Thread: Hiring foreign farmworkers to get tougher under new rule

Hiring foreign farmworkers to get tougher under new rule

Growers must try harder to find Americans to fill the temporary and seasonal harvest jobs, starting next month.

February 11, 2010 | 6:37 p.m.

In a move that is sure to have the agriculture industry grimacing and labor-rights advocates cheering, the Labor Department is reversing a Bush administration rule that allowed farmers an easier path to hiring temporary or seasonal foreign workers.

The department has issued new regulations that will require growers to take more steps to try to find Americans to fill jobs picking crops and other harvest-time roles, as well as increase pay and provide more job-safety protections for the thousands of foreign farmworkers they do hire.

The old rule, which affected the H-2A guest-worker program, was adopted shortly before President George W. Bush left office. The Labor Department suspended that regulation in May.

The new rule, slated to take effect March 15, will increase the average pay for temporary farmworkers by nearly a dollar per hour. Farmers also will be required to list their job openings on a new online job registry, and state workforce agencies must inspect worker housing before employers can get the nod to hire foreign laborers.

Department officials said Thursday that the changes were designed to protect the agriculture industry's most at-risk workers.

"This new rule will make it possible for all workers who are working hard on American soil to receive fair pay while at the same time expand opportunities for U.S. workers," Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis said in a statement. "The actions that we have taken through this rule-making also will enable us to detect and remedy different forms of worker violations."

Even when unemployment rates are high, finding temporary or seasonal workers remains a concern for the agriculture industry. During fiscal 2009, employers filed 8,150 labor certification applications requesting 103,955 H-2A workers for temporary agricultural work. The Labor Department certified 94% of the applications, for a total of 86,014 workers.

The Bush-era rule, which let employers hire foreign workers if they couldn't find Americans to fill the jobs, sparked a fierce battle across the country's farmlands. Labor advocacy groups railed against the rule for slashing wages and weakening worker safety rules.

Farmers have said they need help easing the hurdles to bring in foreign workers to harvest crops, saying U.S. workers don't want those jobs and refuse to take them. Farm groups have spent months fighting the Obama administration's efforts to curtail or modify the rule.

Last year a group of growers associations -- including the National Christmas Tree Assn., the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Assn. and more than a dozen others -- filed suit against the Labor and Homeland Security departments, alleging that they could be unfairly prosecuted for labor law violations.

p.j.huffstutter@ latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-g ... 8532.story

"Farmers have said they need help easing the hurdles to bring in foreign workers to harvest crops, saying U.S. workers don't want those jobs and refuse to take them. Farm groups have spent months fighting the Obama administration's efforts to curtail or modify the rule."

__________________

Really? Well how far off your crop field did you look for US workers? What did you do? Go stand in the middle of a 1000 acre cotton field 20 miles from the nearest town and do a 360 and say "nope, no US workers here for me today ... I'm calling up for my visas and get me some of that foreign labor."

Is that the integrity of a US farmer today? This is how you look for labor in the US, whether you're a dirt farmer, a dairy operator or a chicken-grower. You call up the Division of Employment Security in your state 3 months in advance of your harvest or work-needed dates, you run ads in the newspaper, you post a decent wage and a little bonus and transportation and living expenses, you provide a little training at your expense, and you do that in a radius of your farm until you hit the Canadian Border, the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean and the US-Mexico Border, and I promise you, you'll have all the good workers you could possibly want signed up and lined up in droves to pick your crops, milk your cows, tend your livestock and/or all of the above.

Then they'll stick around to fix your machinery, wash your trucks, clean your barns, paint your house, clean out your drainage ditches, chop your wood and do anything else you need done on your farm enterprise.

You have no idea, because you are so completely out of touch with the US worker, how much better off you and your operations would have been if you'd had Americans tending your agricultural operations. You've been the losers of your own Grand Stupidity and American citizens have been the victims of your lack of integrity and loyalty to our country.

Yet, you line your butts up on our Capitol grounds thick as buzzards on a dead cow carcass with your hands out for subsidies and parities and loans and grants and food programs all funded and guaranteed by the very people you think aren't good enough to work on your farms.

You make me want to puke.

Leahy irked by farm bill Plans to push legislation on foreign dairy workers
By HOWARD WEISS-TISMAN

Thursday February 11, 2010

BRATTLEBORO -- Migrant workers who are illegally working on dairy farms all over Vermont will be forced to continue living under the radar after the U.S. Labor Department failed to address their status in the new rule on seasonal agricultural workers.

The Labor Department on Thursday announced new rules about the H-2A program, which allows farmers to hire foreign laborers for seasonal work.

The Obama administration said the new rules will strengthen worker protections by increasing wages and improving job safety, reversing the Bush administration rule that labor and immigrant rights groups opposed.

Dairy workers, who spend all year on the farm, have never been included in the H-2A program and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has been urging the Labor Department to allow them into the program.

He submitted comments to the Labor Department last year while the new rule was under consideration

"I am deeply disappointed with the Department of Labor’s final rule on H-2A agricultural workers," Leahy said Thursday after the Labor Department’s new rule was released. "This rule falls short, leaving dairy farms in the lurch."

It is estimated that there are between 1,500 and 2,000 people from Mexico and other countries working on farms in Vermont.

Many of them are here illegally and the threat of a federal crackdown adds to the already challenging times facing dairy farmers.

In November, federal agents
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raided a number of farms around Vermont as part of nationwide sweep to investigate alleged immigration and labor violations in the agriculture industry.

"With the dairy industry reeling in Vermont and across the nation, the final rule continues to exclude the dairy industry from lawfully hiring seasonal foreign workers when needed," Leahy said.

The Labor Department said it did not have the legal authority to include the entire dairy industry in the H-2A visa program, though Leahy said Congress "clearly gave the Secretary (of Labor) authority to define agricultural labor and services through regulation."

Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the most senior member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, promised to introduce legislation that would allow dairy workers to obtain the H-2A visas.

Leahy wants the migrant dairy workers to be allowed in the country for a year, and then be eligible for additional one year periods as approved by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Workers would be able to petition to become U.S. citizens after three years, under Leahy’s proposed bill.

Vermont Secretary of Agriculture Roger Allbee also weighed in last year when the new rule was being written.

Allbee, and top agriculture officials from around the Northeast, said the foreign workers were crucial to the region’s dairy industry and said the industry could collapse without them.

On Thursday, Allbee said he was disappointed that the new rule did nothing to address the problem that forces Vermont dairy farmers to break federal immigration rules every time they bring an undocumented foreign worker on to the farm

"We hoped the Labor Department would recognize that dairy farmers need help," Allbee said. "We think their decision is unreasonable and can’t be easily explained."

Sheep farmers in the West are allowed to use the H-2A visa program to hire year-round workers and the Labor Department even went as far as to include logging into the new rule.

Allbee has met with top government officials, as well as with agriculture leaders from around the country, and while everyone agrees that there is a problem there does not seem to be a simple solution.

Immigration policy is highly charged, Allbee said, and it is extremely hard to get Congress to agree on any kind of immigration reform.

U.S Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is scheduled to make his first visit to Vermont this weekend and Allbee said the foreign worker issue is sure to be discussed.

"Everyone knows the workers are here illegally but without them our food system would be severely hindered," Allbee said. "I have conversations with people at the highest level who say they want to address this but there doesn’t seem to be any easy way to solve it."

U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis said the new rule protects both migrant workers and American farm workers.

The new rule ensures that U.S workers in the same occupation, working for the same employer, receive no less than the same wage as foreign workers and it requires farmers to make a greater effort to hire American workers before bringing in labor from outside the country.

"This new rule will make it possible for all workers who are working hard on American soil to receive fair pay while at the same time expand opportunities for U.S. workers," Solis said. "The actions that we have taken through this rulemaking will also enable us to detect and remedy different forms of worker violations."

The new rule goes into effect on March 15.

http://www.reformer.com/localnews/ci_14386851

Leahy, you stupid jerk. Full-time dairy work is not "temporary seasonal work". Now ICE go raid those diary farmers and get those people out of here. That's full-time employment for 1500 to 2000 Americans, JUST IN VERMONT, JUST ON DAIRY FARMS JUST REPLACING THE MEXICANS!

Why do you want our cows milked by Mexicans, Leahy? Why don't you want them milked by American Workers? You want Mexican Milk, you know where to find it South of the Border and we'll be more than pleased to buy you a 1 way ticket down there so you can drink Mexican Milk until you choke on it.