Casper Star-Tribune

October 27, 2005

Wool growers want to make hiring away herders a crime

By BEN NEARY
Associated Press writer

CHEYENNE -- Sheepherding is hard, lonesome work. Nonetheless, offering a Wyoming herder a better job could become a crime under legislation proposed by the Wyoming Wool Growers Association.

The association today plans to ask a legislative committee to endorse a bill that would allow fines of at least $10,000 for offering a job to a herder with the knowledge that doing so would cause the herder to abandon sheep on the open range.

Bryce Reece, executive vice president of the Wool Growers Association, said Wednesday that the association has nothing against herders trying to get ahead. "The intent is not to try to penalize a worker, or try to keep them from bettering themselves," he said.

"We know that there are jobs out there that pay more than our folks can afford to pay them," he said. "It's not a glamorous job, but it is crucial to our industry because quite frankly, we can't find Americans to do these jobs."

He said the legislation is necessary because sheep ranchers often lose big money when herders walk away from their flocks without giving notice. And the region's booming energy and home construction industries continue to lure herders away.

Ranchers on larger spreads only visit their herders to bring them supplies perhaps once or twice a week. When a herder walks off the job, he said, the animals are left to fend for themselves for as long as six days.

"Depending on that time period, if the herder walks off, they're gone," he said of sheep.

It is illegal to hire many sheepherders away from their jobs, anyway.

That's because ranchers contract to bring many herders into the country under special provisions in federal immigration laws. Ranchers pay herders about $800 a month, provide them with room and board and periodically send them back to their home countries.

Reece said the problem of herders walking off the job has been especially bad in southwestern Wyoming, where they commonly get offers to work as day laborers in Salt Lake City.

When Reece first started with the Wool Growers Association 12 years ago, he only rarely heard of a herder walking off the job, usually after a dispute with a rancher. But now he's hearing of as many as 20 herders a year in Wyoming walking off the job, he said.

Mountain Plains Agricultural Services in Casper brings herders and other livestock workers into the country for employment by ranchers here. The company has some 300 agricultural workers of all types working in the state.

Oralia Mercado, executive director of Mountain Plains, said Wednesday she knows that other employers enticing herders away from their jobs is a problem.

"As far as my opinion is concerned, I think that employers who knowingly entice workers away from their present employer and offer them more work, I think that they should be fined," Mercado said.

Other employers often don't realize that a rancher has paid to bring a herder to the United States from another country. "I don't think that they should be allowed to have a worker themselves without going through the process themselves," Mercado said.

Reece said he didn't expect many prosecutions under the proposed new law.

"I think that as in most, or a lot of laws or statutes that we put in place, our focus is we hope it serves as a deterrent, or a check. I hope that we never have to use this law."

He said he expected the bill to pass.

The Joint Agriculture, Public Lands and Water Resources Interim Committee is scheduled to consider the bill at its meeting today in Powell.