Legislation would decimate jobs across rural America

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), America's largest private sector union representing 1.2 million workers in meatpacking, food processing, grocery, and other essential industries across North America, released a statement in response to House Republicans' Securing Agriculture's Workforce Act (SAWA).

UFCW International President Milton Jones said:

"Across the country, rural communities are powered by farm and food processing jobs. The Securing Agriculture's Workforce Act will turn these stable, permanent jobs into temporary ones, leaving workers with less money to take home and spend in their local economies.

"Americans are already shouldering the burden of an affordability crisis, but instead of addressing it, House Republicans would rather focus on weakening the jobs that keep our country running and put food on American families' tables. Jobs in meatpacking and food processing and the communities that rely on them should be invested in, not demolished. Turning dependable jobs into temporary ones will threaten the livelihoods of thousands of Americans, devastate entire communities, and threaten our food supply chain."

BACKGROUND

• Corporations bring in hundreds of thousands of foreign workers to fill seasonal and temporary agriculture jobs via the H-2A visa program. These workers have limited protections against abuse by employers, often resulting in low wages, weak benefits, and poor working conditions.

• The UFCW urges lawmakers in Congress to vote against this bill, and instead support legislation that invests in the jobs that power America's rural communities, like the Grocery, Farm, and Food Worker Stabilization Grant Program Act, which would create a grant program to provide stabilization payments to food workers in the case of a natural disaster or other emergency.

CONTACT: Finn Storer [email protected]