PhillyDeals: 48 in Congress seeking to prop up cheap foreign labor

Employers who legally import 66,000 low-wage foreign workers each year for some of the nation's dreariest jobs - work they say Americans won't do - are mounting a last-minute drive to keep their employees' pay from going up.

In a letter to U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, 48 members of Congress, including Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D., Md.), Rep. Lou Barletta (R., Pa.), and Rep. Pat Meehan (R., Pa.) say business owners should be able to continue importing cheap, foreign labor at current wages.

The wages are set by the government's H-2B visa program. The employers want the Obama administration to delay or abandon an Oct. 1 increase in wages, which they say is designed to discourage employers from using the foreigners - if U.S. workers are available.

Barletta, normally a loud critic of permissive immigration, agrees with the employers. Barletta wants to protect small businesses in his area - northeastern Pennsylvania - and their U.S. workers because raising the wages of foreign employees would cause the businesses to shut down, said Shawn Kelly, Barletta's spokesman.

U.S. District Judge Louis Pollak in Philadelphia, in a ruling in 2010, found current wages required by the visa program too low. He said the program could be exploited by bosses who would want to replace U.S. workers with low-paid foreigners.

Solis' department agreed to raise H-2B wage rates by an average of $4.38 an hour, effective Oct. 1. For example, salaries for dishwashers imported under the program would go from $7.90 an hour to $9.24; janitors, from $9.23 to $13.02; landscapers, from $9.84 to $13.88, and roofers, from $14.12 to $21.38.

But according to the letter from Mikulski, Barletta, and others, the current lower wages make the program "a lifeline for scores of small and seasonal businesses around the country [that are] frequently unable to find enough local workers to fill their temporary and seasonal job openings, even in today's tough economic climate." Higher wages, they say, "could threaten the economic survival of many small and seasonal businesses."

Lawyers for Louisiana shellfish packers that use the program have filed a federal lawsuit to block higher rates. Mikulski told the Baltimore Sun that Maryland crab pickers and packers also rely on H-2B foreign labor.

Labor Department data show that in 2010, the H-2B program employed one in eight U.S. landscaping workers, one in 30 janitors and one in 100 casino workers, at companies ranging from DuPont and Six Flags Great Adventure to Philadelphia-area golf clubs and landscapers.

Concession workers for Aramark food services at Citizens Bank Park voted, 515-275, to reject the company's contract offer, says Rosslyn Wuchinich, director of the Unite Here Local 274 labor union.

The union has struck Aramark sites before, but "there are no plans to strike

at this time," Wuchinich told me. The vote took place in front of the stadium before Monday's Phillies-Cardinals game.

The union says Phillies food workers earn just $11 an hour, compared with $12.32 at Fenway Park in Boston. Aramark's health-care proposal would end benefits for two-thirds of the 240 Philly workers currently receiving "basic" medical insurance. An Aramark representative didn't return a call.

Tyco International Ltd., the industrial conglomerate based in Switzerland for tax reasons but actually run from offices near Princeton, says it is going to split into three publicly traded companies:

Tyco Commercial Fire & Security, with yearly sales of $10 billion, will employ 69,000 under boss George Oliver, from Tyco's current headquarters.

ADT North American Residential, maker of home alarms, with sales of $3 billion, will employ 16,000 under boss Naren Gursahaney, from its office in Boca Raton, Fla.

Tyco Flow Control, a maker

of valves and pipes, with sales

of $4 billion, will employ 15,000 and be run by Patrick Decker, from a location still to be determined.

Gimme Credit L.L.C. analyst Carol Levenson called the plan "long on vision but short on financial details."

In 2007, Tyco chief executive officer Ed Breen spun off Massachusetts-based Covidien, a medical-supplies-maker, and electronic-parts-maker TE Connectivity, of Berwyn.