The most interesting e-mail I've received since the PBS NewsHour story last Friday about the Summer Work Travel (SWT) program came from a friend who just moved from Baltimore to State College, Pa. It began with a wry comment about my failure to wear a tie for my on-camera interview and ended with a painfully candid description of the program's sweat-shop charms for American employers.
"So you didn't have to wear a tie?" my friend began. "I would have lent you one, but the Lithuanian kids who moved my stuff from Baltimore packed them all away."
My friend had hired a moving company that had turned its back on the huge population of unemployed Baltimore youth. It was lured by the State Department's cornucopia of financial incentives to hire foreign students.
Kids from Lithuania, where the average monthly salary for a car mechanic is less than $500, are thrilled to make $8 an hour as SWT workers. They work hard, and they often work scared. Strangers in our land, needing to earn back the several thousand dollars they pay in various fees and travel expenses to get here, they're afraid that they'll be sent home in shame if they don't toe the line.
My friend described his encounter with SWT: "By the way, these Lithuanian kids were great. Got to my house at 9:00, packed things perfectly, left Baltimore at 11.30, arrived in [State College] at 3:00, half an hour ahead of me because I stopped at Dairy Queen. When I asked if they stopped for lunch, they said no because their boss, a Russian, told them not to keep the customer waiting. They then turned around and drove back to Baltimore."
My friend tipped the young workers $100, so they got a small taste of American generosity. But there was no time for a visit to the Penn State campus. No chance to visit the state capital at Harrisburg on the way back south. Not a glimpse at the famous amusement park at Hershey.
Your honor, I submit the above as Exhibit 412 in my case that SWT, while posing as a program of cultural exchange, is routinely exploited as a program of cheap labor. (Speaking of Hershey, Exhibit 209 was last year's exploitation of SWT workers at a Hershey candy warehouse that led to a walkout by the workers, who not only complained that they were treated shabbily, but also that these jobs should go to unemployed Americans).
While the State Department reaches around the world to spread the gospel of goodwill-through-SWT, the problem of youth unemployment here at home continues to fester. Here's an excerpt from a Baltimore Sun editorial last summer, lamenting the city government's decision to cut funding for a summer jobs program:
It's frustrating that Baltimore had to cut summer jobs. That's a program that helps reduce crime and offers young people a vital opportunity to be productive members of society.
Tell that to the State Department. Tell that to American employers addicted to SWT. Tell that to the White House, which last year put out a press release that included this observation:
As pathways to careers, summer employment is critical to the success of young people, good for business, and important for our country. But today's youth are struggling to get the work experience they need for the jobs of the future: last summer, the unemployment rate among youth ages 16-24 set a near record high, and only 21 out of 100 low-income teens had a job. According to a recent report, taxpayers shouldered more than $93 billion in direct costs and lost tax revenue to support young adults disconnected from school and work in 2011 alone.