The past few weeks have been very busy for all of us at CDM. Here’s a quick recap of everything we’ve been up to to ensure fair wages and strengthened protections for farm and poultry workers whose hard work make Thanksgiving feasts possible for families all across the United States:
- We strongly opposed the US Department of Labor’s new methodology for determining wages for migrant farmworkers. The Trump administration’s new methodology would rob individual farmworkers of around $5,500 of their hard earned wages every year. This is a shortsighted calculation that would affect all farmworkers, who are already some of the lowest paid workers.
- Alongside Migration that Works, we’re advocating to ensure that migrant workers are front and center in the upcoming USMCA renegotiations. We urged the US Trade Representative to maintain the Labor Chapter of the treaty and improve migrant worker protections, especially with regards to farmworkers and migrant worker women who disproportionately face discrimination and gender-based violence in guestworker programs. Here are the links to CDM’s and Migration that Works‘ comments.
- We held the National Meeting of the Migrant Defense Committee, a group of current and former migrant workers and their families that’s worked alongside CDM for the past 19 years. This year we focused on recent changes to guestworker programs and figuring out ways to challenge the Trump administration’s efforts to weaken protections for farmworkers and other migrant guestworkers. See photos below.
- We spoke with The New York Times about how workplace raids enable unscrupulous employers to abuse workers across industries and to Bloomberg against the expansion of guestworker programs without strengthening worker protections, among other media outlets.
- We partnered with Democracy Forward, Alianza Nacional de Campesinas and Equal Rights Advocates (ERA) to uncover the truth behind the gutting of the Women’s Bureau and the elimination of life-saving grants and programs aimed at ending workplace discrimination and gender-based violence.
This Thanksgiving week, I’m thankful for our incredibly committed and hard-working team. And I’m grateful for you, for supporting our work, and for all workers who are advancing migrant justice.
We wish you a meaningful and love-filled Thanksgiving holiday.