WHAT HAPPENED: House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson (R-Pa.) this week introduced the Securing Agriculture’s Workforce Act (SAWA), a bill to expand and modernize the H-2A agricultural guest worker program.
WHAT’S IN THE BILL: The legislation would remove the requirement that agricultural work be seasonal in nature, redefining “temporary” as any job contract of fewer than 350 days — opening H-2A access to year-round operations including dairy and poultry processing. The bill also revises the wage calculation methodology, caps year-over-year adverse effect wage rate (AEWR) fluctuations at no more than a 3.25 percent increase or 1.5 percent decrease, and mandates a single online platform to streamline interactions with the Departments of Labor, Homeland Security, and State.
WHY IT MATTERS: Most significantly for the chicken industry, SAWA expands the statutory definition of “agricultural labor or services” to include the harvest and processing of meat and poultry. Current H-2A rules exclude processing/harvesting because they fall outside the “agricultural labor” definition tied to seasonal field work. The bill covers only slaughter and the breakdown of carcasses, meaning the provision applies to front-end plant positions only. Further processing operations — deboning, portioning, marination, and ready-to-eat lines — remain outside the scope of H-2A eligibility under this bill. The bill also transfers authority to define “agricultural labor or services” from the Secretary of Labor to the Secretary of Agriculture.
NCC’S TAKE: “Work is not seasonal in our processing plants — it is year-round, so access to a pool of stable legal workers through a viable visa program is critical to food manufacturers, like chicken processors,” said NCC President Harrison Kircher. “We thank Chairman Thompson and look forward to working with him and Congress to pass this bill.”
WHAT THEY ARE SAYING: “There’s not a constituent in America, and a number of families around the world, that do not pick up the tools of agriculture an average of three times a day, knife, fork or spoon,” Thompson told reporters during a press conference on Tuesday addressing the bill. “Food security clearly is national security, and workforce is a main factor.”
WHAT’S NEXT: Because SAWA amends the Immigration and Nationality Act, it falls under the jurisdiction of the House Judiciary Committee, not the Agriculture Committee. Chairman Thompson has been working to build a broad coalition of original co-sponsors, and the bill has drawn support from more than 250 agriculture organizations. There is no companion bill in the Senate at this time. NCC will continue to engage with Congress on the legislation and advocate for provisions that support the chicken industry’s workforce needs.
House Ag Committee Chairman GT Thompson. Source: House Ag Committee
