Open AccessPre-employment costs associated with H-2A agricultural workers and the effects of the ‘60-minute rule’
Author(s) -
Fritz Roka,
Skyler Simnitt,
Derek Farnsworth
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
the international food and agribusiness management review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.474
H-Index - 35
eISSN - 1559-2448
pISSN - 1096-7508
DOI - 10.22434/ifamr2016.0033
Subject(s) - workforce , business , surety , labour economics , survey data collection , agriculture , labor cost , economics , demographic economics , finance , economic growth , engineering , mechanical engineering , ecology , statistics , mathematics , biology
Agricultural employers increasingly are turning to the foreign guest worker program, known as H-2A, as a means to secure a legal workforce. This paper outlines the procedural aspects and costs of recruiting and hiring H-2A workers. Cost data is from a 2014 survey of citrus harvesters and defines pre-employment costs as filing fees, advertising, surety bonds, travel, and housing. The pre-employment costs associated with guest workers are estimated to be nearly $ 2,000 per worker. The survey was motivated by the ‘60-minute rule’ imposed by the U.S. Department of Labor prior to the 2012-13 citrus harvesting season. Cost data were collected across two crop season, 2012-13 and 2013-14, to analyze the cost implications of the rule. We found that the 60-minute rule significantly increased filing fees. These fees, however, represent a very small share of total costs and overall pre-employment costs associated with the H-2A program did not significantly change.