WAFLA

08/27/2026

Come visit us at booth 15030. Oregon Association of Nurseries and WAFLA have partnered. Pick up your WAFLA membership and learn about the new member perks!

07/29/2026

☕ ATTEND A BREW NEAR YOU! ☕

📍 Tri-Cities, Tuesday, August 4
📍 Yakima, Wednesday, August 5
📍 Wenatchee, Thursday, August 6

🕙 10:00 A.M. - 11:30 A.M.

No membership? No problem. Open to all ag employers! 🙌

1. Save your seat for a brew near you, here! ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️
https://members.wafla.org/event-calendar
2. Forward this invite with a colleague to share a brew with you! ☕ 🙋‍♂️🙋‍♀️

Join us for a lively, interactive session designed for agricultural employers who want practical help with the HR issues that matter most right now.

We’ll kick off with a candid conversation about today’s biggest challenges, share what’s new at WAFLA, and work through real HR scenarios with WAFLA experts and legal partners.

💬 Bring your questions.
🤝 Learn from your peers.
⚡ Leave with real-world solutions.

Because HR is easier when you don’t have to do it alone.

We’re looking forward to great conversations, good brew, and seeing you soon! 😉☕

07/25/2026

These are my friends of 30 years! Shout out to them for recognizing Willapa and our shellfish 🦪 growers of the PNW! Pacific Coast Shellfish Growers Association our new partner. Ask about your new member benefit. I will have to let my dear friend, it not a factory, but a packing house. I’m sure you will forgive her Goosepoint Oysters. 🤭She does have her Oyster stats down.

Beautiful summer day with informative and funny narration by Meliss...

06/15/2026

But ag leaders contend that jobs are still available. Gastelum said that at the time of the interview in late May, his members were still in positive recruitment, meaning they were still hiring domestically — and the program requires growers to hire them first.

"I’m not hearing from employers, 'Roll back my H-2A numbers, I have too many domestic workers,'" Gastelum said. “To say we have 30-some thousand U.S. workers walking around looking for a farmwork job just is not the case.”

https://www.yakimaherald.com/news/local/business/no-surge-in-h-2a-workers-yet-in-washington-following-trump-administration-changes/article_abb587cd-5435-4bd7-94d3-11005827096b.html

Across the Yakima Valley and the Pacific Northwest this summer, thousands of foreign guest workers will be working in orchards and fields in a visa program designed to stabilize the

06/03/2026

Pacific Coast Shellfish Growers Association. Now, this is how you eat a clam. 🤣 🦦👍

05/20/2026

An injunction would have been another blow to financially stressed farms, said Enrique Gastelum, CEO of the Worker and Farmer Labor Association, a Washington-based farm labor contractor. “That would have been a major upheaval,” he said.

https://capitalpress.com/2026/05/15/judge-rejects-ufws-bid-to-shelve-wage-scale-for-foreign-farmworkers/

H-2A wage scale changed by Trump administration A federal judge has rejected a motion by the United Farm Workers to suspend a new wage scale for seasonal foreign farmworkers that […]

05/20/2026

Enrique Gastelum, CEO at WAFLA, the Worker and Farmer Labor Association, says there are three big challenges that need addressed....

“We need a change to the methodology to get this cost under control. You know, when farmers are paying 70% of their costs of operations are just to labor and you have H-2A related to it, that’s kind of, I would say, the number one fix that we need to see.”

Recent progress from the administration, Gastelum says, gives him hope that change is coming.

https://www.aginfo.net/report/65440/Fruit-Grower-Report/H-2A-Reform

Ag-employers have been calling for changes to the H-2A foreign guestworker visa program for years, with few results.

05/08/2026

...Scott Dilley, communications director for the Worker and Farmer Labor Association, said the organization has heard increased interest for H-2A workers, and a key component with that is housing.

“We just don’t have enough U.S. workers. We haven’t for years and we still don’t, so people do need H-2A workers,” Dilley said.

“The other thing is immigration enforcement. You know, there are concerns about what that will mean for workers, and there is now renewed interest in H-2A, because growers are facing a reality where they need to have some security. They need to know that they’re going to have workers for the season,” he said...

A hotel in central Washington is being converted to a temporary home for farmworkers as a change in federal law makes it easier to pay them less.