11/16/06 Listening to Labor Needs

Listening to labor needs. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. The guestworker program continues to be a hotbed of controversay and L&I proposed legislation further regulating farm labor contractors may impact anyone using the H2A guestworker program. According to Farm Bureau's Dan Fazio, they have asked L& I to present this bill to interested employers and answer questions regarding this bill. FAZIO: The Department of Labor and Industries has requested legislation that would impact every person that tries to use the agricultural guest worker program. They say it's a farm labor contractor reform bill. And we've said that we want them to talk to people who are farm labor contractors so we've invited all the farm labor contractors and anyone else who think they might be impacted. Fazio says that once L&I has stated their position, the floor will be open. FAZIO: We'll ask them questions and then see how the people who are impacted feel about the bill and I told them that if the people who are impacted feel like it's a good bill then we'll support it and if they don't we'll oppose it and it's as simple as that and that's basically the way you should do legislation instead of writing in Olympia to affect people that live in Yakima, you should come over to Yakima and talk to the people first. We'll try and have an open mind if we can and just let them try to explain why they feel we need this new law. The meeting will be held Thursday, November 16, at 1:30 pm, at the Yakima Convention Center and is open to the public. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.