Trump Administration Moves To Freeze Wages For Farmworkers Before Leaving Office – By Dave Jamieson (Huffpost) / Nov 9 2020
The Biden White House could reverse Trump’s new regulation for H-2A visas after taking over, but it’s likely to be a time-consuming process.
The Trump administration is moving ahead with a federal rule that would freeze pay for many agricultural guest workers for the next two years, even as they remain essential personnel during a pandemic.
The new regulation would change the methodology used to determine the prevailing wage rates for workers with H-2A visas. Until now, minimum pay rates for most of these workers were set by a survey the U.S. Department of Agriculture conducts twice a year, asking farms for data on their workers’ hours and earnings. The Trump administration has tried to suspend that survey and intends to base future pay increases on data from the Labor Department starting in 2023.
In the intervening years, the prevailing wage rates, which vary from state to state, would remain at their 2019 levels, leaving workers’ pay stagnant. Once pay increases resumed, experts say they would likely be smaller for most fieldworkers than they would have been under the previous methodology.
Workers on H-2A visas come from Mexico and other countries to work temporarily on U.S. farms, typically picking and processing crops. Worker advocates say the wide use of guest workers means the farm labor market does not function like a free market, since these foreign workers are poorer and more willing than Americans to accept below-market pay.
