The cry for H-2A reform can be heard all around agriculture, and the recent adjustments to calculating the Adverse Effect Wage Rate are a step in the right direction.
But Enrique Gastelum, CEO of the Worker and Farmer Labor Association, says the AEWR is not the program’s only problem that needs to be addressed.
“The second fix we need to see is something has got to break the farmers’ way, related to the cost of housing. This is one of the only foreign guest worker programs where the employer is on the hook for paying 100 percent of the worker’s living situation.”
Gastelum says it all adds up very quickly.
“Not only do you have to build, rent, or identify safe and healthy, licensed housing, which I have no problem with, but you’ve also got to bear the brunt of the entire cost, including the facility, the utilities, the maintenance, and the upkeep. That could be upwards of $5 or $6 a production hour per person.”
Gastelum says in the H-2B program, which is seasonal labor, no more than ten months, but non-ag-related, those workers actually pay all of their housing costs.
“Yes, it is a different program, but I think conceptually, as a federal government, we have shown we can still have guestworkers come in and have them pay if not all, they can pay some share of that housing.”
Gastelum says this gives foreign guest workers a competitive advantage with domestic workers, who probably see 40-50 percent of their check going to the place they live.