May 17, 2024

For Immediate Release

Contact:  Michael Marsh, President and CEO

                (202) 629-9320

(Arlington, VA) Michael Marsh, President and CEO of the National Council of Agricultural Employers (NCAE), was recently invited to join a delegation coordinated by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Guatemalan Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare to participate in a panel discussion in Guatemala City, Guatemala, on “Legal Labor Pathways” for agricultural jobs in the United States. For many years, NCAE has engaged with Ministries of Labor for the countries of Northern Central America—Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. This marks NCAE’s latest effort to engage with USAID and other partners in compliance to strengthen the partnerships between American farmers and ranchers and our “Labor Neighbors” in this region.

Above: Michael Marsh speaking with a translator for the Guatemalan Minister of Labor, Miriam Roquel Chávez

“This was an incredible opportunity to witness the transformational power of the H-2A Temporary Agricultural Worker Program and the great work in which USAID engaged to strengthen the H-2A program first-hand,” noted Marsh.  This event coincided with the third Los Angeles Declaration Ministerial with foreign ministers and senior representatives from 21 endorsing countries. During this event, USAID announced plans to launch a new labor mobility initiative, “Alianza de Movilidad Laboral para las Américas” or “Labor Neighbors,” to increase access to circular migration pathways.

In addition to participating in the panel discussion, Marsh and other attendees observed interviews and interactions with prospective H-2A workers from Guatemala. “These are truly outstanding individuals—some of them descendants of Mayan warriors—with aspirations for a better life for themselves and their families,” explained Marsh.

“The H-2A program is a golden ticket to these prospective workers,” noted Marsh. “During the interviews, workers noted that by picking apples on a 90-day contract in the Pacific Northwest, they could earn more than they would in Guatemala in 5 years. During the interview process, prospective workers shared that they had dreams—one stated he plans to build a home upon return and hopes to someday add a wood floor, another shared he wanted to grow coffee, and another hoped to start a business and open a small bodega at the end of his contract.  To these workers, their families, and communities, being selected for an H-2A contract in the U.S. means they can achieve dreams.”

Above: Michael Marsh and other panelists speak with a grower in Guatemala.

“We applaud the efforts of USAID to enhance the legal, circular migration pathways like the H-2A program. USAID’s efforts are among the best our Nation has to stem the flow of illegal migration. The Agency is connecting eager, strong, and well qualified individuals with American farmers and ranchers who are in desperate need of labor.”

“Unfortunately,” continued Marsh, “their best efforts are undermined by challenging and conflicting regulations which further increase the cost and complicate an already expensive and convoluted program. One such regulation is the Department of Labor’s recently published final rule, ‘Improving Protections for Workers in Temporary Agricultural Employment in the United States,’ which presupposes that farmers and ranchers are inherently bad actors. Unlike USAID, which engages agricultural employers as true partners in compliance, in just the last 18 months, the Department of Labor along with other federal agencies have waged a regulatory assault against agricultural employers, issuing an astounding 3,000 pages of new regulations with which farmers and ranchers must familiarize themselves and adjust business processes while maintaining operations”.

NCAE is the national trade association focusing on agricultural labor issues from the employer’s viewpoint.

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April 26, 2024

For Immediate Release

Contact:  Michael Marsh, President and CEO

                (202) 629-9320

(Arlington, VA) Earlier today, the Department of Labor (Department) published 600 pages of new regulations ironically titled, “Improving Protections for Workers in Temporary Agriculture Employment in the United States.” This Rule and the Administration’s promulgation of the rule reflects its disdain for the U.S. Supreme Court, the U. S. Congress, and all who engage in American agriculture.

“This offensive Rule was developed in complete bad faith and should be immediately withdrawn.  This regulation should never have been allowed to see the light of day.  To suggest this regulation somehow protects farmworkers is a bad joke and its punchline is its lasting damage to farmworkers and the American farm and ranch families who employ them,” said Michael Marsh, President and CEO of NCAE. “The Department here seeks to make an undisguised end run around the Congress, the Supreme Court and the Constitution of the United States of America.”

In this Rule, the Department blatantly thumbs its nose at the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2021 decision in Cedar Point, et al, v. Haddid, et al, and implies that the Executive Branch under Article II of the Constitution can simply override and ignore rulings of the Judicial Branch under Article III. In Cedar Point, the Court found in a 6-3 decision that a regulation providing union activist’s access to farms and ranches was an unconstitutional per se physical taking under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.  The Court struck that regulation down, but the Department’s action here reveals its complete disgust for the rule of law.

This rule puts workers, who had enjoyed a brief respite from organizers’ constant coercion, threats, harassment, misrepresentation, deceit, and bullying, at further jeopardy from union activists. Farmworkers were thrilled by the Court’s protective action in Cedar Point, believing they would no longer be subject to the abuse of union representatives at their place of work.  This new rule casts aside this most critical worker protection and again makes farmworkers vulnerable to deceitful union organizing tactics to which we and our employees object.

Shockingly, under this new rule, the Department asserts that unionization of H-2A Temporary Agricultural workers is not preempted by the laws passed by Congress. This unequivocally contradicts the Congress’ specific exclusion of agricultural laborers under the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (NLRA). Further, Congress instructed the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to use the expansive definition of “agriculture” provided by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) in determining whether workers fall under the category of agricultural laborers.

“Rather than accepting the interpretation of law by the Supreme Court, abiding by the laws passed by the Congress, or petitioning Congress to legislate change only it can make, the Department decided it can ignore the Separation of Powers inherent to our liberty, and fill all branches of our government,” explained Marsh. “This is something the Department should know it cannot do.”

Throughout this regulatory process the Department has used demoralizing, pejorative language to cast shade falsely and disrespectfully at farmers and ranchers who are forced to use the H-2A program for workers who are ready, willing, and available, to help us plant, nurture, and harvest crops that feed America. This vitriolic tenor began with the announcement and Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. The Department again disregarded the pleas of America’s farm and ranch families when they denied employers’ requests to extend the comment period so that they could adequately express their concerns about this convoluted regulation.

NCAE works with members and the government agencies themselves to advance compliance with more than just the H-2A regulations. Our members regularly study cases and law related to the FLSA, the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act, and rules promulgated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. In fact, NCAE members and their Human Resource teams annually spend hundreds of hours becoming educated on agricultural employment law and best practices to maintain compliance.  They do this at significant expense to their operations.

NCAE members do this because it is the right thing to do.

The Department’s own data indicates that unfortunately some employers do not follow the lead of NCAE’s members. Their own data indicates that 5% of agricultural employers account for 95% of the violations uncovered in investigations. This rule ignores that reality. Rather than engage constructively with employers who are eager to make the H-2A program work well and safely to reduce violations further, the Department chose to treat all agricultural employers as malicious actors, demoralizing the farm and ranch families who work each day to ensure Americans have food on the table.

“American farmers and ranchers grow and produce the safest, most sustainable food in the world. If the portion of the American public who eats, wishes to find food produced by American families,” explained Marsh, “the incessant barrage of deleterious and crushing regulations targeting agricultural employers must stop.  The Acting Secretary should withdraw this regulation, squalid in its bad faith, immediately.”

NCAE is the national trade association focusing on agricultural labor issues from the employer’s viewpoint.

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March 20, 2024

For Immediate Release

Contact:  Michael Marsh, President and CEO

                (202) 629-9320

(Arlington, VA) It is with great frustration and dismay that the National Council of Agricultural Employers (NCAE) learns once again about allegations of the United Farm Workers (UFW) coercion of vulnerable workers and misuse of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Farm and Food Worker Relief (FFWR) Grant Program. This time the allegations arise from California.

The FFWR program, which began in March 2023, provided one tribal entity and 14 non-profit organizations—including the UFW Foundation—roughly $670 million to issue relief payments of $600 to farmworkers to help defray expenses they incurred preparing for, preventing exposure to, and responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last May, NCAE wrote to the USDA to warn Secretary Vilsack that agents of the UFW Foundation were reportedly informing farmworkers in New York that they must first sign a UFW union authorization card to obtain their FFWR $600 payment. By coercing workers into signing union cards to receive those funds, these workers now must pay the union 3% of their wages in dues.

“At the time, NCAE shared our concerns with USDA that UFW Foundation agents were targeting New York farmworkers specifically because of a new card check law that allows a union to become the authorized bargaining representative with 51% of the workforce signing a union authorization card. The New York legislature had abandoned the farmworker protections inherent in a secret ballot union election, exposing New York farmworkers to UFW shenanigans,” shared Michael Marsh, President and CEO of NCAE. “We stressed that if UFW Foundation or their agents are misleading farmworkers by claiming it is a requirement to sign a union authorization card before UFW Foundation does what it is required to as a grantee under the FFWR program, that is clearly a misuse of Federal funds and should be referred to the Office of the Inspector General to investigate.”

The USDA replied that they would conduct additional training to prevent this type of abuse.

Frustratingly, any additional training that may have occurred has not changed the UFW’s deceitful practices. The allegations we now hear from farmworkers in California are nearly identical to those we shared with USDA 10 months ago.

Once again, UFW organizers are reportedly targeting farmworkers in California—a state with a new card check law.

Once again, farmworkers have expressed, now with 148 written declarations, that they were tricked, lied to, and coerced by UFW organizers into signing a union card to receive the $600 relief payment for which they were eligible.

Once again, NCAE is asking Secretary Vilsack and the USDA’s Office of Inspector General to investigate these repeated, extremely public allegations of misuse of federal grant funds.

“The purpose of the FFWR grant was to help farmworkers with pandemic-related health and safety costs, not to pad the pockets of UFW. USDA entrusted UFW Foundation with almost $98 million in funding to issue FFWR payments to farmworkers. Up to 10% of that award can be retained by the organization for administrative costs,” said Marsh. “It is Secretary Vilsack’s duty to ensure those remaining funds reach workers regardless of their union affiliation and without being tricked into joining the UFW.”

NCAE is the national trade association focusing on agricultural labor issues from the employer’s viewpoint.

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