The Labor Department on Monday proposed mandatory electronic filing of job orders and applications for the H-2A agricultural guest worker program, and would change the methods used to determine pay rates for the seasonal workers.
Growers have relied increasingly on the guest worker program in recent years because of the difficulty of finding a legal and reliable workforce domestically. The number of H-2A workers has doubled in five years, says president Zippy Duvall of the American Farm Bureau Federation. “Even with the increase, last year’s 243,000 workers filled just a fraction of the more than 2.4 million farm jobs.” Groups such as the Farm Bureau have complained that the H-2A visa program is unwieldy, expensive and often tardy in providing workers when they are needed.
In its notice of proposed rulemaking, the Labor Department said a switch to electronic documents would mean faster and more efficient handling of submissions with fewer mistakes. A majority of H-2A applications already are filed electronically but doing so is not mandatory.
The department said it would modify wage formulas by establishing separate adverse-effect wage rates (AEWR) for each agricultural occupation. At present, it sets the AEWR on the basis of the average hourly gross wage for all field and livestock workers in a state or region. Employers are required to pay the highest of the AEWR, the prevailing wage, the union rate, the federal minimum wage or the state minimum wage.
To read the proposed H-2A rule, click here.