added that more government agencies have been involved than what is typically the case. Other legal work that has surfaced specific to the coronavirus includes the Paycheck Protection Program loans that were part of the stimulus package. The loans offered forgiveness if employers followed specific regulations concerning keeping employees on the payroll. In the non-COVID-specific realm of labor law, Schulte said there continues to be litigation trends concerning paying workers for travel time and eliminating the overtime exemption for ag workers. That has largely already occurred in California with labor activist now setting their sights on accomplishing the same worker benefit in Colorado. The Washington D.C.-based SJ-Lake does a lot of advocacy work for its clients and Jacquez said an interesting six months lies ahead as it pertains to both the H-2A program and immigration reform. The Trump Administration is in the midst of issuing new regulations for H-2A, which the agricultural industry believes will be less onerous than the previous rules,
Lynn Jacquez & Chris Schulte, SJ-Lake & Heron The coronavirus has materially impacted the agricultural work of SJ-Lake attorneys Lynn Jacquez and Chris Schulte as they are heavily involved in a wide range of labor law issues and have been inundated with legal questions since the beginning of the pandemic. “It’s been a five-alarm fire ever since,” said Jacquez, noting that both
which were put in place in 2010. However, the new rules have not been announced, hence they will not be in place if a new administration takes the helm in January of 2021. It’s likely that a new round of discussions will begin on H-2A with the previous work basically scrapped. Jacquez is much more confident that immigration reform, at least as it relates to agricultural, will occur in 2021 regardless who wins the presidency. “In fact I will go out on a limb and predict that regardless of the (presidential) administration, the ag work force issue will be addressed in 2021.” She explained that there is bi-partisan support for such an action and the politics would appear to be favorable in either a Democratic administration or a second term Trump Administration. Michael Duvall of Dentons US LLP Michael Duvall is a member of Dentons’ Litigation and Dispute Resolution practice, focusing on class actions, commercial litigation, appeals and administrative enforcement actions. He works from the global law firm’s Los Angeles office where much of the firm’s
regulatory and liability issues are top of mind for agricultural companies across the country. She explained the law firm does a lot of work with employers
trying to secure temporary foreign workers through the Department of Labor’s H-2A guest worker program. The final approval for an application typically requires an in-person meeting at a U.S. facility in the worker’s country of origin. COVID-19 eliminated that possibility, so many work-arounds had to be developed for H-2A workers to be approved. This caused additional shepherding of these applications through the process by the applicants and their attorneys. Visa challenges occurred on a daily basis. She said navigating the H-2A process during these difficult times has become a logistical equation and very case specific. She did express how impressed she has been with how the parties to these contracts have collectively risen to the challenge, sorted through the issues, and made the program work. But there have been a multitude of issues. Schulte said state and local regulations regarding social distancing and mask wearing also impacted the federal program,
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and SJ-Lake’s efforts, as the U.S. company applicants typically needed to adjust their deliverables because of new rules. For
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example, providing housing is part of the H-2A requirement and social distancing rules typically meant providing twice as much living space for each worker. He
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