The Employ America Act
A bill all of you should support immediately!
Senators Bernie Sanders and Chuck Grassley introduce The Employ America Act:
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) today introduced legislation to prohibit major firms that lay off large numbers of American workers from hiring cheaper foreign labor through temporary guest worker programs.
The economic stimulus package included a similar provision authored by Sanders and Grassley to prevent companies receiving a taxpayer bailout from the Troubled Asset Relief Program from replacing laid-off American workers with guest workers from overseas. The Sanders-Grassley Employ America Act expands upon this provision by barring any company engaged in a mass layoff of American workers from hiring temporary guest workers from abroad.
Sanders, a member of the Senate Budget Committee, said, “With the unemployment rate still climbing and millions of people looking for work, we have a responsibility to ensure that companies do not use the temporary guest-worker program to replace American workers with cheaper labor from overseas.”
Grassley, ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, said, “Our foreign guest worker programs are in place to fill employment needs where there is a shortage of American workers, not as a subterfuge to hire cheap labor. With the unemployment rate over 10 percent, companies that undertake mass layoffs shouldn’t need to hire foreign guest workers when there are plenty of qualified Americans looking for jobs.”
Recently, industries that have hired tens of thousands of guest workers from overseas have announced large-scale layoffs of American workers. The high-tech industry, a major employer of H-1B guest workers, has laid off over 345,000 workers since August 2008. The construction industry, a major employer of H-2B guest-workers, has laid off more than 1.5 million workers since December 2007.
Large companies that have announced layoffs of 50 or more American workers over the past year would be subject to this guest worker prohibition.
Thank you Senators! Please all reading this, call your Senators and ask for them to co-sponsor this bill!
The Bill number is S.2804 and is attached to this post.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| S2804.pdf | 27.64 KB |
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Comments
this bill is mostly symbolic
It appears that they introduced SA306 that was an amendment to the Stimulus Bill as stand alone legislation. SA306 did nothing that isn't already in the H-1B law, but perhaps the new one is better (I'll reserve judgment until I look at it).
H-1B already prohibits companies who are doing mass layoffs from hiring H-1Bs. SA306 tightened things up a bit but corporations wouldn't have much trouble getting around the layoff provisions.
SA306 was soundly defeated, so don't expect this one to do much better, especially considering how late in the year it will be introduced. The bill is better than nothing but it will take much more than this to save our jobs.
They ended up gutting it if you're talking about the TARP amd.
To get something into it. I think, considering how quick Congress wanted to pass TARP with no strings attached, their actions weren't too bad.
Maybe this one can get passed intact.
I attached the bill to this post.
Grassley and Sanders
They just create bills to please us but will not go no where. Just look at the S887 bill. I think these senators know what they are doing. They try to please us but know they are not really helping.
I disagree with this
I think it's more what they can get passed. Frankly it's kind of amazing they can get this much in. If you notice, it's only Sanders and Grassley who really work on this issue. That's why we need an email campaign to demand other Senators co-sponsor this bill. It's this right now but bear in mind, eventually "Comprehensive" immigration is going to come up and without huge public outcry, that's when we are going to get really screwed.
Of course if we got enough public outrage going, it's also a chance to get real reform.
Or, we can try to get the Grassley-Durbin bill as a stand alone passed but frankly Harry Reid will probably block it.
But there isn't any political reason, beyond it's the right thing to do, for either Sanders or Grassley to befriend us. There are no campaign contributions, STEM doesn't have enough of a voting block....we're lucky they haven't forgotten us to be frank.