The United Farm Workers and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, the two largest farm worker unions, sued the Labor Department for failing to raise the wages of 30,000 temporary foreign workers. The requirement that the Labor Department raise wage rates for the group of workers migrating mostly from Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean is intended to prevent employers from replacing domestic farm workers with temporary foreign workers. The Labor Department claims it acts legally as long as the Labor Secretary announces the new wage rates before the end of the calendar year, but unions claim that delaying the announcement undermines the purpose of the requirement—to help workers during the year.
See Steven Greenhouse, The New York Times, June 26, 2001