Speech #1090121642

Department of Agricultures National Agriculture Statistics Service quarterly surveya survey that has been published by the Department of Agriculture for decades. a survey that was never intended for the purpose for which the Department of Labor utilizes the collected data. The AEWR reflects the average wage for disparate field and livestock work over a multistate area. Packing house workan occupation filled by a large number of H2A workersis not surveyed. The NASS survey result is the average of all agricultural wages. including the wages that are paid to workers whose higher production levels entitle them to additional incentives or piecework pay. The U.S. Department of Labor then uses this average wage without regard for differences in occupations. skills and seasonality by turning that average into a minimum guaranteed wage for purposes of the AEWR. To put this in terms my colleagues can understand. this would be like if you took a survey of all congressional salaries. from Senators and Congressmen to staff assistants. and then took the average of those salaries and mandated that the average wage must be the minimum amount paid to any congressional staffer. Agricultural employers who use the H2A program to avoid breaking the law by hiring legal workers are put at a distinct competitive disadvantage when compared to growers who use the available undocumented workforce. In fact. this competitive disadvantage caused by the additional expense of using H2A is a major factor in the agricultural industrys increasing dependency on an illegal workforce. Those employers who have been utilizing an illegal workforce have not been paying those illegal workers anywhere near the adverse effect wage rate. Most troubling to me is that in the Judiciary Committees bill. once agricultural employers transition those illegal workers to blue card workers. there is still no mandated wage floor for them! Therefore. H2A growers will continue to experience unfair competition if the AEWR is not replaced with local prevailing wages. I would also like to point out that the wages required of employers of workers admitted under every other temporary. nonimmigrant visa category is a local prevailing wage rate determined by the U.S. Department of Labor through specific occupational surveys by the various states. I believe this should be the case for the H2A program as well. Moving from an Adverse Effect Wage Rate requirement to a prevailing wage would allow the use of a more localized. occupationspecific. competitive wage when growers access legal workers through the H2A program. This would naturally raise wages for some farm workers and better reflect the economic realities of the area in which the work is performed and the type of work being performed. It would also encourage agricultural employers to participate in a program designed to protect and identify the workers on our Nations farms.