ALBANY (New York) TIMES-UNION

June 1, 2008

Picking a fight at harvest time

Farmers fear a plan to hire Puerto Rican laborers could hurt production.

By ERIC ANDERSON, Deputy Business Editor

ALBANY - To state Labor Department officials, the move made perfect sense. Why not have local farmers recruit their seasonal workers from Puerto Rico instead of Jamaica, Mexico and other nations?

The Puerto Rican workers, after all, wouldn't need the temporary H-2A visas given under a federal program because they're U.S. citizens. And the move would help boost Puerto Rico's economy, where the unemployment rate hovers above 9 percent, twice that of the Capital Region.

Local apple growers and farmers have depended on the same workers for years, sometimes decades, to harvest apples and other crops over a six- to eight-week period in late summer and early fall. And they're angry with state officials.

"It's a federal program and New York state needs to mind its own business," said Kevin Bowman of Bowman Orchards in Clifton Park. Bowman criticized what he called the "New York City mentality" of Labor Department officials who believe the harvesting jobs don't require any particular skill.

Peter Ten Eyck II, who operates Indian Ladder Farms in Altamont, said he's uncomfortable replacing skilled workers with unskilled ones.

"The idea was, it's an unskilled job like picking turnips," he said. "It's gotten more sophisticated."

Workers operate tractors and other machinery, and need to know the optimal time to pick the various varieties of apples and other vegetables the growers harvest.

"In the past, we've taken generally the same group of workers from Jamaica and Mexico," said Peter Gregg, a spokesman for the New York Farm Bureau. "They come back year after year. They know what they're doing and are trained and skilled.

"The state said we have to source our labor first from Puerto Rico," he added. "Those workers have never been here before."

Labor Department spokesman Leo Rosales said the move to recruit workers from Puerto Rico didn't represent any policy change.

"Our role in the H-2A program is not to get foreign workers," he said Thursday afternoon. "Our role is to provide growers with a pool of American workers.

"We specified Puerto Rico because there's an interest from our counterparts in the Puerto Rico Department of Labor," he added.

But farmers said they already were required to advertise in their local newspapers for domestic workers before recruiting overseas.

The H-2A program provides visas to seasonal farm workers. There is no annual cap on how many can be issued, said Leonard J. D'Arrigo, an immigration law attorney with the Albany law firm Whiteman, Osterman & Hanna LLP.

While it's a federal program, state labor departments certify that the farmers couldn't find American workers for the jobs.

"They have to advertise the position in the largest area paper for three days to see if there are U.S. workers available," D'Arrigo said. "Then, the state Department of Labor will issue a certification that there are no U.S. workers who want the job. This is forwarded to the U.S. Department of Labor."

The papers are also filed with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the U.S. State Department, which issues the visas.

"You're dealing with three or four government agencies," D'Arrigo said.

Farmers and growers agree to pay at least $9.70 an hour to the H-2A workers, above the minimum wage but not high enough apparently to attract American workers to the jobs. They also agree to supply housing and transportation.

"There's not a lot of U.S. workers that can shovel manure or pick apples," D'Arrigo said. "They have to work six days a week, sometimes 12 to 18 hours a day. It truly is a shortage of U.S. workers."

D'Arrigo said the state Labor Department can't tell farmers they must advertise in Puerto Rico. The move by the agency comes as another effort to ease the shortage of farm workers, the Emergency Agricultural Workers Relief Act, remains stalled in Congress.

That measure, supported by both U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer and U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, would grant temporary, limited immigration status to experienced farm workers who would then commit to working in American agriculture for the next five years.

It also would streamline the H-2A process, eliminating the role of state labor departments.

Bowman said he applied for six H-2A visas in January, before the Labor Department began promoting the recruitment of workers from Puerto Rico, and that his application has gone through. Three Jamaican workers are already on the job at his orchard.

Other farmers haven't been as fortunate, said the Farm Bureau's Gregg. Now is the time for growers to get their H-2A applications in for the fall harvest season.

"We've had a lot of applications turned down," he said Wednesday. "We're concerned this will contribute to a labor shortage already forming."

On Friday, however, he said some applications that had been rejected earlier were now going through, and he was hoping farmers would be able to get their visas after all.

Farm Bureau representatives had met with Gov. David Paterson to express their concerns, Gregg said.

And while he called the Puerto Rico initiative "well- intentioned," Gregg said workers from Jamaica and Mexico have been working on New York state farms and orchards "for decades."

One farmer and apple grower who has decided to avoid the H-2A situation is Larry DeVoe of DeVoe's Rainbow Orchard in Halfmoon.

As a small grower, he said the advertising and other H-2A requirements are disproportionately expensive to his operation.

"There's four of us here and we can get everything in the ground that's necessary," he said. But he ends up hiring anywhere from four to nine workers to supplement his family when harvest time comes.

But finding those workers gets harder every year, DeVoe said. And "there's no way any farmer can keep on their farm enough people to do harvests."