WASHINGTON (AP) — The Labor Department moved Thursday to reverse Bush administration rules that made it easier for farmers to hire temporary foreign workers to help pick their crops.
The new regulations will increase wages and offer greater job safety protections for thousands of foreign farm workers hired each year. The rules also require growers to make a greater effort to fill those jobs with domestic workers.
Farm owners have vehemently opposed changes to the H-2A guest worker program since the Obama administration first attempted to reverse them last year. Growers claim the new rules will make it more burdensome and expensive to hire foreign workers for physically grueling jobs that most Americans don't want.
But labor and immigrant rights groups claimed the Bush regulations slashed farm wages and made it harder for domestic workers to apply for those jobs.
A lawsuit from farm owners last year stopped the Labor Department from immediately suspending the Bush regulations and forced officials to go through a lengthier notice and comment period for making new rules.
The new rules, which take effect on March 15, would increase the average wage for temporary farm workers by about a dollar an hour. Farm owners must also post farm jobs on a new electronic job registry to make sure domestic workers get first dibs.
Labor Department officials say the changes protect some of the most vulnerable workers from abuses. Under the new rules, for example, state work force agencies must inspect the quality of temporary worker housing before an employer can gain approval to bring in foreign workers.
Growers had asked the Bush administration to ease hiring rules they said were so time-consuming that farmers sometimes had to let crops rot in the fields because they couldn't find enough workers at harvest time. The new rules would retain some of the efforts to streamline processing times, but not likely enough to satisfy growers who have threatened further legal action.
