Perhaps more compelling evidence of the need to add more teeth to the current law is the estimate by the Labor Department that only 1.855 farm labor contractorsthe crew leaders who recruit farmworkershad registered in 1973. of a total number of more than 5.000 crew leaders subject to the act. Equally revealing is the fact that only two contractors had been prosecuted for any violation of the act since its enactment. The migrant legal action program. in a rulemaking petition filed with the Department of Labors Employment Standards Administration. on behalf of 26 lowincome farmworkers and 4 migrant organizations. charged that the Department of Labors policy is to write letters to all law violators as the sum total of the sanctions imposed against law violators. The migrant legal action program cited examples of a labor contractor using firearms to threaten farmworkers to stay on the job. and of another crew leader carrying more than 40 persons in the back of a truck which was reported to be "mechanically unsafe. overcrowded." The implications of such charges are evident in the aftermath of the tragedy in Blythe last year when 19 of 47 migrants were killed when the bus they were being transported in ran off the road and into a ditch. The bus was later found to have numerous mechanical failures and to be driven by a driver who had only 4 hours sleep. In addition. last year the Justice Department informed me of several instances where conditions that fit the legal definition of slavery involving east coast crew leaders had been investigated and prosecuted.
Keywords matched
migrants migrant