Items Tagged with 'Farmworker Justice'

The ag industry will be watching closely as the Biden administration seeks to implement its regulatory agenda in 2023.Issues to keep an eye on include the ever-present “waters of the U.S.” definition, renewable fuels, food safety, and emissions from animal operations.

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.

With public comment now closed, around 100 advocates for farmworkers and their employers have filed responses to the Department of Labor’s proposed changes to calculating wage rates for the farmworker nonimmigrant visa program.

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.

The federal government is increasing its oversight of farms and other operations where workers are exposed to extreme heat, launching an enforcement initiative and encouraging employers to provide water, rest, and shade as needed to cope with high temperatures.

Colorado lawmakers just passed a bill that will make the state the fifth in the nation to require farms to pay overtime to their workers, and farm groups expect more state legislatures to follow suit.

Labor advocates and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., called for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to issue an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) for COVID-19 that likely would require employers to adopt programs to prevent transmission in their workplaces.

Congressional Democrats introduced a sweeping immigration bill backed by President Joe Biden that would require farms to start paying overtime and provide an expedited path to citizenship for undocumented farmworkers.

A federal judge orders USDA to continue collecting farmworker wage data, agreeing with farm labor groups that challenged the suspension of the survey that is used to set minimum wage requirements for H-2A workers.

The Environmental Protection Agency has narrowed a rule to protect individuals from pesticide spraying by establishing one 25-foot “Application Exclusion Zone” for all ground spray applications and limiting AEZ’s to the boundaries of the agricultural establishment.