FARMS Act Could Freeze Farm Worker Wages for Two Years, Granting DOL Discretion Over Pay Floor

The Freeze AEWR and Restore Monetary Sense Act, or the FARMS Act, is taking aim at the way agricultural worker wages are calculated. Specifically, Section 2 deals with the Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR), the minimum wage floor set for temporary foreign workers under the H-2A visa program. This rate is critical because it’s designed to ensure that bringing in foreign labor doesn’t undercut the wages of U.S. farm workers.

The Pause Button on Pay Raises

What the FARMS Act does is give the Secretary of Labor the authority to hit the pause button on the AEWR calculation for up to two years. If the Secretary determines that the current method for calculating the new AEWR is “unreliable or valid,” they can simply keep using the rate that was already in place when the law was enacted. Think of it like this: the AEWR is supposed to go up every year to reflect market changes, but this provision allows the government to legally stick with last year’s price tag for two years if they feel the new calculation is messy.

Who Feels This Change?

This temporary freeze has major implications for the folks working in the fields. The AEWR acts as a wage floor, meaning it sets the minimum employers must pay both H-2A workers and similarly employed domestic workers. If the actual market wages are rising, but the official minimum is frozen at an older, lower rate, it effectively suppresses potential earnings for both groups. For a domestic farm worker, this means the mechanism intended to protect their wages from being depressed by foreign competition is temporarily disabled, potentially costing them hundreds or thousands of dollars over two years.

The Discretionary Loophole

One of the most notable parts of this section is the level of discretion it grants the Secretary of Labor. The power to pause the calculation hinges on a subjective finding: that there is “no reliable or valid way to calculate the current AEWR.” The bill doesn't define what makes a calculation unreliable or invalid, which means the Secretary has significant leeway to justify maintaining the older, lower wage rate. While this could provide stability for agricultural employers facing genuine regulatory uncertainty, it also creates a strong incentive to use this discretion to avoid implementing a potentially higher AEWR, which would save employers money but come directly out of workers’ pockets. This provision essentially kicks the can down the road on solving any actual problems with the wage calculation methodology for two years.