As the harvest season winds down in most of the nation over the next two months, decisions on legislation pending in D.C. may significantly affect recruitment of agricultural labor beginning next year. The Agricultural Job Opportunity Benefits And Security Act Of 1998 (AgJOBS, aka to some as the new guest worker program) is the most recent proposal in Congress to create a job matching and work visa system that would serve the needs of agricultural employers and workers more effectively than the existing H-2A program.

The U.S. Senate adopted AgJOBS on July 23, 1998, as an amendment to S.2260, the fiscal-1999 Appropriations Act for the Departments of Commerce, Justice, and State, the Judiciary, and Related Agencies. The House of Representatives' companion appropriations bill does not include a similar agricultural jobs program, so whether and in what form AgJOBS reaches the President's desk will be decided by a House-Senate conference committee, probably by mid-October.

Among key elements of the proposal passed in the Senate are: (1) a national set of voluntary registries of legally authorized workers interested in farm employment; (2) streamlined procedures for admitting and extending the stay of nonimmigrant agricultural workers to fill jobs left open after use of the registries; (3) market-based wages, protection of fair labor standards, and employer-paid housing and transportation. The bill has bipartisan support, and its co-authors believe they have struck a fair balance of farmer, worker, and consumer interests. It is vigorously opposed, however, by labor unions and other worker advocates, who contend that the farm labor supply is quite abundant and that U.S. resident as well as guest workers would suffer under the terms of the proposal.

The Senate floor discussion that preceded the (68-31) vote to adopt this bill rings with themes familiar to students of the farm labor market. In presenting the proposal, co-author Ron Wyden said, "I hope this amendment is just the beginning of the debate on agricultural labor." Presumably, he meant "in this Congress."

New pages in the website of the UC Ag Personnel Management Program offer the complete text of AgJOBS as passed, the Senate floor discussion that preceded its adoption, links to position statements by worker and grower organizations, and other relevant documents. An introductory blurb, with links to all the goods, is the first item on the "What's New" page, which can be accessed directly at http://are.berkeley.edu/APMP/info/choice.html or through a click from the home page at http://are.berkeley.edu/APMP/.