Labor and farmworker groups won an injunction blocking the Department of Labor from freezing H-2A guestworkers' adverse effect wage rates (AEWRs) for 2021 and 2022.
U.S. District Judge Dale Drozd issued the injunction last week, saying the plaintiffs in the suit were likely to prevail on the merits of the underlying case. The United Farm Workers and the UFW Foundation contend DOL's rule runs afoul of multiple aspects of the Administrative Procedures Act, including notice and comment requirements.
The DOL ruling would freeze H-2A wages at 2020 levels and then adjust future adverse effect rates based on the generic employment cost index rather than USDA's Farm Labor Survey.
An earlier ruling by Drozd issued an injunction prohibiting USDA from cancelling the Farm Labor Survey, which it had moved to do after DOL gave notice of its H-2A wage rulemaking. The latest ruling blocked the wage freeze aspect of the DOL rule saying it is likely to depress farmworker wages and cause them irreparable harm.
DOL's own estimates expected the rule to reduce wages paid to H-2A guestworkers by just shy of $200 million over the next two years had it been allowed to take effect. DOL is now required to publish 2021 adverse wage rates, which are expected sometime after USDA publishes updated survey data on Feb. 11 -- a delay from its typical release date of Nov. 30 due of the logistics involved in resuming the report.
The judge gave DOL and plaintiffs 14 days to submit proposed orders laying out deadlines for setting the 2021 AEWRs.