YAKIMA – The United Farm Workers of America and one of the nation’s largest labor recruiters have reached an unprecedented agreement to improve wages, benefits and working conditions for guest workers brought to the United States for farm work.
The agreement follows months of heated UFW criticism of the company, Los Angeles-based Global Horizons, over working conditions and wages for guest workers. Global Horizons is one of the nation’s largest labor recruiters, bringing foreign workers to the U.S. under the federal H-2A guest-worker program.
The program allows a labor contractor to bring in foreign workers if it can prove that workers can’t be found locally.
“This is the first national agreement that we’re aware of that’s ever dealt with H-2A workers or guest workers in this country,” Arturo Rodriguez, UFW president, said Tuesday in a telephone interview from Seattle, where the union and Global Horizons announced the pact.
“To be able to have the opportunity to provide these workers representation, we’re just very excited about that,” Rodriguez said.
Under the agreement, workers will receive a 2 percent pay raise over the federally mandated adverse effect wage rate, the minimum wage employers must pay under the H2-A program. The rates are established by states, and are generally higher than state and federal minimum wages. In Washington state, that rate is $9.01 an hour.
Employers will be required to pay for medical care while the workers are in the United States, and also to provide work breaks. Workers also will receive paid bereavement leave when a family member dies, and paid round-trip transportation to their country of origin.
At any one time, Global Horizons has between 3,000 and 4,000 farm workers in up to 28 states, said Mordechai Orian, president of Global Horizons. That number is expected to increase as farmers contend with a growing worker shortage.
The union will represent all of those workers.
“There’s a lot of protections created here to protect local labor, as well as labor coming from overseas,” Orian said in a telephone interview. “And it’s a step to ensure that we keep the farm industry in the United States.”
His company has faced heated criticism in recent years from both labor groups and state officials in central Washington’s Yakima Valley, where growers have complained about a labor shortage in recent years.
Global Horizons has brought more than 100 temporary agricultural workers from Thailand to the valley each of the past two summers under the guest-worker program. However, the state Department of Labor and Industries and Employment Security Department have repeatedly accused the company of violating state wage and labor laws.
The state revoked the company’s operating license in December; the company has appealed.
The new agreement does not affect Global Horizons’ status with the state. The company’s license remains revoked, said Steve Pierce, a spokesman for the Department of Labor and Industries.
Hearings on the appeal are scheduled for September, he said, making it unlikely the company will be able to bring guest workers to the state this summer.
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