WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Senators Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA), ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, and Ted Budd (R-NC) expressed concerns to Acting Department of Labor (DOL) Secretary Julie Su regarding the Department’s bias against American farmers while under her leadership. This comes after a senior DOL official made shocking public comments deriding the H-2A visa program, which allows farmers to hire non-immigrant temporary or seasonal agricultural workers when American labor is unavailable. Currently, Su’s nomination for the Secretary of the Department of Labor (DOL) is being considered by the U.S. Senate.
On April 14th, a group of nonprofit organizations published a report on the “systemic issues” of the H-2A program, which included multiple quotes from Mike Rios, the current Regional Enforcement Coordinator at the Wage and Hour Division of DOL. In his statements, Rios criticized the H-2A program, describing it as “the purchase of humans to perform difficult work under terrible conditions, sometimes including subhuman living conditions.” In an interview the following week, Rios expressed further criticisms of farmers, saying “[y]ou can throw a rock and hit a violation in the agricultural industry.”
Under federal regulations, farmers are required to pay H-2A workers “a wage that is at least the highest of” the Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR), which does not allow for H-2A labor to earn less than domestic farm workers....
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