Electronic Registry for Ag Jobs

Electronic Registry for Ag Jobs. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. There is a brand new online registry for H-2A agricultural jobs. Those are the jobs usually filled by temporary foreign farm workers, but now domestic workers will be able to access the database and apply for those jobs. American Farm Bureau Federation Labor Specialist Ron Gaskill. GASKILL: If this gets us the stable, legal workforce that we're looking for, we'll be happy. In this time of high unemployment you can't argue about the fact that you need to try to give as much employment opportunities as we can to domestic workers. Gaskill says registry will make the job postings accessible to a lot more potential workers, but... GASKILL: We have serious doubts because the record of retaining domestic workers is very, very poor in agriculture. And that leads to problems with what is called the "50 Percent Rule" which says even if a farmer has already hired an H-2A worker for a job, if the first 50 percent of their contract period is not fulfilled yet, the farmer must hire the domestic worker, otherwise they're in violation of the law. GASKILL: The challenge there is it creates a great deal of upheaval in the workforce because the employer is having to lay off H-2A workers after he's paid to bring them here and then he has to hire domestic workers and unfortunately the domestic worker retention rate on farms is horrid. So you put the employer in a real bind. He explains how the "50 Percent Rule" could be very costly for farmers. GASKILL: The financial cost to get an H-2A worker here is considerable because not only do you have to have the application fees that go to the Department of Labor, you also have to pay for the transportation for that individual to come from wherever his home is to the United States. Their meals and their housing during that transit period and of course when they get here you have to provide them with housing and other expenses as well so that they can live while they're earning a wage so it can be anywhere $2500 to $3500 per individual foreign worker that an employer brings in. And of course you've got to pay for them to go back home, too. So if you've paid a lot of that money and then you have to terminate the employment simply because you've got a domestic worker who now all the sudden wants the job, it's an incredible expense to an employer who's bringing in from other countries a dozen, two dozen or as many as several hundred foreign workers. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.