Winegrape Growers of America - April 15 National Council of Agricultural Employers News Brief.

“I was so naive as a kid I used to sneak behind the barn and do nothing.”

— Johnny Carson

NCAE News, Legal/Technical, & Other Employer Issues:

A Florida woman pleaded guilty on April 6 to a federal racketeering conspiracy that victimized Mexican agricultural workers admitted into the U.S. under the H-2A temporary visa program, according to a news release.

The U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Georgia described it as “modern-day slavery.”

In a boon to property owners, the U.S. Supreme Court recently expanded the definition of what constitutes a physical taking (one that takes possession of property away from its owner) by including what many practitioners would have classified as a potential regulatory taking (one that restricts the use of property).

Regulatory Actions:

Martina Marisol wakes up before dawn most days to get to work at 6 a.m., on a farm upstate.

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller pressed the governor on Tuesday to end a new inspection policy that is snarling traffic at the border and “turning a crisis into a catastrophe.”

H-2 and Other Worker Status Issues:

Crop doesn’t wait.

Safety:

The past two years have been difficult for everyone, but some 87,000 farmworkers in Oregon have faced some of the worst hardships, with state officials sometimes failing to protect them, according to a report published Tuesday.

For the first time, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration has launched a National Emphasis Program to protect millions of workers from heat illness and injuries.

Immigration Reform:

Supporters of legal status for immigrant farmworkers are holding out hope that U.S. lawmakers will prioritize the agricultural workforce in nascent bipartisan immigration talks after previous efforts fell apart.

NCAE This Week:

The House and the Senate were out this week.

A whisper of good news on the agricultural labor reform front lies in the fact that members of the Senate are starting to talk again about doing something. Talks have been long-stalled in the Senate as debate around the President’s budget proposal dubbed “Build Back Better” removed the oxygen from the discussion for several months. Then the process to confirm a replacement to find a replacement for retiring Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Stephen Breyer took center stage. We are hopeful that after the Easter Recess the Senate will turn their talk into action quickly.

The weather here in the D.C. area has finally turned toward something resembling Spring. With that change in the weather it’s probably a good idea to dust off that Injury and Illness Prevention Program and review your heat illness protocols. To help members get a good refresher on the importance of those extra precautions, NCAE will be holding a webinar on the topic on April 28th, 2022. The featured speaker will be Bethany Alcauter, PhD, with the National Center of Farmworker Health.

Registration information is on the NCAE website. Be certain to register early for this event as our webinars typically fill quickly.

Have a blessed Easter!

Michael

News articles and citations of interest for week ending 2022/04/15

I’m upset.

The wheat has been sown for the coming season but nobody in Yakovlivka, a small farming village outside Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine, knows if it will be harvested.

To understand what’s driving the nation’s largest increase in food prices in 40 years, just take a close look at your all-American cheeseburger.

The Census of Agriculture is a complete count of U.S. farms and ranches and the people who operate them.

At first it was just Flippy the Burgerbot, the one-armed automated burger-flipper that proved itself faster than fifteen-dollar-per-hour humans with two fully-functional arms.

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Winegrape Growers of America – April 15 National Council of Agricultural Employers News Brief.

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