By Tom Knudson -- Bee Staff Writer
Published Saturday, February 11, 2006
Setting it straight: In the A1 story Saturday about a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing date on migrant Latino laborers, a U.S. congressman was misidentified. He is Joe Baca, D-Rialto.
A U.S. Senate subcommittee has scheduled a hearing date to examine the shabby treatment of migrant Latino laborers who toil legally as guest workers on national forest land.
"Poor treatment of forest workers is a long-standing problem," Senator Jeff Bingaman, a New Mexico Democrat who requested the hearings, said Tuesday through a spokesman.
"The causes and effects are complicated - and the ultimate solutions are likely to be, as well," Bingaman continued. "But they call into question some of the most basic practices of the (U.S.) Forest Service, other federal agencies and the forest services industry as well."
The March 1 hearing before the Senate subcommittee on public lands and forests comes in the wake of a November Sacramento Bee investigation that revealed widespread wage violations, dangerous working conditions and primitive living arrangements among the 10,000 or so "H2B" forest guest workers. The so-called "pineros" cut brush, plant trees and perform other manual labor across vast swaths of wooded terrain, from Maine to California, on private as well as public land.
Previously, on the House of Representatives side, California Reps. George Miller, D-Martinez, and Jim Baca, D-Rialto, had both called for hearings. So far, those hearings have not been scheduled, although discussions about who has primary responsibility for the problems continue.
The Senate hearing is expected to examine the role of the U.S. Forest Service in hiring and overseeing the reforestation contractors who employ the migrant workers as well as the oversight responsibilities of the U.S. Department of Labor, charged with enforcing safety and wage laws.
"This is wonderful," Susan Perez, wife of a former H2B worker forest in Idaho, said when she learned of the hearing. "It needs to be looked into - and something needs to be done. These people are human beings and they are being treated like animals, like dogs."
The hearing will be chaired by Sen. Larry Craig, a Republican from Idaho. Part of the powerful Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Craig's subcommittee oversees the Forest Service. California Sen. Dianne Feinstein is a member.
"It's part of the Forest Service responsibility to oversee these contractors," said Dan Whiting, Craig's spokesman. The hearing was announced Friday on the committee's Web site.
No formal agenda has been developed, but Whiting said Craig is interested in learning more about recent Forest Service contract changes - put into place in response to the Bee stories - that the agency says spell out for its contract officers what constitutes a violation of workplace laws.
Craig "understands they've made improvements and he wants to discuss it with them," Whiting said.
Migrant advocates, long concerned about treatment of the pineros, said they were pleased that Congress was showing interest. "It's great the Senate is doing this - it's long overdue," said Mary Bauer, an attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center in Alabama, who is suing five restoration contractors that employ H2B forest guest workers.
Unlike undocumented workers, guest workers journey legally to the United States and labor here under a little-known program set up for non-agricultural workers. But for those who work in forestry, that guest worker status carries few protections.
Routinely, they work in dangerous conditions with little training and poor safety gear. They crowd into poorly maintained vans for long commutes to job sites.
Word of the Senate's interest also was welcomed by many forest contractors, who have seen their bids for Forest Service jobs undercut by companies using legal guest workers, as well as undocumented workers.
"It is a long time coming. Hopefully contractual evaluation methods will be revised to distribute, equitably, awards to local businesses," said Cindy Wood, co-owner of Wood's Fire and Emergency Service - a forest contractor in Plumas County.
"These folks are just trying to live the American dream," she added, "however, this should not be done at the risk of exploitation (or of) American small business."
House Bill 4437, the Border Protection, Anti-Terrorism and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005, was approved by the House in December.
* That bill and most Senate proposals would require all employers to check worker documents against federal databases, using a Web site or by making telephone calls.
* Only about 5,000 U.S. employers, including public agencies, have inquired about or have volunteered to use an experimental Web-based verification system called Basic Pilot.
* All new hires are screened, not just immigrants. No previously hired employees are screened with Basic Pilot.
* The House bill would require all U.S. employers eventually to screen every employee in the country, an estimated 120 million people by the year 2012.
* About 85 percent of Basic Pilot checks are authorized initially on average, with 15 percent declined. It's unknown whether verification has been denied for legitimate reasons or because of system glitches.
* A two-year expansion of the system immediately after the bill is enacted would cost an estimated $405 million between 2006 and 2010.
* Costs for new staff at the Department of Homeland Security would reach $35 million more a year by 2009 and "increase substantially" after 2010.
* Costs of handling inquiries would cost the Social Security Administration about $640 million more between 2006 and 2015.
Sources: Department of Homeland Security, Congressional Budget Office
About the writer:
- The Bee's Tom Knudson can be reached at (530) 582-5336 or tknudson@sacbee.com.