Winegrape Growers of America – NCAE December 17 News Brief

December 30, 2021

“A farmer is a magician who produces money from the mud.” — Amit Kalantri

NCAE News, Legal/Technical & Other Employer Issues:

In Georgia, a grand jury indicted two dozen people involved in what police call “modern slavery” with a case of an organized crime ring that exploited the H-2A visa program for migrant workers after more than 100 were freed from working in hard labor.

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Regulatory Actions:

Farm workers are being paid more under a year-old, 60-hour overtime threshold, but farm owners said they are worried that bringing their laborers in line with the rest of the industry by instituting a 40-hour work week would put them out of business, according to a state-commissioned study by Cornell University.

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A state decision on a controversial proposal to make it easier for farm workers to collect overtime pay has been delayed so a new round of hearings can be held.

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Farmworkers who labor in increasingly hot conditions because of climate change will be among those who would benefit from a new federal rule covering workplace safety during extreme heat, advocates say.

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The U.S. Department of Labor today published a final rule amending its regulations regarding the adjudication of temporary and seasonal need for employers seeking herding or production of livestock on the range job opportunities.

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H-2 and Other Worker Status Issues:

Earlier this year, the Washington State Employment Security Department doubled down on efforts to find U.S. farmworkers and spent thousands of dollars on posters, flyers, radio ads and recruitment at job fairs.

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Farmers and ranchers in the agriculture industry say it’s becoming more challenging to find migrant workers through the H-2A Program. That’s a nonimmigrant visa program that allows U.S. employers to bring people form out of the country to fill agricultural jobs.

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Last August, Joel Banderas Almonte posted to TikTok a video he’d had on his phone for a while, joking alongside his co-worker as they worked on a row of Christmas trees at a Mid-Valley farm.

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Noting that almost 7,000 U.S. farmworkers originate from South Africa, the American Farm Bureau Federation, along with more than 60 other agriculture groups, told the Biden administration on Monday that they should be exempted from travel restrictions related to the COVID-19 omicron variant.

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Immigration Reform:

The Senate parliamentarian on Thursday rejected the most recent push from Democrats to include immigration reform in their party-line social spending bill, leaving party leaders scrambling for an alternative.

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NCAE This Week:

The House and the Senate were in this week but will recess next for the holidays.   Breaking news last night was the determination made by the Senate Parliamentarian that immigration reform provisions included in the budget reconciliation proposal (Build Back Better), is not germane to the budget. This decision to veto proponents’ “Plan C” for including this language in the bill was not well received by them. On the other hand, opponents were pleased with the decision.   Agricultural employer efforts in the Senate to advance a companion bill to the House passed “Farm Workforce Modernization Act” have been stymied in recent months. The Parliamentarian’s decision last night will reinvigorate efforts to move more employer-friendly provisions swiftly in the upper chamber. This will be critical as soon campaigning for the midterm elections will begin in earnest, raising the bar considerably in the effort to achieve a bipartisan Senate bill.   Have a great weekend! Michael

News articles and citations of interest for week ending 2021/12/17

Willamette Valley Vineyards, one of the largest wineries in the state, will begin paying overtime to its farmworkers in January, pointing to rising inflation and the rising cost of living.

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A U.S. Department of Labor survey workers on U.S. farms are quite loyal to their employers, and like their bosses.

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