Revoking legal services: Republicans want to keep lawyers from the poor

Progressive, The, April, 1996 by Steven Stycos

But a class-action lawsuit settled by a court-approved order, he says, ensures all present and future workers will be paid, or the employer risks being found in contempt of court.

The ban would also prohibit class-action suits against the government, a tactic that has yielded major victories for the poor.

In 1989, for example, Rhode Island Legal Services sued the State Department of Human Services for failing to give a portion of child-support payments to welfare recipients. The successful class-action suit will eventually return $400,000 to women on welfare in Rhode Island, according to staff attorney Gretchen Bath.

In Vermont, legal services filed a class-action suit to speed processing of welfare-benefit applications; in Cleveland, to integrate and renovate public housing; and in Louisiana, to force implementation of the "motor-voter" law designed by Congress to encourage people to register to vote.

Another new provision approved by Congress would hurt migrant workers. Previous Legal Services Corporation budgets earmarked money for migrant-worker legal-aid programs. But this year, responding to pressure from the American Farm Bureau, Congress eliminated those funds.

Without a specialized program with attorneys knowledgeable in farm-labor laws and fluent in migrants' languages, the legal problems of the nation's 670,000 migrant farmworkers and their families would not be addressed, says Beardall.

He points to a 1992 legal-services victory as proof that a specialized system works. After Texas migrants contacted a small Iowa migrant legal-services office, Beardall was able to win $37,000 for twenty-two workers who traveled to Iowa and Illinois to pull tassels from corn plants for the Garst Seed Company.

To induce them to make the long trip north, migrants were promised good wages, adequate housing, and six weeks of work, Beardall says. But once they arrived in the Midwest, they were laid off after two to three weeks, paid half the promised piecework rate, and forced to sleep on the floor or in their cars. In addition, although social-security taxes were deducted from their paychecks, their employers did not send either the employee or the employer share to the federal government.

Along with financial payments, the case settlement guarantees that the false promises and pocketing of social-security taxes will not happen again.

Migrants are frequently the victims of broken promises, says Beardall, and often not aware of their rights. That's why migrant legal-services staff regularly go into the fields and migrant camps to educate workers on the law. More than a third of all migrant cases start this way, Beardall says.

But that, too, would be prohibited by Congressional Republicans who call outreach and education efforts "solicitation."

No special approach is needed to reach migrant farmers, says Brian Little, a director of governmental relations for the American Farm Bureau. "These people all know where the local law offices are," he says. "They know what their rights are. They don't need someone from legal aid to tell them what their rights are."