice of regularly denying work hours and assigning less favorable’ work to U.S. workers in favor of foreigners participating in the federal H-2A guest worker program. The EEOC also said the Norman Park-based farm showed a pattern of firing U.S. workers and replacing them with H-2A employees. The farm denied the allegations and accused the U.S. workers of violating attendance rules, loitering and failing to keep up with the work, EEOC records show. Hamilton also said all its workers are guaranteed the same wages but some earn more because they work faster. . . . The EEOC’s findings stem from complaints that dozens of U.S. workers filed in 2009 and 2010 with the help of the Georgia Legal Services Program, said Leah Lotto, a staff attorney with the program’s farmworker rights division. The EEOC has invited the workers and the farm to try to reach a negotiated settlement…. Hamilton is the largest employer of guest workers in Georgia, employing about 400 through the H-2A program, according to Georgia Legal Services. Georgia’s $68.8 billion agricultural industry -- the state’s largest -- depends heavily on migrant workers, many of whom come from Mexico, Guatemala and other Latin American countries. Some South Georgia farmers have complained in recent months of severe labor shortages. Many blame those shortages on Georgia’s tough new law targeting illegal immigration, complaining it is scaring away the migrant Hispanic workers they depend on.”
Dana Milbank, “How Rep. Austin Scott betrayed his Tea Party roots,”Washington Post, August 9, 2011
Dana Milbank writes in an opinion piece for the Washington Post: “Rep. Austin Scott of Georgia, a Tea Party favorite and president of the House Republicans’ freshman class, got off to a slow start as a legislator but finally introduced his first bill last week. His draftsmanship should please the people who chant ‘read the bill’ at political rallies, because H.R. 2774 is only one sentence long. In its entirety: ‘Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Legal Services Corporation Act is repealed.’ This one sentence says a great deal about Scott, because it is a transparent attempt by the young lawmaker to defend a company in his district that discriminates against U.S. citizens in favor of Mexican migrant workers. Scott introduced the bill abolishing Legal Services exactly three days after it became public that Legal Services had won a U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission determination that Georgia’s Hamilton Growers ‘engages in a pattern or practice of regularly denying work hours and assigning less favorable assignments to U.S. workers, in favor of H2-A guestworkers.’. . . During his successful campaign to unseat moderate Democrat Jim Marshall, Scott ran a tough-on-immigration message. According to his hometown Tifton Gazette’s report at the time: ‘Scott said Congress has ignored its responsibility to secure U.S. borders and that he has voted for tough immigration bills that included making English the official language, seizing the vehicles of illegal immigrants, placing tougher standards for employers to verify that employees are legal U.S. citizens and chaired the committee on citizenship verification for voters. . . . He said that jobs here was the biggest draw for illegal aliens coming into the country and that making it more difficult to obtain them would curb the influx of illegal aliens.’ Given that, you’d think Scott would have sided with the 17 U.S. citizens in Georgia who claimed Hamilton Growers illegally dumped them in favor of Mexican workers on H-2A visas. . . . Phyllis Holmen, executive director of Georgia Legal Services, said . . . it’s common for growers to call their members of Congress for help when a Legal Services client sues them.”
Read more coverage on Rep. Scott’s political ties to Georgia Fruit & Vegetable Growers Association lobbyists.