LEXINGTON (Kentucky) HERALD-LEADER

March 9, 2008

Farmers: Wages a hardship

HOPE FOR HELP IN OVERHAUL OF GUEST WORKER PROGRAM

By Halimah Abdullah

For the past 14 years, Paul Hornback has worked alongside the same tightknit group of guest workers from a remote corner of Mexico as they toil in the late summer heat to harvest tobacco by hand on his Shelby County farm.

Sometimes he pays them a little extra if it's been a particularly good year. But Hornback says there haven't been too many of those lately, not since multibillion-dollar settlements and a decreased demand for tobacco products weakened the industry.

The price Philip Morris pays Hornback per pound for his crop has dropped to $1.65 -- down from $2 five years ago. And the cost of hiring legal immigrant guest workers to harvest crops has increased to $9.13 an hour.

Then there's the increased cost of fertilizer and fuel, and the cost to house and provide workers' compensation for the 14 guest workers from Nayarit, Mexico, that he employs every year.

Hornback says he's crunched the numbers and has one of two choices: pay his current workers less or hire cheaper workers.

"It's going to be very difficult for me, because of the relationship with my employees, to roll them back on pay," Hornback said. "If we don't get the (pay decrease) passed, I've got to make some decisions about whether to quit raising tobacco, or I may have to go a different route to get my workers."

State and national farmers groups hope a controversial Bush administration proposal to overhaul the federal guest worker H2A program will allow them to classify agricultural workers based on skill level and, in some cases, pay guest workers in the program less so that struggling farms can stay in the black.

In Kentucky, West Virginia and Tennessee that would mean a guest worker who sets tobacco would make much less than the $9.13 an hour that someone who harvests the plant or drives a tractor earns.

The changes also would include allowing farmers to submit statements to federal centers, instead of state offices, that they tried to hire qualified American workers. The U.S. Department of Labor has invited public comment on the proposals, and the Bush administration hopes to implement the changes by this summer.

Typically, farmers steer clear of using the H2A program to hire workers because of red tape and lengthy delays that can extend well beyond a growing season. Last year, farmers hired about 75,000 workers through the program; there are 1.2 million agricultural workers in the United States, according to the Labor Department.

Immigrant rights advocates worry that, in the wake of last year's failed congressional attempts at comprehensive immigration reform, a slate of proposed changes to the H2A program put forth by the Labor Department will lead to widespread worker exploitation. They say AgJobs, a 5-year-old bipartisan legislative proposal that has stalled in Congress, would better provide a path to citizenship for undocumented farm workers and offer stronger protections for guest workers.

Farm labor advocates question the motives behind the changes.

The administration "claims they are responding to the needs of agriculture. We think they are trying to curry favor with traditional Republican constituents and are willing to subject immigrants to abusive wages and conditions to accomplish that goal," said Bruce Goldstein, executive director of Farmworker Justice, a Washington, D.C., agricultural worker advocacy organization.

The farm groups' efforts also echo similar failed legislative attempts by Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., roughly a decade ago to limit mandatory yearly wage increases for the H2A guest worker program.

McConnell spokesman Robert Steurer said last week, "Senator McConnell has a long record of supporting efforts to ensure that migrant agricultural workers are paid the prevailing wage paid to other workers in similar jobs."

In 2001, after McConnell's guest worker wage legislation failed to gain traction in Congress, his wife, U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, ordered a delay in releasing a federal report that traditionally triggered the wage increases, a Herald-Leader investigation found. Farmworker Justice sued Chao over the issue and a U.S. district judge ordered the Labor Department to publish the reports.

"This whole situation is tied up in the morass of immigration reform," said Douglas Stevick, an attorney with Southern Migrant Legal Services, a Nashville firm that has represented guest workers in lawsuits against Kentucky farmers over withheld wages and poor working conditions. "But this sort of piecemeal approach isn't going to cut it."

Stevick says he "doesn't buy" the argument that guest workers should be paid differently depending on their skill level.

"If you want a poster child for unskilled labor you'd be hard pressed to find a better example than farm labor," Stevick said. "These aren't punters in the NFL or attorneys."

However, when more than 200 members of the Kentucky Farm Bureau visited Washington last month, they said they wanted the congressional delegation, including McConnell, to understand what they see as the importance of distinguishing worker skill level and establishing a market-based wage scale. The visit came just weeks before an expected congressional vote on a new farm bill.

"It's been said falsely that all agriculture is trying to look for a cheap wage rate. That's not true," said Joe Cain, director of national affairs and political education for Kentucky Farm Bureau. "We're looking for a fair wage rate for the worker and the farmer. They're willing to pay for the job the worker is performing."