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44 Delta employers fined $350,000 for racist wage and hiring practices, pay $505,000 in back wages

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Labor Secretary Marty Walsh vowed a year ago to fight the racist wage and hiring practices alleged by Black farm workers regarding workplace abuse and exploitation in the Delta.

That promise resulted in a Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division investigation called Operation Delta Force, which released findings Wednesday into those allegations of wage and illegal displacement of local workers in favor of white workers from South Africa, a practice detailed by Mississippi Today

Forty-four employers were found to have violated federal labor laws and were fined nearly $350,000 in civil penalties, according to the investigation. Additionally, about $505,000 in back wages has been recovered for 161 Delta workers.

The Black farm workers “were elated that finally their voices were heard, that finally they were getting the wages and they could go to work and see that they were valued as an employee,” said Audrey Hall, the division's district director in .

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's “Exploited” investigation found that at least five Delta farms paid their local workforce less than workers who came to Mississippi on foreign farm work permits called H-2A visas over the past few years.

Most of the farms recruited young, white South African workers, which farm owners said is in response to an aging local workforce population and a shortage of people to take those .

The H-2A program mandates a premium hourly wage, which was $12.45 last year. Labor regulations order farms hiring the visa workers to offer jobs to local workers at that rate and not to pay current workers below it.

The workers' experiences were detailed in a against two Delta farms that was filed in 2021 and settled earlier this year.

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The Wage and Hour Division took a look at the H-2A program and found employers violated requirements for multiple reasons, including when they showed preferential treatment, failed to pay the same rate of pay to local workers and failed to local workers bonus opportunities.

Juan Coria, the division's Southeast regional administrator based in Atlanta, said the purpose of the H-2A program was to bring people if help was needed – not to replace local workers.

As a result of the investigation, some workers received raises that brought them up to the same rate that the H-2A workers are paid, Hall said, and more farms have come into compliance.

She said that extra money means a lot to Delta workers living in one of the poorest of the . They no longer have to make choices between whether to buy groceries, medicine or pay for housing, Hall said.

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The Wage and Hour Division plans to launch more investigations and increase outreach in the Delta.

Hall said the division's role is to help vulnerable workers through education about issues such as contracts and wages. The division has a toll- help line at 866-4US-WAGE (487-9243.)

Coria said an immediate result of Operation Delta Force is that the division now has an investigator assigned to the Delta who is based in Greenville.

One of his goals is for these efforts to improve working conditions for future Black farm workers in the Delta and inform farms about their responsibilities in federal labor laws.

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“This will have a positive impact,” Coria said.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Mississippi Today

On this day in 1961

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mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2024-05-20 07:00:00

MAY 20, 1961

In this 1961 , leader John Lewis, left, stands next to James Zwerg, a Fisk student. Both were attacked during the Rides. Credit: AP

A white mob of more than 300, Klansmen, attacked Freedom Riders at the Greyhound Bus Station in Montgomery, Alabama. Future Congressman John Lewis was among them. 

“An angry mob came out of nowhere, hundreds of people, with bricks and balls, chains,” Lewis recalled. 

After beating on the riders, the mob turned on reporters and then Justice Department official John Seigenthaler, who was beaten unconscious and left in the street after helping two riders. 

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“Then they turned on my colleagues and started beating us and beat us so severely, we were left bloodied and unconscious in the streets of Montgomery,” Lewis recalled. 

As the mob headed his way, Freedom Rider James Zwerg said he asked for God to be with him, and “I felt absolutely surrounded by love. I knew that whether I lived or died, I was going to be OK.” 

The mob beat him so badly that his suit was soaked in blood. 

“There was nothing particularly heroic in what I did,” he said. “If you want to about heroism, consider the Black man who probably saved my . This man in coveralls, just off of work, happened to walk by as my beating was going on and said ‘Stop beating that kid. If you want to beat someone, beat me.' And they did. He was still unconscious when I left the hospital.” 

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To quell the violence, Robert Kennedy sent in 450 federal marshals.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Mississippi Today

2024 Mississippi legislative session not good for private school voucher supporters

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mississippitoday.org – Bobby Harrison – 2024-05-19 14:11:52

Despite a recent Mississippi Supreme Court ruling allowing $10 million in public money to be spent on private schools, 2024 has not been a good year for those supporting school vouchers.

School-choice supporters were hopeful during the 2024 legislative , with new House Speaker Jason White at times indicating support for vouchers.

But the , which recently completed its session, did not pass any new voucher bills. In fact, it placed tighter restrictions on some of the limited laws the state has in place allowing public money to be spent on private schools.

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Notably, the Legislature passed a bill that provides significantly more oversight of a program that provides a limited number of scholarships or vouchers for special-needs children to attend private schools.

Going forward, thanks to the new , to receive the vouchers a parent must certify that their child will be attending a private school that offers the special needs educational services that will the child. And the school must report information on the academic progress of the child receiving the funds.

Also, efforts to expand another state program that provides tax credits for the benefit of private schools was defeated. Legislation that would have expanded the tax credits offered by the Children's Promise Act from $8 million a year to $24 million to benefit private schools was defeated. Private schools are supposed to educate low income students and students with special needs to receive the benefit of the tax credits. The legislation expanding the Children's Promise Act was defeated after it was reported that no state agency knew how many students who fit into the categories of poverty and other specific needs were being educated in the schools receiving funds through the tax credits.

Interestingly, the Legislature did not expand the Children's Promise Act but also did not place more oversight on the private schools receiving the tax credit funds.

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The bright spot for those supporting vouchers was the early May state Supreme Court ruling. But, in reality, the Supreme Court ruling was not as good for supporters of vouchers as it might appear on the surface.

The Supreme Court did not say in the ruling whether school vouchers are constitutional. Instead, the state's highest court ruled that the group that brought the – Parents for – did not have standing to pursue the legal action.

The Supreme Court justices did not give any indication that they were ready to say they were going to ignore the Mississippi Constitution's plain language that prohibits public funds from being provided “to any school that at the time of receiving such appropriation is not conducted as a school.”

In addition to finding Parents for Public Schools did not have standing to bring the lawsuit, the court said another key reason for its ruling was the fact that the funds the private schools were receiving were federal, not state funds.  The public funds at the center of the lawsuit were federal COVID-19 relief dollars.

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Right or wrong, The court appeared to make a distinction between federal money and state general funds. And in reality, the circumstances are unique in that seldom does the state receive federal money with so few strings attached that it can be awarded to private schools.

The majority opinion written by Northern District Supreme Justice Robert Chamberlin and joined by six justices states, “These specific federal funds were never earmarked by either the federal government or the state for educational purposes, have not been commingled with state education funds, are not for educational purposes and therefore cannot be said to have harmed PPS (Parents for Public Schools) by taking finite government educational away from public schools.”

And Southern District Supreme Court Justice Dawn Beam, who joined the majority opinion, wrote separately “ to reiterate that we are not ruling on state funds but (ARPA) funds … The ARPA funds were given to the state to be used in four possible ways, three of which were directly related to the COVID -19 health emergency and one of which was to make necessary investments in water, sewer or broadband infrastructure.”

Granted, many public school advocates lamented the , pointing out that federal funds are indeed public or taxpayer money and those federal funds could have been used to help struggling public schools.

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Two justices – James Kitchens and Leslie King, both of the Central District, agreed with that argument.

But, importantly, a decidedly conservative-leaning Mississippi Supreme Court stopped far short – at least for the time being – of circumventing state constitutional language that plainly states that public funds are not to go to private schools.

And a decidedly conservative Mississippi Legislature chose not to expand voucher programs during the 2024 session.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Mississippi Today

On this day in 1925

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MAY 19, 1925

In this 1963 , leader Malcolm X speaks to reporters in Washington. Credit: Associated Press

Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska. When he was 14, a teacher asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up and he answered that he wanted to be a lawyer. The teacher chided him, urging him to be realistic. “Why don't you plan on carpentry?”

In prison, he became a follower of Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad. In his speeches, Malcolm X warned Black Americans against self-loathing: “Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair? Who taught you to hate the color of your skin? Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose and the shape of your lips? Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your feet? Who taught you to hate your own kind?”

Prior to a 1964 pilgrimage to Mecca, he split with Elijah Muhammad. As a result of that , Malcolm X began to accept followers of all races. In 1965, he was assassinated. Denzel Washington was nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal of the civil rights leader in Spike Lee's 1992 award-winning film.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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https://www.biloxinewsevents.com/?p=359877

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