Dealing with the Department of Labor

Dealing with the Department of Labor. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Farm Bureau is offering a couple of webinars for ag producers beginning tomorrow but there has been a bit of friction lately with the Labor Department. FAZIO: Kind of a little bit of a disagreement that Farm Bureau has been having with the Federal Department of Labor, really we're just asking them to honor their commitment that they made to us to conduct outreach meetings. As you know we've got two competing groups, the federal and the state for a lot of labor and employment issues. And the federal government has a wage and hour division and they've hired a lot of people lately. They went from 700 inspectors nationwide to 1100. Fazio says 10 or 11 new inspectors in Washington State have caused some grief for ag producers due to problems. FAZIO: The inspectors came onto the property without kind of asking permission, they didn't tell people they were there for an inspection. They were doing housing inspections and talking to workers without getting permission from anyone so there were a lot of questions and controversy over the inspection program last year. The big problem that Farm Bureau has been having is trying to get the Labor Department to come out and play. FAZIO: We asked the Department of Labor if they would do some outreach programs. We have invited them to several of the outreach programs that Farm Bureau has scheduled and the Department of Labor has declined to attend but they did commit that they would conduct training and that they would do it this spring and we haven't seen any kind of outreach at all from the Department of Labor. We'll wrap up tomorrow. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.