Tips on Managing Your H-2A Workforce Alongside Your Domestic Workforce
August 29, 2022 
With the ongoing labor shortages in the U.S., many greenhouse growers are turning to the federal government’s temporary agricultural worker program, better known as H-2A. The program has been around for decades, but developed into its present form in 1986 with the last major overhaul of U.S. immigration law. Many agricultural employers avoided using H-2A for a long time, citing the complexity and cost of the program. The program has not become simpler or cheaper, but participation has increased dramatically due to growers’ increasing difficulty in finding any other sources of labor.
There are several rules for employers to be eligible for the program. They must be doing agricultural work in the U.S. They must provide work that is full-time, meaning at least 35 hours per week. The need for the work must be temporary or seasonal, usually interpreted as 10 months or fewer in a year. Growers, labor contractors, and agricultural associations can all be qualified as H-2A employers. Eligible employers must work through a relatively complicated application process. Find details here.
H-2A has certain conflicts that are inherent to the program. It is designed to provide agricultural employers with a source of reliable, foreign labor, but it is also designed to protect the interests of domestic U.S. workers from being adversely affected by a flood of less expensive, foreign labor. For this reason, H-2A employers must first prove that they cannot find enough domestic workers to meet their needs. They must provide relatively high hourly wages to H-2A employees, either the local minimum wage or the Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR), whichever is higher. AEWR is set annually for each state by the U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL). In addition, employers must pay H-2A workers’ transportation costs into the U.S. and home again, and provide all housing during the work contract at no charge.
This relatively rich set of wage and benefit requirements is purposefully designed to make H-2A employees expensive to obtain in order to protect domestic workers. In the H-2A program, domestic employees who perform work during an H-2A contract that is substantially the same as H-2A employees are called “corresponding employees,” and they are entitled to the same pay and benefits as your H-2A workforce. This often has the effect of causing the AEWR to be the de facto minimum wage for all employees, foreign and domestic. Other benefits such as meals, housing, and transportation provided for H-2A employees must also be offered in the same way to corresponding employees. In most cases, local workers will not want or use these benefits, but they must still be available to them.
Employers who have grown frustrated with finding domestic employees often turn to H-2A as their solution to the problem and emotionally turn against the local labor pool. The high quality and reliability of H-2A employees reinforces this feeling. This sometimes leads employers to actively avoid hiring domestic workers, but this behavior is clearly illegal and a violation of the purpose of H-2A. Employers are required to hire all qualified, domestic workers who apply for corresponding employment. Refusing to hire domestic employees is one of the most common and costly violations that USDOL frequently prosecutes. Avoid discouraging U.S. applicants with discriminatory comments like, “Local people just don’t last in this kind of work.”
A clear job description that lists all of the tasks that workers will perform is required for H-2A work contracts. It’s a good practice to provide a job description for corresponding workers as well. During the contract, if H-2A and corresponding employees are in separate groups, it’s important to avoid discrimination by consistently offering one or the other group harder assignments or more hours.
Turning Division Into Enjoyment
Beyond the rules of ensuring that jobs, pay, and benefits are fairly distributed to both your H-2A workforce and your domestic employees, growers also need to ensure that they are creating an effective and enjoyable work experience for all employees. Yes, greenhouse work can be hard and repetitive, but it can also be enjoyable and sociable. Owners and managers need to act as leaders who actively set the workplace culture and create a positive environment for all employees.
H-2A workers come from foreign countries and often have different languages and customs than domestic workers. This can lead to divisions in the workforce and a we/they mentality. Leaders need to recognize and combat this tendency with actions such as using translators and other tools to overcome language barriers, sponsoring social events, and helping employees to learn about each other’s cultures. Importantly, business leaders need to set an expectation among all employees that there will be a spirit
of cooperation and mutual support.
Far from taking the jobs of domestic employees, H-2A workers often save domestic jobs. Some agricultural businesses, due to workforce shortages, simply could not operate on domestic labor alone. Bringing in H-2A workers has the effect of keeping the business going so that it can continue to support domestic employees alongside the seasonal, foreign employees. The bottom line with a mixed domestic and H-2A workforce is to avoid discrimination against either group and take steps to foster understanding, teamwork, and a positive environment for all employees.
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