The U.S. Department of Labor Wage & Hour Division announced on March 25 a “nationwide education, outreach, and enforcement initiative to ensure workplace protections” for agricultural employees.  According to DOL, “the initiative includes targeted outreach and education efforts to ensure that farmworkers and their advocates understand their rights and that they should contact the division to file a complaint if violations occur. The effort also focuses on educating growers, farm labor contractors, other agricultural employers and industry stakeholders to ensure that they understand their responsibilities, and that the division is available to answer their questions.”

Wage & Hour had released this “Agriculture Compliance Assistance Toolkit” with information that might be useful to ag employers to ensure compliance with federal requirements (which of course underlay very stringent California wage and hour, safety, harassment and discrimination, and other employment-related requirements.

It is unclear to what extent U.S. DOL will have a more high-profile presence in California than it has in the past.  It is certain that continued growth of the H-2A temporary agricultural worker visa program will bring greater DOL presence to California as DOL fulfills its enforcement responsibilities related to that program.