As February has arrived, I would like to remind our members that the OSHA 300A Form posting deadline is here. The OSHA Record Keeping Rule requires employers keep records of all work related injuries and illnesses. This includes the OSHA 300, 300A and 301 forms that employers must have on file. If you do not already have a copy of these forms, they can be accessed through this link OSHA Recordkeeping Forms and Instructions. The 300A Summary of Injuries and Illnesses is the only form that must be posted from Feb. 1 to April 30 of each year. The 300A must be posted in a common area where notices to employees would normally be posted. Be sure to post this form containing work related injury and illness data from calendar year 2025 beginning on February 1, 2026.

It is very important that the OSHA 300A Summary be filled out completely and correctly. In the case that there were no work-related accidents to report, the form must be filled out with zeros in each blank. Often the establishment information is also overlooked and or just not signed. One area of the establishment information that creates some confusion is the area asking about average number of employees and total hours worked. The average number of employees is simply the total number of paychecks written divided by the number of pay periods. This should include all full-time, part-time, temporary, migrant, salaried, and hourly employees.

The other form found at the link above is the OSHA 300 Log of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses. This is a log containing information about every work-related death and almost every work-related injury or illness that involves loss of consciousness, restricted work activity or job transfer, days away from work, and/or medical treatment beyond first aid. You must consider an injury or illness to be work-related if an event or exposure in the work environment either caused or contributed to the resulting condition or significantly aggravated a pre-existing injury or illness. It is also important to completely fill out the OSHA 300 form. All columns must be totaled even if you had no accident to reports there must be a zero for a total. The information from the OSHA 300 form is used to complete the OSHA 300A form.

The final form mentioned is the OSHA 301 Injury and Illness Incident Report. This form is used to provide detailed case-specific information about how a work related incident occurred. Employers may use equivalent forms, such as workers’ compensation or insurance reports, provided they contain all the information required on the OSHA 301 form. There must be and OSHA 301 or equivalent form for each work related injury or illness represented on the OSHA 300 Log of Work-Related Injury and Illness.

This is also a good time to prepare your 2025 injury and illness data for electronic submission on the OSHA Web Portal. Any employer with 20 or more employees at any time during the calendar year is required to enter this data electronically. The data entered electronically is essentially the same data contained in the OSHA 300A form. The deadline for electronic submission is March 2, 2026. To access the electronic submission portal simply click this link OSHA Electronic Submission Page

More information regarding OSHA Recordkeeping can be accessed through the following links:

• OSHA Recordkeeping Rule
• Fisher Phillips FAQ
• OSHA recordkeeping and reporting FAQ
• Tutorial on Completing the OSHA Recordkeeping Forms

Hopefully, this article will serve as a reminder of what must be reported and posted to be in compliance with OSHA’s Recordkeeping Standard. If OSHA comes to your facility, they will ask to see these forms going back for a period of 5 years. It is important to have the files and data on hand and easily accessible. If you have any questions please give us a call.

Andy Knowlton

The following is from the National Cotton Council. The final numbers won’t be out until the week of the 22nd of December when the final acreage report is out. More information will be available at that time.

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Yesterday, during a roundtable with farmers, including cotton growers, at the White House, President Trump announced an economic assistance package for producers for the 2025 crop. The payment is meant as a financial bridge for growers until the increased benefits of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act take effect in the fall of 2026.

I’ve included an outline of the provisions below. Specific commodity per-acre payment rates are expected to be announced during the week of December 22. The USDA press release is included here.

• $11 of $12 billion will be for row crops.

• It will be an ECAP-style program based on 2025 planted acres.

• Payment rates will be announced later this month.

• Producers will have until December 19 to make sure their acreage is on file and accurate. We believe USDA will announce exact payment rates after they’ve verified acreage numbers. 

• USDA will issue prefilled applications like they did with ECAP.

• USDA expects payments to be released by February 28, 2026.

• Program will not pay anything on prevent plant. If a second crop is planted following the prevent plant, that crop would qualify. Fallow land will not get a payment.
  
• Payment limits are different than ECAP. The payment limits will follow the one big, beautiful bill, so there’ll be a $155,000 per person or legal entity, and the AGI limits will be $900,000. In ECAP, producers could double their limit if 75% of their AGI was from farming. Unfortunately, this will not apply for this program.

As we’ve mentioned for some time, the Joint Cotton Industry Bale Packaging Committee (JCIBPC) has been deliberating on how to handle a directive from the National Cotton Council to phase out the use of Woven Polypropylene bagging and wire ties from use in the US. This initiative came about from the National Cotton Council’s Strategic Plan.

The JCIBPC took up the measure at its meeting in February but could not come to a consensus. The JCIBPC’s Executive Committee has met several times to attempt to reach an agreement on this which it did in September. The measure came to the full JCIBPC last week and the following table shows the phase out for these two materials.

TLDR: Woven PP bagging can be used through the 2031 crop and wire ties can be used through 2034 with 2031-2034 being export only.

Please see the attached letter from Chris Berry, JCIBPC Chair for more information. You can also call us if you have questions.

DSF

We’re looking for this year’s Ginner of the Year for 2025. Nominations are now open and will close on October 29. Please see the attached letter outlining qualifications for the award. This award is presented at our Annual Meeting in January each year.

If you know a deserving gin manager, or operation please take a few minutes and send in an application. Give us a call or email if you have any questions. My email is in the letter.

DSF

Just before the Government Shutdown on September 30, the Department of Labor released an Interim Final Rule (IFR) for the calculation of the Adverse Effect Wage Rate. While the rule was released and it has a lot of details, questions still remain but here are the highlights. This is a preliminary review and we reserve the right to get a few details wrong due to interpretation without explanation from DoL Staff. Remember this is for NEW CONTRACTS after October 1, not current contracts.

As we discussed int he State Meetings last month, with the discontinuation of the USDA FLS, the wages will be based on the OWES survey. It reduces that classifications from 6 to 5 that are included. Those 5 classifications will be averaged and a two tier skill system will be implemented. Tier 1 will be low skill with little to no experience needed and Tier 2 will be workers with more than 2 months or special qualifications or training required.

If the workers fall into categories outside the five main categories, then their AEWR will be calculated directly from OEWS survey just like the 2023 rule. For example Truck Drivers will get a higher wage. At this time we are unclear if working in the gin occasionally would make them raise the wage of the other gin employees, but at this point it doesn’t look like it. (a question to be answered)

A second change is that if you have a job that may fit more than one description, the job that is the more predominant in terms of time, is the wage they are calculated on. So if you have a gin employee that sometimes drives a truck, they will get the general AEWR and not the truck driver AWER.

Another important change is that DoL has calculated a housing allowance to reduce the hourly rate for H-2A workers. The housing adjustment is based on HUD data for a 4 bedroom house able to house 8 workers and a 40 hour week. Alabama for example is set at $1.20. Domestic workers that are doing the same jobs would get the full AEWR and you would reduce the H-2A workers by the Housing adjustment. They call it an “Adverse Compensation Adjustment”.

For example: You have a gin in Alabama and are looking for a gin crew. The Skill level 1 rate will be $11.25 per hour and Skill 2 rate will be $14.95. You only need Skill Level 1 workers. The calculated housing allowance is $1.20/hr. You would advertise for the job to and pay US workers at $11.25 but the H-2A workers would only get $10.05 because you’re providing housing to the H-2A’s and not the domestic workers in corresponding employment.

The OEWS data is typically released in May and the new AEWR will change around July 1 although it is not spelled out exactly.

There are still a lot of unanswered questions about this and while this is an Interim Final Rule, there is an opportunity to comment until December 1. As the experts and attorneys digest this rule, it will all become clearer. We just wanted you know there is a new AEWR formula, in most cases it is lower than previously calculated and there is an adjustment for housing.

Below is a table of the AEWR for applications after October 1, 2025 in the Southeast. A full table can be found in the document below.

Click above to download full rule.

Secretary Brooke Rollins announced today that the USDA will discontinue the Farm Labor Survey. The FLS has been misused by the DoL for years as the floor for wages and establishment of the Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR). This puts the ball in the Department of Labor’s court as to the calculation of the AEWR.

The USDA has been less than transparent about how the survey was developed so there was no way to adjust or account for the effect of the expanded use of H-2A in the results. It is widely held that the H-2A wages created a feedback loop that continually increased the average and therefore the AEWR.

This just hitting the press at this point and was a total surprise. Since the Blog auto posts at 3PM eastern, we wanted to get this out as soon as possible.

We do NOT know what the future of AEWR calculation will look like because this is so fresh and there has not been a statement from the Department of Labor. The Press release from The National Council of Agriculture Employers is attached.