Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF) filed a lawsuit on behalf of Miles Berry Farm and the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association against the United States Department of Labor over its unprecedented and unlawful requirement that will give temporary foreign farm workers more rights than American farm workers. This move by the Department turns the Constitution on its head, ignores checks and balances, and will have a devastating impact on produce growers and farmers. Miles Berry Farm and the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association appear in the lawsuit alongside over a dozen states.
In 1935, as part of the New Deal, Congress established the right of certain employees to form labor unions through the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). However, Congress explicitly excluded agricultural workers from the right to form unions and has continued to do so for nearly 90 years.
But now, the Department of Labor under the Biden Administration is taking unprecedented steps to create rights Congress did not intend.
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Under a new agency rule, the Department is requiring employers to allow foreign farm workers to form unions. It claims that it has authority to do so under the Immigration Reform and Control Act, even though that congressional statute—which grants H-2A visas to temporary migrant farm workers—never so much as mentions the right to form unions. The Department is creating a new right out of thin air that is not even granted to American farm workers.
Moreover, the cost of this new program will be devastating for employers, including SLF clients Miles Berry Farm and the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association. Both of those organizations employ or have members who employ H-2A workers and will be forced to participate in the program at significant cost.
SLF filed suit on behalf of its clients in a Georgia federal district court together with seventeen states. They are asking the court to stop this unconstitutional power grab because the Biden Administration is imposing this rule without any congressional authority.