Almost 8,000 holders of H2-A visas worked on Kentucky farms in fiscal 2023, including harvesting burley tobacco. (Getty Images)
Seven Kentucky farmers last week sued the U.S. Department of Labor to block new federal protections for foreign farmworkers who enter the country on H2-A temporary visas.
On Monday Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman joined them, saying the new rule would clear the way for farmworkers in Kentucky to unionize.
Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman
Also moving to intervene to block the new rule are Republican attorneys general from Alabama, Ohio and West Virginia, according to a release from Coleman’s office.
A federal judge in Georgia earlier this year blocked the Biden administration from enforcing the rule in 17 other states.
Announced in April, the rule expands protections to seasonal workers, including against employer retaliation, unsafe working conditions and illegal recruitment practices. It requires that vans used to transport workers have seat belts.
Coleman, a Republican, said the new regulation “would force Kentucky farmers to allow temporary foreign-migrant workers to form a union and engage in collective bargaining. It would add excessive new bureaucratic burdens to Kentucky agricultural employers, who are already struggling to make ends meet.”
The Labor Department issued H2-A visas to 378,000 temporary workers, most from Mexico, in fiscal year 2023, according to Rural Migration News. Almost 8,000 of the temporary workers were employed in Kentucky.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court of Kentucky’s Eastern District, also include organizations that help growers navigate the H2-A process, including the Lexington-based Agriculture Workforce Management Association, which says it is “owned and managed by agricultural employers.”
They argue that without authorization from Congress, the Labor Department lacks the authority to confer “certain new ‘rights’ on foreign agricultural workers who are employed temporarily in the United States on H-2A visas, as well as on American agricultural workers deemed to be engaged in ‘corresponding employment’ with the H-2A workers.”
Federal law requires the Labor Department to determine U.S. workers won’t lose work or wages to foreign workers admitted under the temporary visas.
Unveiling the rule in a California vineyard, U.S. Labor Secretary Julie Su said it “is meant to give H2-A workers more ability to advocate for themselves, to speak up when they experience labor law abuses.”
Coleman said the rule “will force new burdens on our growers, making it harder to get their products to market and raising costs on families at the grocery store.”
The attorney who filed the suit, Joe Bilby, is a former general counsel in the Kentucky Department of Agriculture.
SUPPORT NEWS YOU TRUST.