For Maribel Hernández, falling ill with COVID-19 at a Louisiana crawfish processor and losing her job was terrible enough. But the Mexican guest worker was in for another shock. A federal labor investigation in 2020, initially focusing on worksite safety, revealed that the company failed to pay Hernández and 99 other guest workers a total of $138,629 in overtime earnings.
The 100 workers were deprived of pay "amid the pandemic, when food industry workers put themselves at risk to support the economy," U.S. Labor Department officials announced in August of 2021. Officials recently told the Center for Public Integrity that 35 of the foreign workers were also owed $12,922 in sick pay required under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act.
Shortchanging workers such as Hernández isn't an isolated problem. From 2005 to 2020, U.S. employers around the country were ordered to pay more than $42.5 million in back wages to 69,000 workers who perform seasonal low-wage jobs on H-2A and H-2B visas.
But labor advocates are worried that many more workers are being cheated. They're also concerned that investigations by the Labor Department — which has special oversight over guest workers — aren't keeping pace with a dramatic increase in workers. Closed cases focused on allegations of violations specific to H-2A and H-2B visas increased only slightly from 424 cases in 2011 to 478 in 2019, according to a Public Integrity analysis of department data. Over the same period, the total...
NEW DELHI: Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Monday alleged that the entire press conference conducted by Congress leaders Pawan Khera and Gaurav Gogoi was based on material supplied by ...