11/27/07 No Match Update

No Match Update. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Is it a standoff in the courts? The Bush administration has asked the Northern California judge to suspend the case being brought to invalidate its "No-Match Safe Harbor" rule according to Washington Farm Bureau's Dan Fazio. FAZIO: The administration conceded that there were problems with their "no-match" rule and they want to fix them and they asked the judge if he would delay further proceedings in the trial to invalidate the rule so that they could have an opportunity to reissue the rule in a different format. They're going to make corrections to the rule to address the issues that the judge has raised in that the judge had said this rule is going to lead to firing of legal workers and so they want to put something in the rule to address that. Fazio says there are some procedural changes needed to the rule. FAZIO: When you issue a rule like this you have to have small business impact statement if in fact you think it will impact small businesses and they had gotten around that by making a blanket statement that there would be no impact on small businesses. This also affects the "Safe Harbor" aspect as well. FAZIO: Presumably the no-match regulation is not in effect right now. The administration has voluntarily asked to have it pulled so this regulation that gave employers a safe harbor if they followed a certain procedure is no longer valid. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.