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Balanced Reporting. Trusted Insights.
Tuesday, November 29, 2022
A second big Supreme Court case for agriculture is coming up next week, this one involving California’s Proposition 12 requirements for animal housing.
The Labor Department on Thursday issued new regulations for employing H-2A workers that tighten standards for housing and meals while clarifying that agricultural associations can be held liable for rules violations by individual farmers.
The Senate is heading to the August recess and into the fall campaign season with little sign of a deal on farm labor reforms that would expand the H-2A visa program and provide a path to legal status for existing workers.
The Supreme Court has set Oct. 11 as the date when the National Pork Producers Council and the American Farm Bureau Federation will be able to make their final case for overturning Proposition 12, a California ballot initiative that would require pork sold in the state to come from sows afforded a minimum amount of space.
The Biden administration will work with the United Farm Workers to develop a $65 million program broadly aimed at ensuring farms implement “robust health and safety standards” for employees and preventing unfair recruitment practices for H-2A workers.
The office in the Labor Department that oversees and enforces the H-2A guest worker program will continue to be without a leader for the foreseeable future, which could hamper the Biden administration’s efforts to provide more protections for farmworkers.
Agricultural employers seeking to get H-2A workers into the country for seasonal labor are finding that under U.S. COVID-19 protocols, not all vaccines are created equal.
The Biden administration will lift restrictions on travel from South Africa Dec. 31, which is good news for farmers and ranchers who are expected to employ about 7,000 workers from that country this growing season.
The Department of Labor (DOL) is publishing today its 2022 Adverse Effect Wage Rates (AEWR), which are the minimum an employer must pay H-2A nonimmigrant agricultural workers, and proposing some changes to how those rates are set for certain jobs.
