On paper, California’s interim H-2A wage change was a $3.07 hourly subtraction: the base rate fell from $19.97 to the state minimum wage of $16.90. That change put a federal labor rule into the same column as the crew-cost calculations citrus growers make for pruning, thinning and harvest work. California’s prior rate change
The dispute is about the adverse effect wage rate, or AEWR, for workers brought to the United States through the H-2A agricultural visa program. It is not a general change to California’s minimum-wage law, and it does not set the pay of every farmworker.
A wage rule with a short runway
In August, U.S. District Judge Kirk E. Sherriff ruled that the Trump administration’s overhaul of the H-2A wage system was unlawful. The ruling came from a California federal court and challenged the department’s lower rates. The court’s August ruling
Sherriff’s later order gives the Department of Labor until Dec. 30 to issue replacement wage rates. The judge rejected the department’s request for as much as six months, setting a firm endpoint for a rule that had left employers working from an interim scale. The deadline and rejected extension
The arithmetic lands in the grove
For citrus operations that use H-2A crews, the practical question is how the replacement scale will fit into labor plans already being made for upcoming field work. A rate change can affect the cost assumptions behind hiring and scheduling; the court order itself does not provide the new figures.
The order was signed in Fresno on Oct. 2, according to the California Farm Bureau Federation. The department must now write a replacement rather than continue relying on the challenged approach. The order’s signing and scope
That leaves a narrow planning problem for employers: the old interim figure is not a dependable long-range assumption, but the replacement rate has not yet arrived. The federal department’s next move will determine what H-2A labor costs look like for California growers who use the program.