Veronica Birkenstock is Practical Employee Solutions, a company that boasts of having brought “over 40,000” cheap H-2B workers from 80 countries to the USA to work in “hospitality, landscaping, welding, and construction” for companies like Marriott and Starwood Hotels, for whom it is the “preferred vendor.”
Veronica Birkenstock is also part of Trump’s Department of Labor transition team.
The H-2B program has come under criticism for helping suppress wages of domestic workers. The Economic Policy Institute, which Trump frequently cited on the campaign trail, believes that the program leaves “workers vulnerable to low pay and abuse.”
PES advertises videos on its website from the H-2B Workforce Coalition, a coalition of mostly business groups who lobby Congress to protect this visa option.
In one of these videos, owners of landscaping firms testify that they can’t find domestic workers, and that’s why they have to utilize H-2B visas.
Birkenstock has spent the last 20 years working at PES and helping employers find cheap labor. Needless to say, that isn’t America First.
Member of Trump’s Labor Department Transition Team Specializes in Recruiting Cheap Foreign Labor [Zaid Jilani/The Intercept]