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H-2B Rules Draw Lawsuit 06-10-15 | News

H-2B Rules Draw Lawsuit

A new wage rule requires companies to pay H-2B workers more than what half the U.S. workers make performing the same jobs according to plaintiffs.

A lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Labor and the Department of Homeland Security was recently filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida by two landscape businesses and three supporting organizations.

The businesses, Bayou Lawn and Landscape Services, and Superior Forestry, Inc. were joined by the National Hispanic Landscape Alliance, the National Association of Landscape Professionals, and the Small and Seasonal Business Legal Center in asking the Court to order recent H-2B rules enacted by the DOL and DHS illegal.

According to the NHLA, the H-2B visa program is of great importance to the landscape industry and to many NHLA members, and it has been burdened by the rules issued on April 29, 2015.

The organization claims that those rules are illegal because, "contrary to the requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act, the agencies did not give the public a chance to comment on them and there was no basis for making the rules immediately effective."

"This is a jobs issue on which the administration's policies are working contrary to Congressional intent with an acutely adverse impact on Hispanic Americans," said Ralph Egües, executive director of the NHLA. "The policies being pushed by the DOL are having a chilling effect on companies otherwise poised to grow."

Reportedly, the livelihood of more than a half million U.S. Hispanic families depends on the landscape industry, whose workforce is more than 35 percent U.S. Hispanics, with more than 17 percent of landscape companies owned by that group; double the U.S. national average rate of Hispanic ownership.

The H-2B program benefits American laborers who work with, supervise, and otherwise support H-2B workers. The NHLA asserts that U.S. Hispanics are best able to lead H-2B workers and ensure that they perform their duties efficiently and safely.

A recent press release by the organization stated that "the plaintiffs believe that it is imperative that the DOL and DHS stop burdening a program that benefits American companies and workers, and the nation's economy, with rules that make the process unnecessarily costly, arduous, and risky for businesses that would otherwise be thriving and adding jobs."