May 2019 - 34

AG LABOR REVIEW
States exceed authority with attacks on ag employers
The bill has passed out of the
MICHAEL MARSH
President & CEO
National Council of Agricultural
Employers
Michael@ncaeonline.org
Washington Senate but has yet to pass
out of the House.
As if that bill wasn't crazy enough,
Caged canaries were taken into coal
mines as an early warning system
for miners. The tiny birds were very
sensitive to buildups of methane and
carbon monoxide. So long as the
canaries were singing, miners could have
some confidence that dangerous levels
of silent, but deadly, toxic emissions
were not present in their working
environment. The miners would mine
while the canaries would sing.
I think agricultural employers have
our own " canaries in the coal mine. "
Our canaries are, unfortunately for
them, the farmers and ranchers in
California and Washington. And the
toxic emissions for which they are
our " early warning system, " are those
expelled by their state legislatures.
In fact, I am so convinced of the
import of this " early warning system "
that this year, like at our last Ag Labor
Forum in Las Vegas, I am going to
ask attorneys from those two states to
present to attendees the crazy antifarmer
goings-on in their state capitols.
And, when I say crazy, I mean truly,
amazingly crazy!
Our membership's weekly H-2A
conference calls have lately examined
what's going on in Washington state as
if their legislature is fighting tooth and
nail to prove they are the wackiest.
Last summer, under significant
pressure from anti-farmer activists,
the Washington Employment Security
Department (ESD) started promoting
the notion of charging fees to farmers
and ranchers involved in the federal
H-2A temporary agriculture worker
visa program.
We search out, with
our members' help,
and identify threats to
agricultural employers.
The fees being proposed would be
used to generate funds for the ESD
to supplement work done on H-2A
application processing but would also
duplicate regulatory efforts of the U.S.
Department of Labor on Washington
farms and ranches. These duplicative
regulatory efforts, please keep in
mind, have never been delegated to
the state by the federal government.
The National Council of
Agricultural Employer's (NCAE)
legal counsel developed a legal
memorandum on the notion last
summer for NCAE members in
the state identifying the action's
constitutional failings.
This year, legislation was
introduced to authorize these fees
in the Washington state legislature.
The legislation would authorize ESD
to impose fees on H-2A employers
sufficient to cover whatever the
agency determined its costs and
activities related to the program to be.
Some initial agency estimates put this
at approximately $3.5 million in new
tax burden on users of the program.
And, veering wildly out of their
defined lane, the ESD would initiate
new, added compliance regimes
costing agriculture millions more.
Senate Bill 5693 in the Washington
Senate tries to outdo it. In yet another
shot at agriculture, this bill would require
some retail sellers and manufacturers
of agricultural products to require
their farmers to report " violations of
employment-related laws and incidents of
slavery, peonage and human trafficking. "
I'm not kidding. I guess the antifarmer
advocates have been working
overtime to convince Washington
legislators that agricultural workers
are routinely enslaved and trafficked.
Of course, not only is this bill
offensive to agricultural employers (as
its author and cohorts likely intended),
it seeks to add yet another burden on
farmers to address an evil that exists
only in sick minds.
But in one of life's great ironies, a
significant human trafficking problem
was revealed on Feb. 28 in Seattle,
when 11 Asian massage parlors were
raided in a prostitution sting. Twentysix
women were freed from being
trafficked and forced into prostitution.
None of them worked in agriculture,
but all of them were being trafficked
in the district represented by the
sponsor of Senate Bill 5693.
Fortunately, this bill did not advance
further and is dead - for now.
Canaries in the coal mine.
Thankfully, this is one of the benefits
to members of NCAE. We search out,
with our members' help, and identify
threats to agricultural employers,
educate members on their rights and
how best to inoculate their businesses.
It's nice to have canaries helping to
keep us safe. FGN
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34 | FruitGrowersNews.com
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May 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of May 2019
