For the second time in recent months, the United Farm Workers has sued the Trump administration over its attacks on essential workers who feed the nation, this week filing a lawsuit against the Department of Labor over a recently published rule that would freeze wages for hundreds of thousands of seasonal farmworkers for two years.
DOL’s decision “is an utterly arbitrary and unlawful act that inflicts grave harm to some of the most vulnerable workers in the nation,” said Farmworker Justice President Bruce Goldstein, which represents the organizations in the lawsuit.
“The two-year wage freeze will cause workers to be paid more than 4% less on average than they would under DOL’s current regulations,” the lawsuit said. “In certain states, like California, Oregon, and Washington, those losses would be substantially greater. California farmworkers will be paid almost $1 less per hour under the Final Rule compared to the current methodology, resulting in approximately $170 in lost wages per month.”
“Oregon and Washington farmworkers would likewise be paid about $0.45 less per hour, resulting in approximately $77 in lost wages per month,” the suit continues. “Moreover, starting in 2023 (after already losing two-years’ worth of wage increases), farmworkers wages will increase slower than the market rate. In short, farmworkers will be paid substantially less under the Final Rule.”
Farmworker Justice said in condemning the rule last month that farm laborers “are among the lowest-paid workers in the nation, generally earning poverty-level wages, but this policy will stop the modest progress that many farmworkers have experienced recently.”
There’s no valid reason for the rule, which is among the number of last-minute, “midnight regulations” the administration is rushing through in its final weeks for cruelty’s sake. What the rule does do is personally benefit the Trump family. “If the new regulation goes into effect, employers like Trump Winery may not have to increase their pay rates for H-2A workers over the next two growing seasons, even though they likely would have under the status quo,” HuffPost reported.
Goldstein told HuffPost that while the incoming Biden administration can start to reverse the rule, it’ll likely still kick in for the 2021 season, which is another reason why court relief is urgently needed. “The lawsuit alleges that the DOL’s new regulation violates the federal Administrative Procedure Act in several ways,” Farmworker Justice said, “including by failing to comply with the H-2A prohibition against adverse effects to farmworkers’ wages, arbitrarily and capriciously selecting mechanisms that bear no relation to the farm labor market, and failing to give the public notice and an opportunity for comment on the wage freeze.”
“The United Farm Workers’ lawsuit comes on the heels of its successful challenge to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s hasty decision to postpone the Farm Labor Survey this year, which a federal judge declared essential to setting a fair pay rate for farmworkers,” Courthouse News reported.