The National Consumers League, the nation’s pioneering consumer organization, today reaffirmed its support for robust action by the Federal Communications Commission to address the problem of “bill shock.” The following statement may be attributed to Sally Greenberg, executive director of the National Consumer League:

“Wireless phone bills have become a source of confusion for consumers in recent years. Increasingly data-hungry applications, high rates for data, voice and text-messaging overages and a shift away from paper bills and towards automatic bill pay have all combined to put consumers at the mercy of wireless companies’ billing systems. While many carriers have instituted usage control technologies, they typically rely on proactive user engagement and often require a fee to take advantage of the most useful features. Action by the FCC is needed to give consumers, regardless of carrier, the necessary disclosures and warnings before they experience “bill shock.”  We applaud Chairman Genachowski for his pro-consumer position on this issue.”

 

 

By Reid Maki, Coordinator of the Child Labor Coalition and Director of Social Responsibility and Fair Labor Standards

America’s farmworkers are mostly invisible these days. The men, women, and children who pick our fruit and vegetables go largely ignored by the public and Congress, which has failed to update the Fair Labor Standards Act leaving farmworkers mostly unprotected from workplace abuses. This September, however, two celebrities—Eva Longoria and Stephen Colbert—traveled to Capitol Hill in an effort to shine a much-needed spotlight on the plight of farmworkers.

On September 15, Longoria, a cast member from the television hit “Desperate Housewives,” appeared at an informal briefing in the Rayburn House Office Building to promote “The Harvest”, a documentary she is producing about child labor in agriculture. Longoria and filmmaker Robin Romano showed clips of child workers featured in the film, which will premier at the Sundance Film Festival. The Harvest follows kids as they migrate and perform back-breaking work that many adults will not do because it is too hard and the pay is too low.

Despite being “a long time advocate for farmworkers,” Longoria said she was unaware that hundreds of thousands of children toiled in America’s fields because of loopholes in our country’s child labor laws. She noted that the educational impact on farmworker kids is profound: two out of three migrant students do not graduate high school. The high drop out rate, she added, contributes to a cycle of poverty that grips the farmworker community. Children are faced with the dilemma of providing needed family income or pursuing their educational needs. “No child should have to make that decision,” Longoria said, urging the briefing attendees to support H.R. 3564, the Children’s Act for Responsible Employment or CARE, legislation that would extend labor protections to farmworker kids.

The bill’s author, Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.), told attendees that passing CARE “would be a great step forward in protecting children.”

On September 24^th, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship & Border Security’s hearing on “Protecting America’s Harvest,” addressed attempts to ensure that there are enough workers to harvest crops. TV humorist Stephen Colbert was one of the “expert” witnesses based on his recent experience as a farmworker. His testimony was pure satire that would have made H.L. Mencken smile: “Congresswoman Lofgren has asked me to share my vast experience spending one day as a migrant farmworker.”

“I’m happy to use my celebrity to draw attention to this important, complicated issue and I certainly hope that my star power can bump this hearing all the way up to CSPAN 1,” Colbert told a crowded hearing room.

“As you’ve heard this morning, America’s farms are far too dependent upon immigrant labor to pick its fruits and vegetables. Now, the obvious answer is for all of us to stop eating fruits and vegetables. And if you look at recent obesity statistics you can see that many Americans have already started.”

“I reject this idea that farm work is among the semi-mythical jobs that Americans won’t do…Really, no Americans? I did, as part of my ongoing series—“Stephen Colbert’s Fall Back Position” — where I try other jobs and realize that mine is way better. I participated in the UFW’s “Take Our Jobs” campaign. One of only 16 people in Americans to take up the challenge, although that number may increase in the near future as I understand many democrats may be looking for work come November,” quipped Colbert.

“I’ll admit I started my work day with preconceived notions of migrant labor, but after working with these men and women, picking beans, packing corn for hours on end, side by side in the unforgiving sun, I’d have to say—and I do mean this sincerely—please don’t make me do this again. It is really, really hard.”

“For one thing, when you’re picking beans you have to spend all day bending over. It turns out—and I did not know this— most soil is at ground level. If we can put a man on the moon why can’t we make the earth waist high?” asked Colbert in exaggerated mock pain.

The subcommittee also heard testimony from Arturo Rodriguez, the president of the United Farm Workers, who told members of Congress that “most of the food on your table has been harvested and cared for by unauthorized workers.”

“There’s another indisputable fact. The life of a U.S. farmworker in 2010 is not an easy one: most farmworkers live in poverty, endure poor working conditions, and receive no government assistance,” said Rodriguez.

“Undocumented farmworkers take jobs that other Americans won’t do, for pay that other Americans won’t accept, and under conditions other American won’t tolerate,” said Rodriguez, who urged Congress to support the Agricultural Job Opportunities, Benefits and Security Act, or “AgJOBS” bill, which would allow undocumented farmworkers already here in the U.S. to earn legal status by continuing to work in agriculture. “It is time to acknowledge the dignity of the current farm labor workforce and ensure the safety and abundance of America’s food supply by passing the AgJOBS bill. A failure to do so would be both a human and economic tragedy,” said Rodriguez.

Congress should take action, Colbert suggested. “This brief experience gave me some small understanding of why so few Americans are clamoring to begin a career as seasonal migrant field worker. So what’s the answer?” he asked. “I’m a free market guy. Normally I would leave this to the invisible hand of the market but the invisible hand of the market has already moved over 84,000 acres of production and over 22,000 farm jobs to Mexico and shut down over a million acres of U.S. farm land due to lack available labor because apparently even the invisible hand doesn’t want to pick beans.”

“Maybe this AgJOBS bill would help. I don’t know. Like most members of Congress I haven’t read it,” quipped Colbert, who suggested that offering more visas to immigrant laborers might help. “This improved legal status might allow immigrants recourse if they are abused.”

“It just stands to reason to me,” explained Colbert, “that if your coworker can’t be exploited then you’re less likely to be exploited yourself, and that itself might improve pay and working conditions on these farms and eventually Americans may consider taking these jobs again.”

“The point is we have to do something, because I am not going back out there,” said a horrified Colbert. “At this point, I break into a cold sweat at the sight of a salad bar.”

Colbert couldn’t help giving Congress one last tweak as he ended his testimony: “I trust that following my testimony both sides will work together on this issue in the best interest of the American people as you always do.” The packed hearing room laughed loudly at Colbert’s reference to the increasing lack of bipartisanship in the current Congress.

Not everyone seemed amused by having a humorist on a congressional panel. The Subcommittee’s ranking minority member Steve King (R-Iowa) sat unsmiling through the satiric Colbert testimony and during questioning suggested that film footage of Colbert working on a farm was “staged.” King later said it was insulting to suggest that American workers do not want to do farm work.

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), the chair of the full Judiciary Committee, suggested that Colbert leave the hearing during the Q and A so that members could get down to business. He was politely “overruled” by Subcommittee chair Zoe Lofgren (D- Calif.), who said that Americans are interested in Colbert’s views.

Subcommittee members asked Colbert questions about the conditions he encountered in his brief time in the fields. “It was very hot,” said Colbert. “It was hotter than I like to be….It’s not a job I want to do and not a lot of people took Mr. Rodriguez up on his offer….[statistics] seems to say that Americans don’t want to take these jobs, but I don’t want to say definitively that they won’t.

Colbert turned a bit serious when Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) asked him why he chose to take a stand on the working conditions endured by farmworkers when there are so many issues to weigh in on. “I like talking about people who don’t have any power and this seems like one of the least powerful people in the United States—our migrant workers who come and do our work but who don’t have any rights…Yet we still invite them to come here and at the same time ask them to leave. That’s an interesting contradiction to me.”

View all of Colbert’s testimony on YouTube here and here.

By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

One of the great things about living in Washington, DC is that you can witness the drama of politics up close and personal and for free. On Wednesday I went down to the House of Representatives to attend the oversight and investigations hearing on the 500 million egg recall that took place over this past summer. The drama was to be the apology offered by Jack DeCoster and his son Peter, who run the million+ hen facility that sent the millions of eggs contaminated with Salmonella Enteritidis (SE) into the stream of commerce. More than 1,600 (1,608 to be exact) reported cases were identified.

For me the drama was less the questions put to the DeCosters. I thought it was far more powerful – and scary – to hear from two women, one 30 years old, the other over 70, who had eaten food contaminated with the SE pathogen. Each time I hear stories about what the most virulent foodborne pathogens do to victims I’m always stunned. It’s not the overnight upset stomach or throwing up/diarrhea that most of have experienced from a bout of food poisoning. Each of these women would likely have died had it not been for medical intervention. They described high fevers, severe dehydration, emergency room admissions, and days spent with IVs in their veins, unable to function or get out of bed. The older woman testified that she had permanently lost her old vitality and enjoyment of life . . . and eating had become a scary experience.

Both had conditions that compromised their immune systems, making them particularly vulnerable. The 30-year-old mother of two had consumed a custard pie made with uncooked eggs. The older victim consumed something like a crab cake with a sauce that she guessed harbored the pathogen.

The DeCosters – father and son – owners of the huge facility that produced the effected eggs – argued that they had done all they could to keep the plant running well. Sounds reasonable except for the fact that Committee investigators had photos of 8-foot-high piles of manure, maggots, hundreds of live and dead flies, buildings oozing liquid manure, rodents, holes in the floor where mice entered the plant, and piles of dead chickens. The DeCosters really couldn’t explain the discrepancy – the elder DeCoster, who former Labor Secretary Robert Reich called “a rotten egg” in a recent blog because of his many violations of the law – said “we were small and then we got big and that’s where we got into trouble.” Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA), who chairs the full committee, challenged the DeCoster’s statement that the plant is well run: “that’s not what the record indicates” naming all of the above violations – and suggesting they needed to fire their quality control manager.

Finally, the FDA’s second-in-command, Dr. Josh Sharfstein, gave compelling testimony about the new rules for egg regulation that have just gone into effect allowing the FDA to set stronger standards for egg production, while also stressing the importance of passing the food safety bill that is being held up by Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) in the Senate because it will give the FDA mandatory recall powers (which they lack today). Two other dramatic moments took place: ranking member Michael Burgess (R-TX) and Subcommittee Chairman Bart Stupak (D-MI) nearly came to blows over procedural issues, with Burgess constantly complaining he wasn’t given his allotted time to speak, and Stupak eventually turning off his microphone.

And the moment the DeCosters sat down to testify, a small group of protesters arose from their seats, holding up a banner and chanting that factory farming egg production is corrupt and should be stopped. They were escorted out of the hearing room by Capital Police.

You can understand why I talked about the drama of politics. On a serious note, if anyone wonders why we need improved food safety rules, the harrowing stories of these two women – victims of a virulent salmonella strain – should provide the answer. Now if we could just get Senator Coburn to lift his hold on the bill.

By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

At a recent meeting in downtown Washington, I heard an expert on teenage high school dropout prevention talk about new strategies for keeping kids in school or luring them back after they’ve dropped out. The expert told us that in some of the worst schools – “dropout factories” (schools where 60 percent or more of children graduate) most common in high poverty rural areas and inner cities – as many as 70 percent of the students drop out.

This issue touches the National Consumers League’s issues in several ways. First, it was the mission of Florence Kelley, our first leader, to get kids out of sweatshops, factories, steel mills, and mines and into school. Dropping out flies in the face of those fundamental goals. Secondly, NCL has a teenage financial literacy and consumer education program for teens called LifeSmarts, but most of our youngsters compete through their schools. As a result, kids who drop out have little chance of being able to benefit from all of the wonderful and practical education that LifeSmarts provides.

Finally, NCL is working hard to pass legislation that will provide rights and protections to farmworker kids. These children suffer much higher than average dropout rates. Their families travel from farm to farm, often in different states, picking crops; understandably these youngsters have a hard time staying in one school and graduating with their peers. The dropout rates for farmworker kids are perilously high. We need to have strategies to keep those kids engaged, learning, and graduating from high school.

In Minneapolis, the school system has launched the “We Want You Back” campaign, in which volunteers go door-to-door. In the Little Earth community in Minneapolis, largely American Indian, the graduation rate is a shocking 22 percent. The Minneapolis campaign is modeled on a Houston, Texas drive that has successfully brought 50-100 dropouts back to schools – which can include online courses, independent study or actual schools – each year. Dropouts need to feel wanted and valued and see a pathway to their degrees. According to one volunteer, “it’s news to people that we care.”

We at NCL support campaigns to keep kids in school and bring back into the fold those who’ve dropped out. These young people deserve all the support we can give them, and when they succeed, we can only believe they will be better informed and wiser consumers and citizens.