Labor Department finalizes plan to cut H-2A wages

Farms that use H-2A workers will be allowed to pay them significantly lower wages under a sweeping overhaul of the program’s wage regulations announced by the Labor Department on Monday. For most H-2A workers, annual increases in the minimum wage after 2022 will no longer be determined by the Agriculture Department’s annual survey of farmworker wages but will instead be based on a national average measure of wages known as the Employment Cost Index, as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For those workers, H-2A wage rates for 2021 and 2022 will remain at the 2020 levels, which were based on the 2019 USDA survey. USDA announced earlier this fall that it was discontinuing the Farm Labor Survey but was ordered by a federal judge last week to resume conducting it. –Agri-Pulse