Washington, DC – According to the information from EPI, nearly 170,000 H-2B non- American citizens were employed in the United States in 2024. Rather than importing workers from other countries, Americans should be hired to do these jobs. Bringing workers from other countries to do jobs at cheap labor that American should be doing must be stopped.
“The RWDSU strongly opposes expansion of the H-2B visa program into poultry processing and meatpacking,” said Stuart Appelbaum, president of RWDSU. “As the recent EPI report makes clear, this program fuels wage suppression and exploitation, putting workers in precarious, insecure jobs.”
Small and large companies in rural communities provide thousands of jobs in the beef, pork and poultry industry. These local jobs are critical to the economies of many small towns and produce most of the beef products of American households. We must protect the local employees in these factories that stabilize local communities. UFCW/RWDSU represents more than 15,000 poultry workers at facilities across the southern United States, as well as meatpacking and processing workers in other parts of the country.
