01/28/09 H2A Questions

H2A Questions. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. A big question on every farmers lips is what is going to happen with the new administration and the labor issue. According to Washington Farm Bureau's Dan Fazio, the Bush Administration made some final positive changes. FAZIO: President Bush changed the rules on H2A to make it actually more fair for both the employer and the worker and it actually looks like it's a program that farmers can use now. He says they are getting a lot of calls about that issue FAZIO: The biggest change to the H2A rule in favor of employers is it looks like they are using more of a prevailing wage. The old wage scale in the H2A was a super prevailing wage about $10 an hour minimum wage and now it looks like it's more of a prevailing wage, somewhere in the $8.60 to $9.00 an hour range. He says that makes the program a lot more usable. There is good news for workers as well. FAZIO: Workers no longer have to pay the recruiter fees and that was a big deal for the workers. We heard workers say that in some cases it was 5, 6, 7 hundred dollars that they were paying recruiters in Mexico and now the employers are paying those recruiter fees. But there may be bad news on the horizon. More tomorrow. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.