Washington’s H-2A bill aims to enhance data collection, faces fiscal concerns

OLYMPIA — Washington Subsitute House Bill 2226, aims to address wage suppression in the H-2A guest worker program. The bill advances to the Senate with a 54-42 vote. A companion bill, Senate Bill 5996 awaits movement from rules to the Senate floor.

The proposed bill mandates the Employment Security Department to collect accurate worker counts at worksites during field visits. 

“This bill is a step forward,” said the prime sponsor of the bill, Rep. Lillian Ortiz-Self, D-Mukilteo. “Washington is taking action to combat exploitation and ensure fair wages for our farmworkers.” 

The H-2A guest worker program allows agricultural workers to enter the United States on a non-immigrant visa, known as the H-2A visa. The program is designed to address seasonal labor shortages by hiring temporary seasonal workers from other countries.

Edgar Franks of Familias Unidas por la Justicia, an independent farmworkers union, says that the new surveys are necessary to allocate the right amount of resources to farmers. The data collected through these surveys can potentially help in ensuring fair compensation and preventing the undermining of local workers’ job security and wages. 

“Federal law says that local workers can’t be pushed out of their jobs and the wages can’t be driven down by the use of H-2A. But that’s what’s happening because growers want to pay workers a flat hourly rate in the harvest. Workers in Washington make money by peace and food harvest for the most part," Franks said.

The primary focus of the bill is to enhance the data collection efforts of the Employment Security Department regarding H-2A workers and hand harvesters. For H-2A workers, the bill mandates ESD to collect specific information during field checks and field visits, including the number of H-2A workers at each work site and their actual geographic locations during employment.

This data will be compared with the information provided in the employer’s H-2A application and shared quarterly with the Office of Agriculture and Seasonal Workforce Services’ Advisory Committee.

Additionally, the bill requires the ESD to conduct annual wage surveys for workers' hand-harvesting apples, cherries, pears and blueberries. The surveys must gather information on wage rates, demographic details, and unemployment insurance claims. 

The ESD is obligated to conduct phone and field surveys with specific targets for different fruit harvesters and provide incentive payments to eligible survey respondents. The collected data will be summarized in an annual report to the legislature by May 1. 

The bill faces opposition on various fronts. Some argue that the legislation may be costly and overburdensome. According to the fiscal note, the program is expected to cost the ESD an estimated $494,759 for the 2023-2025 period. In the following biennial, the costs are estimated to increase up to about $1.2 million during the 2027-2029 period. 

“The federal government does a piece rate analysis regularly. The federal government gives funding to the state to do a piece rate analysis, which is part of this survey that they already have to do. So we’re going to do it again and spend another couple hundred thousand dollars when it’s already being done. Again we’ve got a survey in place,” said Rep. Alex Ybarra, R-Quincy. 

Opponents also contend that the bill may be duplicative, questioning whether the proposed measures add substantial value to existing regulations. There is a fear that the legislation might lead to unnecessary micromanagement of the Employment Security Department’s responsibilities, potentially hindering its ability to respond effectively to broader economic challenges. 

Ybarra added that there is already a program that collects data from farm workers. 

"We do not need to spend extra money for a survey that’s not going to tell them any more than we already have,” said Yabarra. 

In response to the opposition, Ortiz said that the surveys are not being done to farm workers anymore after the pandemic. They are now asking farmers but the farm working surveys are not being done per ESD. 

“This bill is going to be a few hundred thousand dollars to make sure that we have accurate data from those that work so hard on our behalf that fed us through COVID that continue to feed us every day,” said Ortiz. 

If signed into the law SHB 2226 will take into effect 90 days after adjournment of the session in which the bill is passed. 

Correction: Rep. Ybarra's name has been corrected above.