Eleven agricultural organizations wrote a letter to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to express concerns about the way the H-2A temporary worker program’s adverse effective wage rate (AEWR) is determined.
The organizations stated that the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) use of the Farm Labor Survey (FLS) to establish the AEWR “is inconsistent with the intent of the FLS and an ill-suited mechanism to establish H-2A wages.” They added that adjustments to the survey could be used “to improve DOL’s methodology (by amending its regulation) and determine an AEWR that is more reflective of the minimum wages paid to U.S. workers.”
The FLS uses all wages paid to farmworkers to determine the average gross wage, and includes bonuses, incentive pay and overtime, according to the ag organizations. “This creates a self-inflating minimum wage (the AEWR) based on the prior year’s gross wage, resulting in volatile wage spikes,” the letter claimed.
Some regions of the country will see a nearly 10% increase in minimum H-2A wages next year, the ag groups stated. They added: “Such a spike could not have been foreseen and, for many farmers, comes at a time when budgets have already been set, making it even more difficult for the farmer to absorb that cost. This is an unsustainable burden for farmers to bear and threatens their ability to continue in labor-intensive agriculture.”
The annual average hourly base wage should be determined using the wage rate that workers are guaranteed to receive regardless of productivity and exclude any bonus, incentive and overtime wages, the groups told Vilsack.
The DOL recently released new AEWRs for the employment of temporary H-2A agricultural workers by state. Florida’s new AEWR is $16.23, effective Dec. 30, 2024. This is an increase of approximately 10% from the previous year’s rate of $14.77.
The Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association (FFVA) is one of the 11 organizations that wrote the letter to Vilsack. The vast majority of Florida citrus is harvested by temporary foreign H-2A workers.
Source: FFVA
Share this Post
Sponsored Content