Understanding Your Rights During a Natural Disaster and Recovery Efforts

Spanish Version

Natural disasters can significantly impact communities, especially H-2A workers who may be more vulnerable due to the remote location of their work and housing. Many H-2A workers also rely on employers for essentials like housing, food, and, for foreign workers, immigration status.

As an agricultural worker employed under the H-2A program, including those in corresponding employment, you have specific rights and protections during natural disasters and recovery efforts. This guide highlights key information to help you understand your rights in the following areas:

 

Evacuations

In some emergencies, a state or local government may order you to evacuate the affected area. The employer must follow all federal, state, and local laws, including those related to evacuations and worker safety and health. Your employer must continue to provide free and safe housing, meals or kitchen facilities, daily transportation to the jobsite, and other benefits required by your contract. Just because you have evacuated the area does not mean the work contract is no longer valid.

Even if you are not required to evacuate, natural disasters may affect the type and amount of work that the employer offers you.

Housing

If your housing is damaged in a natural disaster and you have to move, your employer must provide new housing free of cost and make sure it is safe. The employer is also responsible for transporting you to the new housing.

Kitchens or Meals

Your employer must provide either three meals a day, seven days a week, or free and convenient cooking and kitchen facilities, which includes provisions for safe food storage and clean water, even during a disaster. Meals must be calorically and nutritionally adequate.

Job Location

If you are assigned to work at locations that are not in your contract because of a disaster, those worksites must be in the same general geographic area. Your employer should not send you to work in a faraway place in another state. If you are sent to work in another state, you may have a right to a higher wage.

Daily Transportation

When work resumes, your employer must continue to provide free and safe daily transportation from the housing to the jobsite, even during a disaster.

Job Duties

You may be assigned cleanup duties that are not in your contract, but only if your employer is a farmer and a major part of those duties are on the farm. If you are assigned work that is very different from the duties in your contract – like driving heavy trucks or operating heavy construction equipment to do cleanup work – you may have a right to a higher wage.

Guaranteed Work Hours

Unless your employer applies for and receives special permission from DOL to end the contract early, you have a right to be offered at least three-fourths of the hours included in your original contract period. Even if your employer does receive permission to end the contract early, you still have a right to at least three-fourths of the hours during the shortened contract period. If your employer does receive permission to end the contract early, your employer must also make efforts to transfer you to other work you are legally allowed to do.

Inbound and Outbound Transportation

If the contract ends or you are sent home because there is no more work, you must receive outbound transportation free of cost. You also have a right to any inbound transportation and subsistence expenses that have not already been reimbursed.

U.S. Workers

If you are a U.S. worker, your employer may not reduce your hours or lay you off while continuing to offer hours to workers with H-2A visas.

Where to Get More Information

The Wage and Hour Division offers multiple compliance assistance resources, including an agriculture compliance assistance toolkit, to provide employers and workers the information they need to comply with the law. Employers and workers can call the division confidentially with questions using the agency’s toll-free helpline at 866-4US-WAGE (487-9243). The division can communicate with callers in more than 200 languages, regardless of where they are from.

 

The contents of this document do not have the force and effect of law and are not meant to bind the public in any way. This document is intended only to provide clarity to the public regarding existing requirements under the law or agency policies.