Tag Archives: guest workers

Uncertainty for Producers Relying on Guest Workers

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Tifton, GA |

Down in Tifton recently, producers gathered for the annual Agricultural Relations Forum – an event that’s designed to educate and inform growers on the ever so changing guest worker programs producers utilize on their operations. The importance of the event can’t be overstated as it comes at a time when producers have been burdened with frequent, drastic changes to the program so many of them rely on.

“The biggest factor that drives the need for this event is the ever changing regulatory environment that we find ourselves in. For a grower that is focused on growing a healthy crop, keeping up with six hundred pages of regulations and new rules is a challenge. So, if we can synopsis that into two days and again, let them have the information so that they are compliant, so that they know they’re operating their farm the way that the rules stipulate, but also the way they want to be able to operate and treat their employees who come back year after year and become part of their families,” says Chris Butts, Executive Vice President of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Grower’s Association.

In the last few years, growers that utilize the program have had to adapt to sudden changes; changes that have caused a lot of uncertainty – the biggest being the wage rate, which has increased more than twenty percent in just two years – a huge hurdle for producers, especially when that rate could change at any time.

“One of the biggest factors influencing the effectiveness of the program is what we call the adverse effect wage rate. And that becomes, in effect, a de facto minimum wage rate for all AG work in your area. That rate that can be increased, at any time during the year. The last few years, we’ve had a twenty-one percent increase in ’23 and ’24. That comes after the fact that our growers may have already had contracts to provide produce to their suppliers. So, that uncertainty comes in with ‘I can’t identify what my labor costs are going to be next year because I don’t know what the pay rate is going to be'”, says Butts.

More uncertainty comes for producers as a lawsuit has been brought forth that is challenging the overreach and unfairness in the many burdensome and unfair rules and regulations the Department of Labor has issued.

“The latest rules we feel were an overreach by the Department of Labor outstripping the authority granted to them by Congress. And in fact, they’re conveying rights to foreign ag workers in the country that even U.S. citizen workers don’t receive. The pay rate is now twice in Georgia what the minimum wage is. Those pay rates become disassociated from really the economic realities in our rural communities, but because of the rules, that becomes the de facto wage rate. And we are now paying a wage rate that’s oftentimes twice what other industries in that area are paying. That leaves us uncompetitive with our foreign competitors and susceptible to seeing more of our food supply come from other countries,” says Butts.

Ultimately, Butts says that the rules and regulations have been changing in a way that has left growers at a very unfair advantage, especially when you add in all of the many other challenges that they’re dealing with.

“We find ourselves at the intersection of trade policy and labor policy that is leaving our growers uncompetitive, or at a competitive disadvantage to foreign competitors. For food security, we’ve got to make sure that American growers have a future and growing fruits and vegetables in the U.S the sustainable,” says Butts.

By: John Holcomb

Latest H-2A Wage Rule a Concern for Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers

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LaGrange, GA

Here in the state of Georgia, our farmers and producers rely heavily on our country’s guest worker program known as H-2A. In fact, according to the US Department of Labor, in 2021 Georgia utilized more than thirty thousand guest workers, showcasing just how important the program and its workers are to our state’s fruit and vegetable production in growing and harvesting high quality produce.

“In fruit and vegetable production in Georgia, we’ve got over thirty commodities that we produce. All of which require a lot of intensive hand-labor,” says Chris Butts, Executive Vice President of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association. “When you see a Vidalia onion in the store, that onion has been touched and processed by hand multiple times. Same on other crops like cucumbers and zucchini, and even peaches and apples. These don’t lend themselves well to mechanization or automation, so we’ve got to have skilled labor out there in the fields that are helping to grow, pick, harvest, and pack the fresh produce to get it in the local grocery store shelves in the quality we’re looking for.”

However, the department of Labor, back late last year released a new wage rule for H-2A workers that increased their wages by fourteen percent here in Georgia – a mandate that Butts says producers couldn’t have possibly budgeted for and will severely impact fruit and vegetable operations across the state.

“We were hit with a fourteen percent wage increase in Georgia. That was the second highest percentage increase in the country, but that took that wage from 11.99 per hour to 13.67 per hour and it essentially becomes kind of the de facto minimum wage for ag work in that area,” says Butts. “No one can plan and budget for a fourteen percent increase year over year and that far exceeded anything we saw for cost-of-living adjustments for, let’s say social security recipients or consumer price index. It was almost twice that, so, saddling Georgia’s growers with that increase is going to cost them over 120 million dollars just this year alone given the number of H2A workers that we have in the state of Georgia.”

Butts says the wage increase comes at a time when producers across the country are already struggling and believes it will just cause even more of our state’s fruit and vegetable production to be sent outside of our nation’s borders.

“That fourteen percent as you mentioned comes on top of record high prices for inputs; everything that the farmer uses to produce and market that crop from the diesel in his tractor, to chemicals, to packaging. We’ve seen huge increases over the last couple of years and now we throw that fourteen percent pay rate increase on top of that. In our estimation, the only recourse a grower has is to use fewer laborers. They’re not going to be able to afford to bring as many workers as they have in the past,” says Butts.

According to Butts, the effects of that ultimately means less production in Georgia moving forward.

“Ironically, as we continue to battle imports and cheap produce coming across our borders from Mexico and others, I think this will ultimately drive more production south of the border to foreign countries. The AEWR is supposed to be there to protect the wages of domestic workers; we don’t have those domestic workers, so in an effort to protect a worker that doesn’t exist, we may end up sending more of the production of our food to foreign countries,” says Butts.

The new rule went into effect at the end of March, however there’s currently bi-partisan legislation being led by Senators Ossoff and Tillis that would reverse the wage increase through the end of 2023 – a measure Butts says is a step in the right direction.

By: John Holcomb