Opinion ID: 658534
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Substantive APA Claim

Text: 29 CATA's argument loses sight of the overall purpose of the provisions which is to require employers to advance travel costs to domestic workers where the employer advances such costs--directly or indirectly--to foreign workers. See 20 C.F.R. Sec. 655.102(a) (1993) ([t]he employer's job offer to U.S. workers shall offer the U.S. workers no less than the same benefits ... which the employer is offering ... to H-2A workers (emphasis added)); accord id. at Sec. 655.105(a); 20 C.F.R. Sec. 655.202(a) (1986); H-2A Program Handbook, p. I-23 (Jan. 1988), reprinted in J.A. at 511, 512. We agree, therefore, with the DOL that even where the employer may be collaborating with third parties, the risk of loss analysis is a reasonable tool in order to determine whether there was an advance by the employer within the meaning of the regulations. Letter from Lynn Martin, at Enclosure p. 2 (J.A. 4) (emphasis in original). We believe that the DOL reasonably interpreted the meaning of an advance in light of the competing interests of U.S. labor and growers of perishable crops. It may rationally have concluded, for example, that the interpretation of the collaboration standard as envisioned by appellants would be inappropriately burdensome on the employer, requiring as it would that employers fund travel advances out of their own pockets in cases where they were not advancing such costs to foreign workers. Id. See H.R.REP. NO. 682(I), 99th Cong., 2d Sess. 81 (1986) (the Committee does not intend to impose unduly burdensome [recruitment] requirements upon the employer). 30 We reject as well appellants' insistence that the regulation on its face requires an employer to advance travel and subsistence costs whenever a foreign government advances such costs even if the employer bears no risk of loss. To be sure, when promulgating Sec. 655.202(a) in 1978, the DOL was in part reacting to a factual scenario then in place in which the employer would reimburse the Jamaican government fifteen days into the harvest for advancing travel costs. 43 Fed.Reg. at 10,308. That arrangement, [304 U.S.App.D.C. 150] not totally dissimilar to the Jamaican loan arrangement before us now, provided that (a) the Jamaican government itself--as opposed to a bank--extended the travel advances, and (b) the employers, by direct contractual agreement with the Jamaican government, promised to reimburse the government after the worker completed fourteen days of harvesting. In promulgating Sec. 655.202(a), the DOL sought to clarify its position by stating that it would require employers to advance travel costs to domestic workers where the employer advances such costs indirectly to foreign H-2A workers by collaborating with any entity, including a foreign government, that is furnishing the travel funds in advance to foreign workers. Id. In our view Sec. 655.202(a) as promulgated in 1978, together with its clarificatory statement containing the cooperation language, do not, however, trigger an employer's duty to advance transportation costs whenever a foreign government advances such costs to its citizens. The regulation requires that the employer hav[e] ... [the travel advances] paid by the foreign government. 20 C.F.R. Sec. 655.202(a) (1986). Hence, we see no inconsistency between the old regulations and the DOL's current position that mere collaboration with a foreign government that advances travel funds to H-2A workers--without the grower bearing any economic risk--is insufficient to trigger an employer's duty to advance such costs to domestic workers. While perhaps the 1978 regulations could have more clearly articulated the precise point at which an employer's involvement in any collective scheme would trigger his duty to advance travel costs to domestic workers, we do not read the regulations as in any way inconsistent with the risk of loss test applied here to the agreement between the growers and the Jamaican bank.