1/9/08 Surviving H2A Part 4

Surviving H2A Part 4. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Lawyer Ryan Edgley deals with many different H2A cases and at the recent Washington State Horticulture Convention he discussed many of the issues surrounding the implementation of an H2A program. Housing is an issue that many Ag producers are unclear on. EDGLEY: To use H2A and import temporary foreign workers you have to provide them with housing. Well but then the law says you have to offer housing to any domestic worker that cannot reasonably travel from their place of residence to the job every day. To make all these areas work for your operation can be costly. EDGLEY: I don't want to scare you away from using H2A but H2A is expensive. You're going to spend more money  a significant amount of more money on labor using H2A than you otherwise would have. And so individually, what you need to ask yourself is; one-am I really experiencing a shortage of labor or do I anticipate, reasonably that I am going to experience a shortage of labor. Using an H2A program has also caused a bit of role reversal. EDGLEY: One of the things that H2A does when you use it is it takes some of the risks that used to be borne by the workers and puts it on the employer. And so you may have to wind up compensating workers for the occurrence of a risk that it used to be their burden to bear and no longer is. Tomorrow we wrap up our conversation with Ryan Edgley. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.