Source: Harvesting Justice, 4/5/10

According to farmworkers advocates, the Bush Administration eliminated many of the wage and labor protections for farmworkers in the regulations of the H-2A agricultural guestworker program.  Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis issued new regulations, restoring the wage rates and protections.  Judge Osteen of the federal court in Greensboro, NC, overturned Solis's decision in June 2009, saying that the procedure had not been adequate.  Secretary Solis re-did the regulations with some other changes.  The new regulations took effect March 15, meaning that applications for guestworkers filed on or after that date are covered by the new regulations.  But the American Farm Bureau Federation and the North Carolina Growers Association (a contractor of H-2A guestworkers for several hundred growers) filed a lawsuit again challenging the H-2A regulations issued by Secretary Solis.

The grower groups have requested a preliminary injunction - essentially emergency relief -- to overturn the regulations.  Judge Osteen set a hearing for April 9th.  The Department of Labor is defending the case, represented by the Justice Department.  Several farmworker organizations -- including the United Farm Workers, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, Change to Win, and PCUN (Oregon's farmworker union) -- and several individual farmworkers from around the country have intervened in the case to oppose the growers' efforts.  Farmworker Justice is one of several public interest organizations that are representing the farmworker groups and individual.  Lead counsel is Greg Schell of Florida Legal Services Migrant Farmworker Justice project and local counsel is Robert Willis, the general counsel of FLOC, aided by California Rural Legal Assistance, Change to Win, and Southern Poverty Law Center, among others.

Judge Osteen may or may not rule on April 9 but  a ruling is expected either on that day or shortly afterward.  In many locations, the wage difference between the two sets of regulations is $2.00 per hour. 

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