Protect Our Workers from Exploitation and Retaliation Act

Floor Speech

Ms. CHU. I rise today to announce the introduction of legislation that will finally provide protection to immigrant workers from exploitation, the Protect Our Workers from Exploitation and Retaliation Act, the POWER Act.

Too often, unscrupulous employers threaten or retaliate against workers who complain about illegal working conditions. Today, employers can use a worker's immigration status and threaten them so that they will fear reporting them to the authorities. The abuse of these vulnerable workers undermines working conditions and wages for all U.S. workers.

The POWER Act protects these workers. Under current law, the U visa provides temporary status for immigrants who are victims of crimes, including domestic violence and rape. The POWER Act ensures that this visa protection is also provided to these workers who risk everything by reporting to authorities the employers who break the law by committing serious labor violations.

Today, such workers are silent out of fear, but silence can mean the difference between life and death. Take the case of Mr. Asuncion Valdivia, a farmworker who came from Mexico seeking a better life. One day, during the hot summer months, he picked grapes for 10 hours straight in 105 degree temperatures. Then he fell over, unconscious and ill. Instead of calling an ambulance, Giumarra Vineyards told his son to drive Mr. Valdivia home. On his way home, the father started foaming at the mouth and died of a heat stroke. A son had to witness his father die, a preventible death, at the age of 53.

After hearing about this tragedy, I had to act. For 15 years, the farmworker advocates had petitioned Cal OSHA for minimal health protections for the workers who perished and died working in heat, but they were always ignored. So I carried a bill in the California legislature that required that farmworkers and all outdoor workers have basic protections from the heat: water, shade, and rest periods. It passed and became the first law of its kind in the Nation.

A decade after that law, I am in Congress. And while some farms obey the heat protections, others are flagrantly violating it. The POWER Act will stop these violations. It would have let someone like Asuncion go to the authorities without fear of retaliation. It would

have let him continue to work while he cooperated with Cal OSHA to take Giumarra to court and would have ensured that Giumarra treated all their workers fairly from then on. And I hope that because of the POWER Act, a son will never have to watch a father die in this way again.

The POWER Act will bring abused workers out of the shadows. It will give employees the courage to stand up to the world's biggest and strongest companies. The POWER Act will fundamentally change the very structure of workers' rights in this country. It supports every honest, hardworking employees across the country, protecting them. It's time that exploited workers were able to come out of the shadows, leave cruel conditions, and find jobs where they are treated with the dignity and respect that every employee in America deserves. It's time for the POWER Act.

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