WA State Agrees With Wafla And Changes Grower Survey

I'm Susan Allen with the Fruit Grower Report. In the coming weeks, many growers in Washington and Oregon will receive a wage and practices survey from their state employment agency. Well here is Dan Fazio an attorney with WAFLA to give you his insight.

FAZIO: Last year, wafla advised Washington state that it was not properly following federal guidelines, which mandate that piece rates with hourly wage guarantees such as the ones provided by H-2A employers must be surveyed separately, for the obvious reason that they represent a different and potentially higher pay to the worker. So the good news is that This year Washington state agreed with wafla and has changed its survey to align it with the wafla recommendation.

With this change, we believes the survey will be much more fair but it still begs the question, should the employer should fill out the survey,

Wafla has scheduled a free webinar for its members taking place Thursday, September 22 from 11 a.m. to noon, conducted by the Washington Employment Security Department (ESD). ESD will explain the survey and answer questions. We urge Washington growers to attend! Wafla has placed a request with the Oregon Employment Department for the following week on December 29th. We hope people will tune in to free webinars and then make a decision if you are going to participate in these surveys to help the State of Oregon and Washington in deciding what the wages and prevailing practice are for employers next year.