ATLANTA, Oct. 21 (UPI) -- A federal court ruling on guest worker compensation in Atlanta may alter the employment landscape among U.S. timber companies, industry observers say.
The court ruled that guest workers brought to the United States through the H-2B visa program were due $5 million in back wages, The Christian Science Monitor reported Tuesday.
Workers, mostly from Guatemala, were paid a piece rate and charged transportation costs for long drives to and from their hotels, the newspaper said.
"The big question is: Are these the kinds of programs that should be the model for immigration reform?" the guest workers' attorney Mary Bauer asked.
Even paid less than prevailing wages from 10 years ago, the workers weren't known to complain, as weekly paychecks of $400 were enormous compared to standards in their home countries, the newspaper said.
The guest workers also planted 2,500 to 4,000 trees in one day, the newspaper said.
"The prevailing sense (among contractors) is that we can't ever go back because foreign labor has raised the production bar so high that American workers are never going to be able to compete," says Vanessa Casanova, an anthropology lecturer at the University of Texas in Brownsville.
