The Southeastern Legal Foundation says it is representing Miles Berry Farm and the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association in a new lawsuit challenging a new Department of Labor requirement that will compel agricultural employers to allow temporary foreign farm workers to unionize.
The Department of Labor regulation is an “unlawful and unprecedented move that will impose significant costs on employers while giving more rights to foreign farm workers than American farm workers,” the group said in the release.
“President Biden is once again mobilizing the bureaucracy to dismiss and override Congress when it won’t act as he wants,” Braden Boucek, vice president of litigation for the SLF, said in the release. “This time it comes at the expense of America’s farmers. Making a living off the land is hard enough these days without the Department of Labor granting a right to foreign workers that is denied to Americans.”
During the New Deal, Congress gave some employees the right to form labor unions through the National Labor Relations Act, but it excluded farmworkers from the right to form unions and has continued to do so for nearly 90 years, the release said.
“Now, without any signal of approval from Congress, the Biden Department of Labor is taking unprecedented steps to create rights Congress did not intend,” the group said. “Under a new agency rule, the department is requiring agricultural employers to allow temporary foreign farm workers to form unions, creating a new right out of thin air that is not even granted to American farm workers.”
The group said the new rule will impose “devastating” costs on employers through this new program. This includes SLF clients Miles Berry Farm and the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, who employ or have members who employ H-2A workers, the release said.
Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association Executive Vice President Chris Butts said growers can’t afford the H-2A program regulations.
“This drastic measure by the Department of Labor will be devastating for the agricultural industry, not just in Georgia but across the nation,” Butts said in the release. “We must level the playing field for producers instead of continuing to stack the deck against them.”
The National Council of Agricultural Employers gave support to the SLF lawsuit.
“This offensive regulation was developed in utter bad faith and in conflict with Congress and the Constitution of the United States,” Michael Marsh, president and CEO of NCAE, said in the release. “This regulation never should have been allowed to see the light of day, let alone be published as a rule. NCAE commends the SLF’s efforts to stop this regulation from inflicting lasting and devastating harm on America’s farmers and ranchers.”
Agricultural employers are “suffocating” under 3,000 pages of regulatory text that the department and other regulatory agencies involved in agricultural labor have piled on U.S. farmers and ranchers in the last few months, Marsh said in the release.
“This troubling trend of regulatory overreach must reverse if the American public wishes to enjoy food produced by American farmers and ranchers on American soil,” he said. “We are hopeful SLF’s efforts will be a strong step towards turning that tide so America’s farmers and ranchers can get back to doing what they do best: feeding America and the world.”
