TheNovember Farm Foundation® Forum, Growing Together: Trends and Transformation in U.S. Agriculture Labor, highlighted some of the findings from a recent multi-day symposium that explored the future of the U.S. agricultural workforce. The symposium, held by Farm Foundation and the Economic Research Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, aimed to convene a network of researchers and stakeholders to engage in productive discussions focused on farm labor issues. The primary goal was to strengthen and enhance ongoing farm labor research.
This forum highlighted the critical importance of farm labor to the competitiveness of US agriculture, particularly for labor-intensive commodities like fruits and vegetables. The discussion was moderated by Michael Marsh, president and CEO of the National Council of Agricultural Employers, and featured panelists: Philip Martin Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Davis; Andrew Padovani, senior research associate with JBS International; and Alexandra Hill, assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
The Forum covered a wide range of topics, including wage rates and competition, legislative and regulatory challenges, litigation and legal actions, mechanization and labor alternatives, and economic and demographic trends.
Numerous Issues to Consider
One point brought up was that there has been no significant agricultural labor reform since 1986, making it difficult to address current labor issues. Farmers must also contend with many new regulations, including those related to wage rates and worker protection. The impact of the Adverse Effect Wage Rate and competition with countries like Mexico was also discussed.
One solution to rising labor costs is a push toward mechanization, which brings about its own set of questions around adaptation to this change. In some cases, robotic harvesters are not yet fast enough or inexpensive enough to replace human hand pickers, but the gap may be closing fastest for crops like apples.
The H2-A program was also a large part of the discussion. The use of H-2A workers is increasing, but the program’s costs and regulatory requirements are significant. The anticipated impacts of the incoming administration on the potential for ag labor reform was also briefly discussed during audience question and answer session.
Overall, the Forum underscored the urgent need for comprehensive agricultural labor reform to ensure the sustainability and competitiveness of US agriculture. The discussions highlighted the complex interplay of wage rates, regulatory challenges, and the need for mechanization and alternative labor sources.
The two-hour discussion, including the audience question and answer session, was recorded and is archived on the Farm Foundation website.
Public employee collective bargaining rights have been restored by a Dane County judge, who ruled that several sections of Wisconsin's controversial law known as Act 10 are unconstitutional.
Wisconsin public worker and teachers unions scored a major legal victory Monday with a ruling that restores collective bargaining rights they lost under a 2011 state law that sparked weeks of protests and made the state the center of the national battle over union rights.
That law, known as Act 10, effectively ended the ability of most public employees to bargain for wage increases and other issues, and forced them to pay more for health insurance and retirement benefits.
Under the ruling by Dane County Circuit Judge Jacob Frost, all public sector workers who lost their collective bargaining power would have it restored to what was in place prior to 2011. They would be treated the same as the police, firefighter and other public safety unions that were exempted under the law.
Republicans vowed to immediately appeal the ruling, which ultimately is likely to go before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. That only amplifies the importance of the April election that will determine whether the court remains controlled 4-3 by liberal justices.
Former Gov. Scott Walker, who proposed the law that catapulted him onto the national political stage, decried the ruling in a post on the social media platform X as “brazen political activism.” He said it makes the state Supreme Court election “that much more important.”
Supporters of the law have said it provided local governments more control over workers and the powers they needed to cut costs. Repealing the law, which allowed schools and local governments to raise money through higher employee contributions for benefits, would bankrupt those entities, backers of Act 10 have argued.
Democratic opponents argue that the law has hurt schools and other government agencies by taking away the ability of employees to collectively bargain for their pay and working conditions.
The law was proposed by Walker and enacted by the Republican-controlled Legislature in spite of massive protests that went on for weeks and drew as many as 100,000 people to the Capitol. The law has withstood numerous legal challenges over the years, but this was the first brought since the Wisconsin Supreme Court flipped to liberal control in 2023.
The seven unions and three union leaders that brought the lawsuit argued that the law should be struck down because it creates unconstitutional exemptions for firefighters and other public safety workers. Attorneys for the Legislature and state agencies countered that the exemptions are legal, have already been upheld by other courts, and that the case should be dismissed.
But Frost sided with the unions in July, saying the law violates equal protection guarantees in the Wisconsin Constitution by dividing public employees into “general” and “public safety” employees. He ruled that general employee unions, like those representing teachers, can not be treated differently from public safety unions that were exempt from the law.
His ruling Monday delineated the dozens of specific provisions in the law that must be struck.
Wisconsin Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said he looked forward to appealing the ruling.
“This lawsuit came more than a decade after Act 10 became law and after many courts rejected the same meritless legal challenges,” Vos said in a statement.
Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the state’s largest business lobbying organization, also decried the ruling. WMC President Kurt Bauer called Act 10 “a critical tool for policymakers and elected officials to balance budgets and find taxpayer savings.”
The Legislature said in court filings that arguments made in the current case were rejected in 2014 by the state Supreme Court. The only change since that ruling is the makeup of Wisconsin Supreme Court, attorneys for the Legislature argued.
The Act 10 law effectively ended collective bargaining for most public unions by allowing them to bargain solely over base wage increases no greater than inflation. It also disallowed the automatic withdrawal of union dues, required annual recertification votes for unions, and forced public workers to pay more for health insurance and retirement benefits.
The law was the signature legislative achievement of Walker, who was targeted for a recall election he won. Walker used his fights with unions to mount an unsuccessful presidential run in 2016.
Frost, the judge who issued Monday’s ruling, appeared to have signed the petition to recall Walker from office. None of the attorneys sought his removal from the case and he did not step down. Frost was appointed to the bench by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who signed the Walker recall petition.
The law has also led to a dramatic decrease in union membership across the state. The nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum said in a 2022 analysis that since 2000, Wisconsin had the largest decline in the proportion of its workforce that is unionized.
In 2015, the GOP-controlled Wisconsin Legislature approved a right-to-work law that limited the power of private-sector unions.
Public sector unions that brought the lawsuit are the Abbotsford Education Association; the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Locals 47 and 1215; the Beaver Dam Education Association; SEIU Wisconsin; the Teaching Assistants’ Association Local 3220 and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 695.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
Service workers at Lakefront Brewery in Milwaukee are trying to form a union, the Milwaukee Area Service and Hospitality Workers Organization announced Monday.
Employees work at a Rivian electric vehicle factory in Normal, Ill., in 2021. A historic recovery in manufacturing jobs between 2019 and 2023 was concentrated in small urban areas such as McLean County, where Normal is located, and where car and candy factories have added jobs. (Courtesy of Rivian)
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, McLean County, Illinois, was known mostly as the home of State Farm Insurance in Bloomington and Illinois State University in Normal.
Now, the area illustrates a trend that’s bringing more factories to small cities with lower costs of living: It has thousands of new jobs manufacturing Rivian electric vehicles and a new candy factory that will produce Kinder Bueno and other Ferrero candies.
“Food and electric cars. This is not something we were known for before 2019,” said Patrick Hoban, president of Bloomington-Normal Economic Development Council in McLean County.
“We’re primarily an insurance and university town that’s just now seeing a rise in manufacturing. Rivian has ramped up from 300 to 8,000 employees, and I don’t think anyone realized how fast that was going to happen,” Hoban said.
President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to rebuild American manufacturing, and he won handily in most areas hollowed out by the movement of factory jobs overseas. But the rebound Trump promises has already been underway in many places: McLean County is part of an unusually strong jump in manufacturing jobs between 2019 and 2023 — the first time manufacturing employment has recovered fully from a recession since the 1970s, according to a recent report from the Economic Innovation Group, a bipartisan public policy organization in Washington, D.C.
There were about 12.9 million manufacturing jobs in 2023, slightly more than in 2019. However, the number of manufacturing jobs has declined precipitously since the all-time peak in 1979, when there were 19.4 million of them and they were a much larger share of overall employment.
Joseph McCartin, a Georgetown University professor and labor history expert, said manufacturing has been on an upswing since 2010 as the nation started recovering from the Great Recession. The pandemic interrupted the trajectory, but the United States recently saw a hopeful increase in pay for the new jobs, he said, as the Biden administration aimed to increase both wages and jobs through the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act.
“The Biden administration tried to use policy to ensure that more of these would be union jobs or at least offer union-level wages,” McCartin said. “This approach is almost certainly dead due to the results of the election.”
Employers may have a hard time filling lower-paying manufacturing jobs such as meat processing if the new Trump administration deports the immigrants who fill them, said William Jones, a University of Minnesota history professor and former president of the Labor and Working Class History Association.
“These will be hard hit if Trump follows up on his deportation plan,” Jones said. “The political rhetoric is that a bunch of native-born workers will move into these jobs, that they’re getting squeezed out, but that’s actually not the case. Some of these industries are extremely dependent on immigrant labor.”
Where growth happened
Small urban areas such as McLean County got most of the increase in manufacturing jobs between 2019 and 2023, according to the Economic Innovation Group report. Rural areas lost those jobs, and large cities saw no change.
It was mostly Sun Belt and Western states that saw the increases during those years, according to a Stateline analysis of federal Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
The largest percentage changes in manufacturing jobs were in Nevada (up 14%), Utah (up 11%), and Arizona and Florida (each up 9%). The largest raw numbers of new manufacturing jobs were in Texas (up 48,200), Florida (up 35,100) and Georgia (up 22,900).
Southern states such as Alabama and Mississippi also have seen more automotive jobs as manufacturers have taken advantage of lower costs and state “right-to-work” laws that weaken unions. Vehicle manufacturing jumped by 7,800 in Alabama and 6,600 in Mississippi, the largest increases outside California.
Meanwhile, traditional Rust Belt states have seen continued declines, with manufacturing jobs down about 2% in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and also in Illinois — despite McLean County’s success.
Manufacturing is playing a critical role in Nevada as it tries to diversify its tourist-oriented economy so it can better weather downturns such as the one during the pandemic, said Steve Scheetz, research manager for the Nevada Governor’s Office of Economic Development.
Automotive and other battery manufacturing and recycling, driven by electric carmaker Tesla and battery recycling firm Redwood Materials, account for much of the increase in Nevada manufacturing, Scheetz said.
The Biden administration tried to use policy to ensure that more of these would be union jobs or at least offer union-level wages. This approach is almost certainly dead due to the results of the election.
– Joseph McCartin, Georgetown University
As in Illinois, the job growth tended to be in smaller areas outside big cities, such as Storey County, just east of Reno, with a population of about 4,200.
“Fifteen years ago, this small county in rural Nevada was relatively unknown,” Scheetz said, adding that jobs and economic output has risen tenfold and the number of total jobs — including manufacturing — has grown from less than 4,000 to almost 16,000 in those 15 years. The county also is home to plants making building materials, industrial minerals and molded rubber, among other products.
The Biden administration focused on bringing more blue-collar jobs to small cities like Normal and Bloomington, said Jones, the University of Minnesota professor.
“Much of the growth is due to [President Joe] Biden’s manufacturing investments. There was a conscious strategy to focus on small towns to get the political benefit in places that tended to vote Republican,” said Jones.
If there was a play for political benefit, it got mixed results: Vice President Kamala Harris carried McLean County, Illinois, on Nov. 5, but she lost Storey County, Nevada, by the largest margin for a Democrat in 40 years.
Blue-collar wages
The decline of unions and the availability of cheaper labor overseas have dampened U.S. factory job wages in recent decades. Even so, manufacturing jobs remain an attractive path for blue-collar workers.
Manufacturing pay still ranks fairly high among the blue-collar fields at an average $34.42 per hour as of October — less than wages in energy ($39.98) or construction ($38.72), but considerably more than hospitality ($22.23) or retail ($24.76). That also was the case in 2019, and it has led many state and cities to seek more factory positions to balance out the lower-paying service jobs that have blossomed as manufacturing has waned.
But in the past year, state Republican leaders have pushed back on a burgeoning Southern labor movement that aims to bring higher wages and better benefits to blue-collar workers.
In Alabama, Republican Gov. Kay Ivey signed a new law in May that would claw back state incentives from companies that voluntarily recognize labor unions. GOP leaders in Georgia and Tennessee also passed laws pushing against a reinvigorated labor movement, viewing unions as a threat to the states’ manufacturing economies.
Much of the increase in Alabama manufacturing jobs has been in the northern part of the state, near Tennessee and Georgia. Since the pandemic began, Mazda Toyota Manufacturing came on line with the goal of hiring 4,000 vehicle production workers and another 2,000 in nearby parts factories as other manufacturers also boosted hiring. Private investment in Alabama automotive manufacturing totaled $7 billion over the same time frame, Stefania Jones, a spokesperson for state Commerce Secretary Ellen McNair, said in a statement to Stateline.
Supply-chain problems during the pandemic illustrated the advantages of American-made goods, said McCartin, the Georgetown University professor. However, without union support, today’s factory workers are unlikely to achieve the middle-class lifestyle enjoyed by earlier generations, he said.
“The growth of manufacturing itself is unlikely to become a panacea for what ails working-class America,” McCartin said.
Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.
Farmworkers play an “essential role in keeping food on our tables,” said U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack during opening remarks at a symposium held September 17-19, 2024, in Santa Cruz, California. The three-day event, “The Changing Landscape of Farm Labor Conditions in the United States: What the Future Holds and How to Prepare for It,” was hosted by U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Economic Research Service (ERS) and Farm Foundation. The symposium consisted of a two-day conference plus a one-day farm tour centered around the theme of U.S. agricultural labor conditions, challenges, and solutions. Dr. Jessica Crowe, chief of the Rural Economy Branch at the USDA’s ERS, along with ERS’s farm labor team, organized the event along four key themes:
Trends in the farm labor force—including presentations on worker migration and the H-2A Temporary Agricultural Program
Labor costs—including presentations on the effects of H-2A Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR) and overtime laws on farmworkers
Farmworker conditions—including presentations on workplace safety; effects of climate change on worker health; workplace harassment
Workforce development and technology—trends in training current farmworkers and a new generation to develop, operate, and repair new technologies in the field and lead packing operations
In her opening remarks, ERS Assistant Administrator Kelly Maguire stressed that although critical to the Nation’s food security, “farm work is potentially hazardous and ERS data show that farmworkers receive lower wages when compared with nonsupervisory workers outside of agriculture.” Complicating the issue, both the private and government sector will need to “accelerate adaptation to a changing landscape of farm labor,” said Maguire. This will be necessary for the United States to remain competitive as a producer of labor-intensive commodities like fruit and vegetables, she said.
The symposium’s opening remarks continued with Secretary Vilsack highlighting that “the USDA, Department of Labor, and employers can all play a role in addressing systemic challenges” while emphasizing the importance of building “a system that works for everyone… by creating value and opportunity for employers and farmworkers.”
In his keynote address, Dr. Philip Martin, professor emeritus at the University of California-Davis, outlined three responses to rising farm labor costs: an increase in mechanization, an increase in the number of migrant workers with H-2A visas, and an increase in imported produce. However, questions remain as to the extent machines can lessen labor needs by commodity, the number of workers the U.S. will need in the future and where they will come from, and whether the U.S. can import more fruits and vegetables from Mexico, Central and South America.
Day 1 Overview: Farmworker Well-Being
After opening remarks, the first day’s sessions focused on the changing farm labor force, farmworker wages, workplace safety, and farmworker health. Presenters described the changing demographics of domestic crop workers as one that is aging, increasingly coming from Southern Mexico, and more likely to have at least one chronic health condition. In addition, the number of farmworkers on migrant H-2A visas continues to increase. Several speakers discussed farmworker wages from the perspective of the farmworker and farm owner. Audience members contributed to these discussions by considering how high costs of housing factor into the discussion on wages. With respect to H-2A wages, Dr. Zach Rutledge, assistant professor at Michigan State University, discussed the adverse effect wage rate (AEWR) including how the AEWR is calculated, problems with its calculation, whether the rate is too low or too high, and how changes to the AEWR would affect H-2A and non-H-2A farm wages.
Speakers discussed the impact of farmworkers being excluded from many federal workplace protection laws on farmworker well-being. State laws are patchwork with some states providing more protection for farmworkers than other states. For example, six states have implemented (or are finalizing) heat standards for agricultural workers while three states have regulations in place for wildfire smoke. Despite agricultural workers having fewer workplace protections at the federal level than other occupations, farmworkers are exposed to hazardous conditions including extreme weather, wild animals, hazardous plants, dangerous tools, hazardous chemicals, and poor living conditions. These risks found in the workplace can lead to injuries and illnesses that are often left untreated until the problem becomes severe. Dr. Brenda Berumen assistant professor at Texas State University, described several barriers that farmworkers face to seeking medical treatment including the high cost of care, unpaid sick leave to receive treatment (resulting in lost wages), long travel times to receive certain health services, and a lack of information and resources (including information in their native language).
Day 2 Overview: Technological Innovations, H-2A Visa Program
The sessions on the second day focused on workforce development, technology, and the H-2A visa program. Advances in technological aids in orchards and fields, such as platforms used in apple orchards, can increase labor productivity while reducing injuries associated with previous picking methods. However, adoption rates are slow as the structure and architecture of existing orchards and fields have to adapt to the new technology. In addition, robotics in fields and orchards are continuing to advance, but have a ways to go before the technology is efficient enough to be cost effective. However, patents for artificial intelligence (AI) in agriculture have increased substantially in the past few years. It is yet to be seen how the increase in agricultural AI will impact farm labor.
The H-2A visa program is an increasing source of temporary agricultural labor. Presenters discussed the problems of the program, including scams and illegal fees associated with the recruitment of migrant workers, lack of oversight and accountability for employers who break laws tied to H-2A, and the tethering of farmworkers to employers by visa status. While speakers and audience members debated the impacts of H-2A wages on farmworkers and employers, overall, symposium attendees agreed that H-2A is a significant program that employers increasingly seek out to secure farm labor. Furthermore, attendees agreed that problems exist that can result in exploitation of farmworkers, during recruitment and employment. Dr. Kelly Maguire closed the symposium by thanking those involved who organized the three-day event, including the interpreters, reflecting on what was learned through formal and informal conversations, and encouraging attendees to continue to build on newly formed relationships and to nurture new perspectives and information gained during the symposium.
This post-event summary of “The Changing Landscape of Farm Labor Conditions in the United States: What the Future Holds and How to Prepare for It” symposium was written by Dr. Jessica Crowe, chief of the Rural Economy Branch in the Resource and Rural Economy Division in the USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS).
A youngster holds up a pro-union sign during a break between speeches at Labor Fest in Milwaukee Monday. Both presidential candidates are trying to appeal to union members. (Erik Gunn | Wisconsin Examiner)
Editors note:This five-day series explores the priorities of voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as they consider the upcoming presidential election. With the outcome expected to be close, these “swing states” may decide the future of the country.
7 States + 5 Issues That Will Swing the 2024 Election
Wisconsin carpenter Efrain Campos just retired this summer after 30 years, working mostly in commercial multi-story buildings — “from 15 floors and up,” he said. For him the last four years have been a boom period.
Efrain Campos (Erik Gunn | Wisconsin Examiner)
On Labor Day, Campos, 68, was among the thousands of union members and their families who turned out for Laborfest on Milwaukee’s festival grounds on the shores of Lake Michigan.
He had planned to vote for President Joe Biden for a second term in office, but when the Democratic Party pivoted to Vice President Kamala Harris as its candidate, he pivoted as well. “We need somebody to help the middle people,” he said, “so they can advance, get a little bit better than what we are now.”
Campos dismisses the notion that the Republican candidate, former President Donald Trump, is a pro-worker candidate despite Trump’s populist appeal that grabbed a slice of the working class electorate in 2016.
“Not at all,” he said. “It’s ignorant. He’s a rich man, he gets his way. That’s not what this country is about.”
As the Nov. 5 presidential election nears, Democrats are counting on union workers to deliver voters, particularly in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada where unions have remained an influential bloc, even as their strength has declined over the decades.
Many labor union leaders say they’re working as hard as they ever have to oppose Republican candidate and former President Donald Trump and elect Vice President Kamala Harris. The AFL-CIO, a federation of 60 unions that range from Major League Baseball players to firefighters to workers in the food industry, has endorsed Harris.
A growing share of rank-and-file union members, however, have been less likely to follow their leadership — some of them among Trump’s base.
Sean O’Brien, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, speaks on on July 15, 2024, the first day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images)
“It has to be recognized that union members are not monolithic in terms of the party they support,” said Paul Clark, a professor of labor and employment relations at Penn State University. “Many unions have 30, 40, maybe 50% or more of their members who either are registered Republicans or are going to support Donald Trump in this election.”
Last week, International Brotherhood of Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien announced the union’s executive council would not endorse either ticket and cited the support of a majority of his members for Trump. (The Teamsters aren’t part of the AFL-CIO).
Other union leaders insist that O’Brien is an outlier.
Nick Webber, a business agent with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and a political organizer for the North American Building Trades Unions, said, “It’s unprecedented the amount of interest in people in getting involved” as he marshals union canvassers this fall for the Democratic national ticket. He said in his conversations he’s hearing union members say “not only, ‘am I going to be voting,’ and [that they’re] tuned in, but ‘how can I get involved’ and ‘doing my part.’”
Appeals to steel and culinary workers
When Biden dropped out July 21, the national executive council of the 12.5 million-member AFL-CIO endorsed Harris the next day “because we knew that the administration that has been fighting for working people for the last three and a half years, we know what they’ve delivered, and we knew that her record spoke for itself,” said Liz Shuler, national AFL-CIO president, in an interview with NC Newsline.
In an appeal to United Steelworkers, the most powerful union in western Pennsylvania, Trump said in January he would block a potential acquisition of U.S. Steel by Japan-based Nippon Steel.
Nevertheless the union endorsed Biden, who said in a visit in April he also opposed the sale. Both he and Harris reiterated that stance during a Labor Day visit to Pittsburgh. “I couldn’t agree more with President Biden: U.S. Steel should remain in American hands,” Harris said.
In Nevada, Trump held a rally in June where he proposed ending federal taxes on tipped income — an appeal aimed at the workers in the state’s largest industry, hotel-casinos.
Harris adopted the no-tax-on-tips position as well in a visit in August, a day after the powerful Culinary Workers Local Union 226, endorsed her. The union reports that its 60,000 members are 55% women and 60% immigrants.
In a return visit in August, Trump suggested his “no tax on tips” position would draw Culinary members’ support — “A lot of them are voting for us, I can tell you that,” he said.
But the union responded by doubling down on its support for Harris, who on a visit months before had celebrated the union’s successful contract negotiations with the Las Vegas Strip’s largest gambling-resort corporations.
“Kamala Harris has promised to raise the minimum wage for all workers — including tipped workers — and eliminate tax on tips,” said Culinary Vice President Leain Vashon. Vashon said Trump didn’t help tipped workers while he was president, so “Why would we trust him? Kamala has a plan, Trump has a slogan.”
Making the case
For most union leaders, the case for Harris is the stark contrast they see between Trump’s record in the White House from 2016 to 2020 and that of his successor.
Kent Miller, Laborers Union Wisconsin District Council president and business manager (Laborers Union photo)
“When you talk about the politics of what’s at stake in this election, it’s very clear,” said Kent Miller, president and business manager for the Laborers Union Wisconsin District Council.
The 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, the 2022 bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which passed with only Democratic votes, opened the sluices to fund a range of investments in roads and bridges, clean energy and electric vehicle infrastructure.
The programs include strong incentives for union labor and for the enrollment of new apprentices in training programs operated by unions and their employers.
“We’ve got record membership and apprenticeship [numbers] right now,” said Miller, crediting the legislation. “Just imagine what another four years of pro-labor, pro-worker investment could do for our union, our communities and for the state of Wisconsin and our economy.”
But the messages unions have been pushing about manufacturing growth, the infrastructure advances and jobs — even unemployment rates that have fallen to just over 4% nationally and 3% or lower in states such as Wisconsin — have been slow to resonate with voters who are focused on higher prices resulting from supply chain shortages.
“Part of that is the investment is still in the works,” said William Jones, a labor historian at the University of Minnesota. “It was slow to be distributed, and it depended largely on state and local government taking it up and creating jobs. It’s possible some people haven’t felt the full impact.”
Jones also suggests there may have been inadequate messaging from the administration — something that unions are trying to make up for in their member outreach.
Beyond what Miller and other union leaders see as those bread-and-butter accomplishments are other policy stakes in who holds the White House, such as the makeup of the National Labor Relations Board and who holds the post of general counsel, the principal architect of the agency’s legal perspective.
Those differences further underscore what most union leaders see as a sharp distinction between the two tickets. “We’ve seen both these movies before,” said Webber of the electrical workers union.
Under the Trump administration the NLRB veered to positions less favorable to unions, Miller observed. Under Biden, it has issued more decisions that have supported union positions.
How much does Trump appeal?
Can the former president succeed in once again carving out some support among union voters?
In Wisconsin, union members’ connections to the Democratic Party appear to have softened since 2016, a review of survey data from the Marquette University Law School poll suggests. While about 65% of union members told pollsters they were Democrats in 2012 through 2015, that dropped to 59% in 2016 and has fluctuated since.
Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, all previously reliable Democratic states with strong union political involvement, famously flipped to Trump by narrow margins in 2016, leading to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s defeat that year. All three flipped back to help carry Biden to victory against Trump in 2020.
Jones said Trump’s criticism of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 2016 — enacted under Democratic President Bill Clinton in 1993 — “helped him among a certain demographic in 2016” — primarily working class white men from rural and small town regions.
When Teamsters President O’Brien announced the union wouldn’t make an endorsement this year, the union released a poll of rank-and-file members that found nearly 60% support for Trump compared to 31% for Harris. The union said the survey was conducted by Lake Research Partners, a Democratic polling firm.
O’Brien’s announcement followed his precedent-breaking speech to the Republican National Convention in July, where he called Trump “one tough SOB,” proclaimed a willingness to work with either political party and attacked business lobbies and corporations.
“I think he feels that at least half of his members are Trump supporters,” said Clark, the Penn State professor, in an interview before the non-endorsement announcement. “And while I think he recognizes that Biden has been very pro-labor, you know, politically, I think he felt a need to sort of send a message to his members that he hears them.”
The outcome opened up a rift in the union, however. Within hours of O’Brien’s announcement, local, state and regional Teamsters bodies representing at least 500,000 members of the 1.3 million-member union endorsed Harris, including groups in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada.
The pro-Harris Teamsters highlighted Biden’s role in signing legislation, included in the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act, that shored up the union’s Central States Pension Fund. The fund faced insolvency by 2026 after years of underfunding.
Ken Stribling, retired Teamsters member and president of the National United Committee to Protect Pensions, speaks at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. (Screenshot | Democratic National Convention YouTube channel)
In August, Teamster retiree Ken Stribling of Milwaukee, president of a retiree group formed to campaign for the pension rescue, addressed the Democratic National Convention to thank Biden and Harris. Legislation had circulated during Trump’s term but the former president never took action to advance it, he said.
“The Biden administration and the vice president were really the ones instrumental in making sure that we got what we deserved,” Stribling said in an interview after his convention appearance.
In a statement, Bill Carroll, president of the union’s Council 39, representing about 15,000 Wisconsin Teamsters, said Harris would also build on Biden’s pro-union record. “In contrast, Donald Trump tried to gut workers’ rights as president by appointing union busters to the NLRB and advocating for national right-to-work,” Carroll said. “Trump’s project 2025 would go even further, attacking the ability for unions to even have the ability to organize.”
The labor-related provisions in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 document — billed as a blueprint for the next Republican White House — include proposals that experts have said would eliminate public sector unions nationwide, make forming private sector unions more difficult and allow states to opt out of federal labor laws. Other proposals would reduce federal protections for workers whether unionized or not.
Union messaging to members has emphasized the document and its ties to Trump, despite his repeated disavowal of the agenda and claims of ignorance about its contents.
“It is absolutely his plan,” the AFL-CIO’s Shuler told NC Newsline. “He’s had over 100 former administration officials and the Heritage Foundation basically writing the blueprint for his next term, which would eliminate unions as we know it.”
Reaching out to members
Union leaders say they’re trying to make sure their members are seeing the campaign the way they see it.
In Nevada, where the Culinary’s canvassing and get-out-the-vote effort is regarded as one of the state’s most formidable, the union boasts that during the 2022 campaign cycle it knocked on 1 million doors.
This year, UNITE HERE says it is once again mobilizing its members and plans to knock on more than 3 million doors in Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina and Michigan “to ensure that Kamala Harris wins the presidency.”
In Wisconsin, the Laborers are building political messaging into a union project to engage members more closely, “connecting union members with other union members,” Miller said, to explain how negotiations affect wages and health and retirement benefits, as well as the importance of increasing union representation.
“We’re a jobs club,” Miller said. The message to the union members, he adds, is that “at the end of the day it’s everybody’s right to decide who to vote for — but we want to let you guys know these are the issues at stake in this upcoming election.”
Experienced union members are holding one-on-one conversations, particularly with newer and younger members. “We’re not just doing phone calls, we’re doing job site visits, and member-to-member doing doors,” Miller said.
Webber’s work with the building trades group is similar. “We’ve been doing a lot of reaching out and making sure to have those conversations,” he said — on job sites and during union meetings.
The message: “These jobs don’t come out of thin air,” Webber says. “There’s been strategic, intentional investment for a need in the community.”
The communications don’t just focus on other union members, either, he said. “You need to be sure people on the periphery of the union hear [the message],” said Webber. “Union household members are a huge part of these conversations — a partner, a spouse or child.”
The Wisconsin law known as Act 10, enacted in 2011, has weakened the once-powerful The Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state’s largest teachers union. But Peggy Wirtz-Olsen, WEAC’s president, said the union remains active phone-banking weekly and with regular canvassing planned for October.
United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain speaks onstage during the first day of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center on Aug. 19, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
“We’re making the calls to ensure that our members are well educated on who’s on the ballot this go around and what they’ve done,” Wirtz-Olsen said.
Those calls focus both on the state races, where educators are hoping that a vastly different Legislature in 2025 could help unlock more funding for public schools, as well as on the national ticket.
“During the [presidential] debate we had a dozen house parties hosted by our members,” Wirtz-Olsen said. Along with Harris’ choice of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former teacher, as her running mate, the contrast between the Harris campaign’s support of public education and Trump’s vow to abolish the federal Department of Education “has them fired up and excited about this race.”
On Monday, the United Auto Workers union unveiled a national YouTube video aimed directly at members who might still see Trump through the lens of his attacks on NAFTA in his first presidential campaign.
The UAW has endorsed Harris. In the 3 1/2-minute video, UAW President Shawn Fain finds both Democrats and Republicans culpable for NAFTA and the factory closings over the quarter-century since it was enacted. In 2016, Fain says, “All of that pain had to go somewhere. And for a lot of working-class people, it went to voting for Donald Trump.”
The video, however, portrays Trump as a con man, highlighting his 2017 tax cut as favoring the wealthy and the USMCA, the trade law Trump enacted, as no better than NAFTA, which it replaced.
While emphasizing that “both parties have done harm to the working class,” Fain said that under Biden and Harris, “we’ve seen the tide starting to turn.”
Under Biden there’s been “more manufacturing investment in this country than at any point in my lifetime,” he says, and under Harris, “the Democratic Party is getting back to its roots.”
Paula Uhing (Erik Gunn | Wisconsin Examiner)
Paula Uhing is president of the local Steelworkers union at a suburban Milwaukee factory. She’s another enthusiastic Harris supporter, but said she and other labor leaders “know that we still have a lot of work to do” to pull more union voters behind the vice president.
“We have so many union members that vote against their own interests,” Uhing said. “It’s just because they’re not paying attention, they’re not listening to the right people.”
She describes herself as “optimistically cautious,” though. One reason has been some of the conversations she’s had with coworkers.
“There are people at work who are not necessarily turning away from the Republican Party altogether, but they are considering the Democratic ticket,” Uhing said. “They’re looking at it in a completely different way than they did last cycle, which is a good thing.”
Kim Lyons, Pennsylvania Capital-Star; Hugh Jackson, Nevada Current; Rob Schofield, NC Newsline; and Andrew Roth, for Michigan Advance, contributed reporting for this story.
This story has been updated to correct the spelling of UAW President Shawn Fain.
Faith leaders with the Dane Sanctuary Coalition spoke out against anti-immigrant rhetoric at the Midvale Community Lutheran Church Thursday | Wisconsin Examiner photo
Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance traveled to western Wisconsin this week to double down on his spurious attacks on immigrants, promising to “kick these illegal aliens out.”
It was the second time in two weeks that Republicans have campaigned in the rural, western part of the state on their “mass deportation” platform.
The region where Vance and U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden made their recent stands against immigrants is heavily dependent on immigrant labor. Immigrants make up a large majority of the workforce on area dairy farms and they do most of the heavy lifting for other key businesses in the area including Ashley Furniture — the world’s largest furniture manufacturer — and the Pilgrim’s poultry processing plant.
Western Wisconsin has experienced a big recent demographic shift with an influx of Latin American immigrants. And those newcomers have revitalized small towns across the region that were in decline because young people are moving away, leaving an aging white population. Mexican restaurants, grocery stores and other small businesses have given new life to fading Main streets and young families have filled schools that were on the brink of closure from low enrollment.
It’s hard to keep up with all the falsehoods politicians are spreading about immigrants in this campaign season. Among the doozies Vance dropped during his visit to Eau Claire was his baseless assertion that immigrants caused two area hospitals to close recently and that mass deportation will “make the business of rural health care much more affordable.”
The closure of those rural hospitals was agonizing for the communities that struggled to hold on to them. An aging patient population, low Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements, trouble finding and keeping staff, and a larger harsh landscape for nonprofit hospitals were among the factors that caused the hospitals to close. But neither the legislators who worked on the issues nor hospital management pointed to immigrants as the problem. There’s good reason for that.
Across the country, immigrants use the U.S. medical system far less than people born in the U.S. A study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that: “Recent immigrants were responsible for only about 1% of public medical expenditures even though they constituted 5% of the population,” and “immigrants’ medical costs averaged about 14% to 20% less than those who were US born.”
As Alison Pfau, bilingual regional dairy educator for the University of Wisconsin Extension, has seen that phenomenon up close. She explained during a panel I participated in this week that given a choice between seeking medical care and staying on the job, “immigrant workers will choose to keep working every time, unless it’s a dire emergency.”
Meanwhile, national research shows that immigrants — including those without legal status — pay more into government health care programs through tax withholdings than they use in benefits. In 2022, undocumented immigrants paid almost $100 billion in taxes, about a third of which went to Medicare and Social Security — programs they will never be able to use —Wisconsin Watch reports. Without them, U.S. safety net programs would take a big hit.
Other misleading campaign talking points mix up immigrants who are in the U.S. without legal authorization, like most Wisconsin dairy workers, with refugees and asylum seekers like the atrociously slandered Haitian refugees Vance and Trump have been falsely accusing of eating pets in Springfield, Ohio — who are here under U.S. protection and therefore not, contrary to campaign rhetoric, eligible to be deported.
Antonio De Loera-Brust, a United Farm Workers spokesman, told Wisconsin Watch that the point of anti-immigrant rhetoric is not a real policy plan. After all, deporting millions of workers would be logistically impossible, in addition to depriving U.S. agriculture of a huge portion of its labor force. Employers who support Trump despite his threats, De Loera-Brust theorized, aren’t worried about losing their workers — they see the rhetoric as a way to frighten farmworkers so they don’t demand their rights. “I don’t think you need to psychoanalyze it that much further beyond, ‘This is in their economic interest,’” he told Wisconsin Watch.
He has a point. There is nothing coherent or logical about the barrage of hateful rhetoric about immigrants. Fear itself seems to be the point. And a system in which a disempowered workforce lives in fear is a system that is bound to be rife with exploitation.
Still, some farmers do object to the nasty characterization of immigrants. They point out that there is no legal visa for year-round farm work, even though the U.S. has depended on these workers to do jobs Americans don’t want to do for decades now. They want a visa program that recognizes that work and gives the people who’ve been here a long time a path to citizenship.
Perhaps the most important thing to understand about all the political flame-throwing over communities supposedly afflicted by immigrants is that many of the people who live in those communities don’t agree that they are afflicted at all.
I found this out when I interviewed local leaders in Whitewater, Wisconsin, which was the focus of a lot of misleading political spin about a supposed sudden “flood” of Nicaraguan asylum seekers causing a crime wave. It turned out that story was false.
Eau Claire, like Whitewater, has been welcoming asylum seekers from other countries for years, and, as in Whitewater, residents there say the experience has enriched their community.
Matt Kendziera, executive director of Wisconsin Faith Voices for Justice, lived in Eau Claire for 29 years before moving to Madison last year. He said he never heard divisive talk about the arrival of people from other countries in the community until Vance visited this week to talk about the scourge of immigration. “Eau Claire has been a wonderful and welcoming community to the refugees who are there,” he told me. Many former refugees have become community leaders, he added, running for city council and becoming active in the local schools.
I spoke to Kendziera Thursday during a news conference at the Midvale Lutheran Community Church in Madison, where faith leaders who are part of the Dane Sanctuary Coalition were speaking out against “the growing number of vicious, racist lies, hatred, bomb threats, persecution and death threats against asylum seekers,” according to a coalition press release.
“This church has had the privilege of accompanying asylum seekers,” said Midvale Lutheran’s co-pastor, Rev. Katie Baardseth. Families from Cameroon, Ukraine and Colombia fleeing persecution and violence had found “peace and success in Madison,” she said. The experience of welcoming those families had benefited the congregation, she added.
Rabbi Jon Prosnit of Temple Beth El talked about Jews’ historical experience: “We’ve been targeted, we’ve been scapegoated. … We are always on guard lest our own hearts harden,” he said, adding that welcoming and protecting outsiders is “the most repeated injunction in the entire Torah.”
Ibrahim Saeed, president of the Islamic Center of Madison, described the history of the Muslim people as a history of persecution and exile but also of being welcomed by strangers. God made humanity, he said, “so you can get to know each other, not to despise each other.”
Without a doubt, there’s a demographic shift going on in Wisconsin, especially in rural areas. But community leaders, employers and regular citizens in Wisconsin communities like Whitewater, Eau Claire and Arcadia have embraced the change and the energy and economic and cultural benefits that come with it.
It’s inspiring to talk to people who have opened their hearts, welcoming newcomers and feeling their own lives and communities enriched by the experience.
Contrary to all the toxic rhetoric, immigration is a net plus for our country, and especially for the white, rural areas the Trump/Vance campaign is targeting in Wisconsin. Beneath the noise of the political campaign, a lot of people in those communities can tell you about it.
President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Sean O’Brien speaks on stage on the first day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on July 15, 2024. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters declined to endorse a candidate for president Wednesday, although both parties sought the support of the nation’s largest union.
The group’s General Executive Board voted Wednesday to abstain from an endorsement, citing a split among members and a lack of firm commitments from either major party candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, on labor issues.
In Wisconsin, however, the Teamsters’ statewide organization broke with the parent union and unanimously endorsed Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Teamsters Joint Council 39 represents 15,000 Teamsters in Wisconsin in three locals.
In endorsing Harris they joined with Teamsters groups in Michigan, Nevada and Philadelphia as well as local unions across the country with more than half a million members, according to the Harris-Walz campaign.
“As Vice President of the most pro-union administration ever, Kamala Harris worked with the Teamsters and other union workers to pass the historic Butch Lewis Act which has saved the pensions of over a million retirees to date,” the Wisconsin council stated in a press release Wednesday afternoon. Wisconsin Teamsters retirees were among those active in the campaign to salvage the pension fund.
The national union’s refusal to endorse can be viewed as a loss for Harris, the Democrat. The union has endorsed the Democrat in every presidential election since 2000, including Trump’s opponents, Joe Biden in 2020 and Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Each campaign sought the endorsement of the 1.3-million-member union, hoping it would buoy their candidate in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — the closely contested industrial states considered crucial to an Electoral College victory in November.
And the union’s leaders held in-person meetings with each candidate, seeking to extract policy commitments. But those commitments were not forthcoming, according to a statement from the union explaining the decision not to endorse.
“Unfortunately, neither major candidate was able to make serious commitments to our union to ensure the interests of working people are always put before Big Business,” Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien said in the statement.
“We sought commitments from both Trump and Harris not to interfere in critical union campaigns or core Teamsters industries — and to honor our members’ right to strike — but were unable to secure those pledges.”
The Wisconsin council’s announcement contrasted sharply with O’Brien’s statement. Bill Carroll, council president, expressed confidence that Harris would work with Congress to pass the PRO Act, legislation removing barriers to union organizing, “ending some of the most egregious union busting tactics once and for all,” Carroll said in a statement.
Carroll lashed out at Trump’s first-term record as hostile to labor and proposals in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation agenda whose authors have included numerous Trump advisors, which he said would attack union organizing further. He tied the Wisconsin Teamsters to union supporters who have signed on to organize and campaign for Harris and Walz this fall.
O’Brien, meanwhile, encouraged the union’s politically diverse membership to remain active during the election season.
“Democrats, Republicans, and Independents proudly call our union home, and we have a duty to represent and respect every one of them,” O’Brien added. “We strongly encourage all our members to vote in the upcoming election, and to remain engaged in the political process. But this year, no candidate for President has earned the endorsement of the Teamsters’ International Union.”
However, by Wednesday night, locals in the battleground states Nevada and Michigan, in addition to Wisconsin, announced they would back Harris, along with other locals that had earlier issued endorsements. “Along with these locals, the Vice President has received the overwhelming support of organized labor because, while she has spent her entire career championing labor, Donald Trump celebrated firing striking workers and his Project 2025 agenda would fundamentally undermine the right to organize,” the campaign said in a statement.
Teamsters Joint Council 32 representing members in Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin also endorsed Harris.
Trump preferred in member poll
In an electronic poll the union released Wednesday, rank-and-file Teamsters preferred Trump, the Republican, over Harris 59.6% to 34%.
In a statement, the Trump campaign touted the poll results.
“While the Executive Board of the Teamsters is making no formal endorsement, the vast majority of rank-and-file working men and women in this important organization want President Donald Trump back in the White House,” the unsigned statement read.
The electronic poll’s results were a reversal from a previous straw poll that showed members supported President Joe Biden to Trump 44.3% to 36.3%. Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris in July.
The mere question of whom Teamsters would endorse marks a significant shift toward Republicans. Unions, including Teamsters, have historically backed Democrats.
Trump’s populist appeal appears to have upset that tradition.
O’Brien had a prime-time speaking role at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this summer, though he did not endorse Trump. It was the first appearance by a Teamsters president at a Republican National Convention in the group’s 121-year history.
Harris’ running mate Walz was a teachers union member before entering politics.
This report has been updated with the endorsement of the Harris-Walz campaign by local and state Teamster organizations, including in Wisconsin.
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Erik Gunn contributed to this report.
Migrants wait throughout the night on May 10, 2023, in a dust storm at Gate 42, on land between the Rio Grande and the border wall, hoping they will be processed by immigration authorities before the expiration of Title 42. (Photo by Corrie Boudreaux for Source NM)
It seems absurd to take the time to refute the preposterous claims about immigrants made by Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans in Wisconsin, including U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden and Sen. Ron Johnson. But the campaign of slander targeting vulnerable workers who milk our cows, pick our crops, build our roads and prop up our economy is genuinely dangerous.
Trump hit a new low when he claimed during Tuesday’s presidential debate that “in Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
Kamala Harris’ bemused reaction, laughing and shaking her head, reflected the feelings of a whole lot of viewers who were appalled to hear the former president spreading a racist internet fable from the debate stage.
This was not a one-off. Outrageous lies about immigrants are the centerpiece of Republican campaigns this year.
On Monday, as Henry Redman reported, Van Orden held a press conference to turn a single criminal case against a Venezuelan immigrant into fodder for his reelection campaign in Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District.
“American citizens’ human rights are being violated. They’re being kidnapped, raped and murdered by criminal, illegal aliens, and it’s just got to stop,” Van Orden declared.
In reality, an extensive study led by Stanford University economist Ran Abramitzky shows that immigrants are significantly less likely to be locked up for serious crimes than people born in the U.S. “From Henry Cabot Lodge in the late 19th century to Donald Trump, anti-immigration politicians have repeatedly tried to link immigrants to crime, but our research confirms that this is a myth and not based on fact,” Abramitzky said.
As dairy farmer John Rosenow, who lives in Van Orden’s district, told Redman, anti-immigrant rhetoric does nothing to help farmers like him, who employ some of the immigrants performing 70% of the labor on Wisconsin dairy farms. Almost all of those workers are not here legally and could be deported at any time, because Congress has failed to enact a visa program for year-round farm work.
“If there’s one thing you can do to help us [it’s to] tone down the rhetoric,” Rosenow said he told Van Orden’s staff. “They’re doing all the work, and why do we select one person that does something wrong that’s an immigrant and make it like all immigrants are like that person?” Rosenow added. “We don’t do that for Americans. We’ve got plenty of bad white people around here that do bad things, and we don’t extrapolate that to everyone else.”
But stirring up white voters with race-baiting stories about immigrants is a vote-getter, Republicans figure.
On Wednesday, Wisconsin’s Sen. Johnson joined Senate GOP colleagues in a press conference demanding immediate passage of the SAVE Act “to protect integrity in U.S. elections and ensure only U.S. citizens can vote.” Republicans are threatening to shut down the U.S. government over the non-issue of alleged voting by undocumented immigrants — something that is already a felony.
Instances of unauthorized immigrants voting are “so rare as to be statistically nonexistent,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnik, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, told the Christian Science Monitor — hardly a “crisis” that merits the extreme measures Johnson and his colleagues are calling for.
For the most part, Democrats have responded to Republican alarmism about immigration by sticking to policy and brushing off the fearmongering and grotesque caricatures of immigrants. Taking the high road might be a smart political strategy, particularly for Harris, who is herself the child of immigrants and the first woman of color with a serious shot at the White House. Like Barack Obama, the first Black president of the United States, Harris has responded to race-baiting attacks by rising above them and encouraging Americans to do likewise, to “turn the page” on ugly, divisive politics, to embrace a big-hearted sense of ourselves as having “more in common than what divides us.” Calling out racism directly is a loser for candidates of color, political consultants advise.
At the same time, Democrats including Harris and Wisconsin’s incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin point out — correctly — that Republicans in Congress abandoned a bipartisan border security deal they’d helped negotiate because Trump told them to let it die so he could use immigration as a campaign cudgel.
It’s true that the incident shows the GOP’s lack of seriousness about tackling the U.S. immigration system they are constantly complaining about. But the border security bill also drew a lot of criticism from immigrant rights groups, particularly for the way it turns the U.S. asylum application process into a game of roulette, allowing a future administration to deny asylum protections, and changing the rules on a day to day basis when border crossings exceed a certain threshold.. Harris has pledged to sign it anyway if she’s elected.
That’s too bad, because the bill does nothing to address the issue she was charged with looking into as vice president: the root causes of mass migration. Nor will it stop people from sneaking across the border to fill jobs while employers are desperate for their labor — including on Wisconsin dairy farms.
These workers are already vulnerable to exploitation. They come here with no legal protections and work long hours for low pay doing back-breaking jobs Americans won’t take. They pay taxes through wage withholdings into social safety net programs they can never access.
To a lot of citizens they are invisible. Anti-immigrant campaign rhetoric casts them in an ugly glare, focusing resentment on people who are already living in tenuous circumstances. They are not only doing our dirty work, they are boosting the wages of U.S. workers and making our economy stronger.
The injustice of Republicans’ anti-immigrant libel, set beside immigrant contributions to the U.S. economy, is overwhelming.
Political point-scoring aside, it would be nice to see Democrats stand up more forcefully on this topic, instead of tacitly agreeing with Republicans’ false claims that immigrants are harming our country. Eric Hovde, the Republican challenging Baldwin this year in the U.S. Senate race, claims without evidence that immigrants are causing the lack of affordable housing and driving up the cost of health care. Baldwin has said she supports the bipartisan border security bill and wants to stop fentanyl from crossing the border.
What we don’t hear enough about is that the big reason migrants pour across our southern border is because employers like the farmers here in Wisconsin demand it. Without those immigrants — if, for example, Trump launched his promised “mass deportation,” sending federal agents door to door to arrest undocumented workers — our dairy industry would go belly-up overnight.
“Immigrants are driving the U.S. economic boom,” the Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell writes in a recent column. “That is: The United States has escaped recession, hiring growth has exceeded expectation, and inflation has cooled faster than predicted — all largely because immigration has boosted the size of the U.S. labor force. Don’t just take my word for it; ask the Federal Reserve chair or Wall Street economists.”
Van Orden, in his recent press conference, acknowledged the contributions of immigrants to the dairy industry in his district, along with the construction and hospitality industries, and said that’s why he supports the H-2A visa program, which gives temporary visas to migrants to do seasonal farm work in the U.S.
But the H-2A program “means nothing to dairy farmers,” Rosenow told the Examiner, since it doesn’t apply to workers who labor year-round on dairy farms, as well as in all of the other industries Van Orden mentioned.
Instead of scapegoating, we owe hard-working immigrants a debt of gratitude. And we need to listen to employers like Rosenow, who are asking politicians to show some common decency and come up with policy solutions that acknowledge what they’ve known for decades: Our country benefits tremendously from immigrants.
Although critical to the nation’s food security, farm work is potentially hazardous, farmworkers receive lower wages when compared with nonsupervisory workers outside agriculture, and many hired farm workers lack legal work authorization and access to basic public services. For the United States to remain competitive as a producer of fruit, vegetables, and other labor-intensive commodities both private and government institutions will need to accelerate adaptation to a changing landscape of farm labor.
The conference is presented by the USDA Economic Research Service and Farm Foundation. It will cover four key themes: trends in the farm labor force, including worker migration and the H-2A Temporary Agricultural Program; labor costs, farm worker conditions, and workforce development.
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