Food industry, others fear impact of worker ID order
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By SUSAN FERRISS
McClatchy Newspapers

SACRAMENTO, Calif. --A new White House order that federal contractors verify employees' identity documents has some businesses sweating over the potential impact.

President Bush has ordered businesses and institutions with federal contracts to use E-Verify, a database that checks if workers' names, Social Security numbers or other ID match.

Under the Bush order, employers would have to fire workers whose identity doesn't square with Social Security Administration records. The computer system can't flag ID information that's been stolen, but it can detect false Social Security numbers used by illegal immigrants.

"We're concerned. It's still very much open how far back in the supply chain E-Verify would have to be used," said Rich Hudgins, president of the California Canning Peach Association.

His group's 500 members produce 80 percent of the nation's canned peaches, which are supplied to processors that sell most of them for federally subsidized school lunches.

An estimated 50 percent to 70 percent of farmworkers are suspected of being undocumented, particularly in fruit and vegetable production.

Groups like the peach farmers have until Aug. 11 to submit comments to the federal government about Bush's order and to ask questions. The rule won't go into effect until later this year, after the comments have been reviewed.

Government officials suggest the scope of the order may be more limited than businesses imagine. But in the meantime, industry representatives complain, it's unclear which employees they'll have to check.

Hudgins has asked the government to extend the public comment period 90 days. He said his members are harvesting and need time to develop questions.

If food companies feel they won't be able to comply with the order without firing workers and damaging their businesses, Hudgins said, "they might just take a pass on school lunch bids."

The U.S. food industry acknowledges that illegal immigrants are in their workforce. Workers with fake documents began filling farm jobs as immigrants who had received amnesty in 1986 moved out, representatives say. The law hasn't required employers to check documents' authenticity.

Today, the food industry and other businesses with large immigrant work forces want to combine E-Verify with a program to allow undocumented workers to earn legal status.

California-based fruit and vegetable processing company Pacific Coast Producers sold almost $10 million worth of food to the Department of Agriculture last year.

Dick Ehrler, the company's human resources president, said he has been advised not to use E-Verify because of Social Security database errors, but he doesn't anticipate a "significant problem" when he starts using it.

"We've complied with all the legal requirements for hiring," he said.

Only about 1 percent of U.S. businesses voluntarily use E-Verify. Congress made it available in 1996, but has limited it to new hires - not workers already on payrolls

The new Bush rule would require employees hired after 1986 who work directly on a federal contract be checked as well as all new hires once the database is in use.

Existing employees not connected to a contract would not have to checked, according to Michael Collins, communications official with the federal General Services Administration.

For example, if scientists at the University of California laboratories received a federal contract "to develop a new widget, they would have to be E-Verified," Collins said. "But employees not working on this contract - like the cafeteria staff at UC Berkeley or the groundskeepers at UC Santa Cruz - would not."

Businesses with employees performing services on federal land or installations, such as maintenance or construction, will have to use E-Verify to check employees assigned to the contract.

Pride Industries, based in Sacramento, was awarded $51 million in 2007 for housekeeping, janitorial and food service work on military bases.

Tina Oliveira, Pride's human resources vice president, said Pride is not worried that its employees will prove ineligible to work. But she said she understands others' concerns.

"These (fake) documents are really good these days," she said. "I think the industries that have been accepting these documents are going to have an impact."

Immigration control groups say E-Verify is a proven tool to help employers avoid hiring illegal immigrants.

Latino and other civil rights groups oppose expansion of E-Verify because of an estimated 17 million discrepancies that exist between names and numbers in Social Security Administration records - many the result of clerical errors. Because of those discrepancies, citizens and legal immigrants have been flagged and fired.

Although Bush's order was announced as a crackdown on undocumented workers, federal officials are suggesting many at the bottom of the food-production chain may not be affected.

Collins, the GSA spokesman, said subcontractors that supply a federal contractor with products that are also sold to commercial suppliers - such as fruits and vegetables - would not have to use the database.

"However," Collins said, "answers to questions about subcontractors will be addressed by the acquisitions councils responsible for drafting the rules."

It's that "however" that has the food industry on edge.

Del Monte, a food giant whose workers process fruit, vegetables and meat, held a federal contract in 2007 to sell more than $126 million in food to federal agencies, including military commissaries and federal food programs.

The San Francisco-based corporation declined to comment on the Bush rule, referring questions to Hudgins, whose members supply Del Monte with peaches.

Hudgins said he's read the order, and he's puzzled.

Craig Regelbrugge, with the National Council of Agricultural Employers, said it's clear to him that meatpackers and food processors with contracts are going to be forced to use E-Verify.

But what's unclear, Regelbrugge said, is how Bush's order will affect farm cooperatives. Sometimes a cooperative - which might be co-owned by farmers - holds the federal contract. If farmers are owners of the cooperative, they might have to check their workers, Regelbrugge said.

"If this thing (Bush's order) goes through as published," he said, "you're going to see a lot of people analyzing these structural relationships and how to change them."

California Dairies Inc., a Central Valley-based cooperative, does $3.5 billion in sales worldwide a year, with more than $10 million in 2007 to the federal government. More than 600 dairymen are co-owners.

President Richard Cotta said the cooperative's 700 processing plant workers are longtime workers, and he doesn't anticipate a problem with E-Verify.

If Bush's rule were to apply to all dairymen - whose farms are run independently - "that would be a completely different story," Cotta said.
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