H-2A Workforce Summits Pt 2
With today's Fruit Grower Report, I'm Bob Larson. Three Workforce Summits scheduled for next month will focus on how seasonal employers can make the most of the federal H-2A program and continue attracting a stable workforce.WAFLA executive director Dan Fazio says one will be held Washington, one in Oregon, and one in Idaho, all three will varied issued ...
DAN FAZIO ... "In Washington we had a little bit of a labor unrest situation last year so we're going to really delve deeply into that and to what does it mean, you know, why would you have labor unrest, what's the root causes, how you can prevent it. And then, the kinds of things that people are doing with grading systems for workers, accountability, leadership types of things that people need to have in order to have a successful H-2A program."
Fazio says the issues employers care about can be different depending on the size of the operation ...
DAN FAZIO ... "For the smaller employers, they asked us to have a large on-the-farm presence where we have WAFLA employees that go to the farm, talk to the workers, talk to the supervisors, even shoot videos of what they're doing, etcetera. For the larger employers, they have staff that can do that themselves. They just want us to do the 'grunt-work' with the government and making sure that the workers get here and being innovative about how we get workers, making sure that they're really good workers that are going to stay and do a good job."
Go to the WAFLA website at WAFLA DOT ORG to register and to find more information on the Workforce Summits, January 9th, 10th, and 17th.