January 2023 - 31

AG LABOR REVIEW
Regulations must reflect reality of ag labor
Editor's note: This column, from December 2021, is no
less true today, with rising H-2A wages and an NCAE legal
challenge to recent Biden administration changes to the
H-2A program.
O
ne of the biggest drags on agricultural employer
profitability, and consequently the employer's
sustainability, are wage rates disconnected from
the market for agricultural labor in the United States.
This disconnect is being significantly driven by a couple of
things, and it is getting worse.
City dwellers, who will assert they are all-knowing (and
certainly perceive themselves more knowledgeable about
nearly everything than we country folk), are increasingly
pushing their state legislatures to enact legislation
regulating what happens on the farm. Legislators from
New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, Minneapolis, Denver
and San Francisco, to point out a few, have divined
themselves the arbiters of what needs to happen on
America's farms and ranches.
These legislators, and their complicit legislatures, have
taken it upon themselves to dictate mandates on their
country brethren. Instead of recognizing that markets
best allocate resources in any economy to their highest
and best use, these city folk have seen fit to eliminate
exemptions from overtime for agricultural labor, among
other things. Because, of course, a job out of doors that
is subject to the vagaries and whims of Mother Nature, is
just like a job at Amazon, Apple or Google. Right?
The federal government is not one to be left out of
this " clobber the farmer and rancher " mentality either.
However, these federal efforts kind of feel like a piling on.
The National Council of Agricultural Employees (NCAE)
has been attempting over the past several years to block
this piling on. The organization has repeatedly petitioned
the Secretary of Labor to determine that an adverse effect
on domestic workers is being visited upon them due to
the employment of temporary H-2A workers, before
mandating the influential Adverse Effect Wage Rate
(AEWR). That's the purpose of the AEWR.
But of course, an AEWR disconnected from the market
for the very labor it seeks to regulate impacts not only
the farmers and ranchers who are forced to employ H-2A
temporary workers because they cannot find enough
workers to help do the work, but also impacts those
employers lucky enough to find a few hardy souls in their
neighborhood to help. This is what is occurring today, and
it is not sustainable.
This is precisely the message NCAE delivered to the
White House's Office of Information and Regulatory
Affairs (OIRA). Regulations must pass muster at OIRA
before they are implemented by the agency. And, since
VEGETABLEGROWERSNEWS.COM | 31
the Department of Labor (DOL) has stepped forward
to bring a new AEWR to the table (recall the Trump
administration's effort was enjoined by a federal district
court), NCAE seized the opportunity to again press the
case for real reform that may help keep some farmers
and ranchers in business.
Today, over half of the fresh fruit and a third of the
fresh vegetables consumed in America are produced
in a foreign country. American domestic policies
mandated by state legislatures and the federal
government are forfeiting our nation's food security to
our foreign competitors. And that circumstance forces
the question as to whether a nation, any nation, can
truly have national security if they are reliant on foreign
countries for their food.
This drag on the sustainability of agricultural employers
cannot be tolerated. That is the message NCAE delivered
to the White House. I encourage all employers to stand
with NCAE and make sure your politicians, state and
federal, have the courage to stand with us too.
http://indianahortconference.org http://www.VEGETABLEGROWERSNEWS.COM
January 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of January 2023
