>According to an article on Fisher and Phillips laborlawyers.com website, a recent circuit court ruling has held that the state of Florida broke its own constitution by lowering the state’s minimum wage. As a result, the state of FL will require all employers to pay a minimum of $7.31 instead of the Federal $7.25. 

Florida Employers Face Mid-Year Minimum Wage Increase

>Even while the Georgia Immigration bill is waiting for the Governor’s signature, Alabama is well on its way to enacting similar legislation according to an AP article found on Fox News. Both the House and the Senate have had their own versions of immigration enforcement (can’t really call these reform) bills and have passed their initiating houses. The House bill passed several weeks ago and has made it through the Senate committee but has not been voted on by the full Senate. The Senate bill has passed the Senate and is sitting in committee in the House.

The bills have several things in common mostly dealing with enforcement. Both bills require law enforcement to check the nationality of each individual on every traffic stop if the officer has reasonable suspicion to think that the person is not in the country legally. Both bills make it illegal to knowingly house, provide transportation for or even rent to an illegal immigrant. Both bills also make it illegal to knowingly employ illegal immigrants.

One way that the bills differ is that one of the bills requires E-Verify for all new hires and the other only requires it when working with the state. The second leaves it up to employers to prove the nationality of the individual they are hiring (understanding that hiring an illegal would then be illegal). They also differ in the varying punishments for each offense.

We will update as we get more information but follow the link above for the whole article.

DSF

>The Social Security Agency recently resumed sending notifications to employers regarding name and social security mis-matches. The practice known as no-match letters was discontinued in 2007 following the Department of Homeland Security’s rules regarding the use of these letters as “proof” of employing illegal aliens was overturned by the courts.

The law firm of Fisher and Phillips has more information on the new letters by following this link. There are apparently very few instructions as to what to do once you get these letters. If you receive such a letter you should follow the
instructions exactly. You are not obligated to respond to these letters and it seems that if you do respond, those responses may be used by ICE in the future.  You should, though, document any and all activity you take if you receive a letter. ICE routinely asks for any correspondence from SSA such as these no-match letters.

If you receive a no-match letter, please let us know so we can see the exact language that is being sent to gins. There will be more of this topic to come in the future.

DSF

>The Georgia Senate passed HB87 last night without the E-Verify provisions that so many in the ag community had worried about. The debate on the bill lasted almost 3 hours with several amendments being argued on the floor. Issues with the way the bill parallels the AZ law, racial profiling, litigation and job destruction were all discussed. The Senate Ag Committee chair offered the amendment that did away with the E-Verify provisions but another amendment almost put the provision back in.

The debate got into the parliamentary weeds when the amendment that eliminated E-Verify was followed by some that modified it. The amendments that eventually passed did NOT put E-Verify back in but they did modify the eliminated section (see I told you it got into the weeds). The modifications but a date for which the employers counted the number of full time employees and another moved the number from 5 to 25 for mandatory E-Verify.

The bill now heads back to the House where they can let it die, agree with the changes, or send it to conference. The most logical option would be to send it to a conference committee. The issue is that there is only one legislative day left and the General Assembly hasn’t been very successful in conference committees in that the Republican party in Georgia is divided on many issues and the Lieutenant Governor is in the middle of the debate. This has led to very few conference committees this year. This whole issue will be done, one way or the other by Thursday when the session is scheduled to end.

This is a very polarizing issue. As Georgia tends to be a leader in some respects, the fate of this bill may have some influence on similar bills in the region such as the bill in Alabama’s legislature that we reported on earlier this week.

>The Air School and Seminar for the new South Carolina air quality rule will start a bit earlier than we had originally publicized. The school will start at 9 AM instead of 10. We have a lot of information to cover and felt we needed an extra hour to handle it. Lunch will be on your own and we plan on being done late in the afternoon. Please reserve your space now by emailing susan@southern-southeastern.org. 

>Congress took a big step toward helping agriculture this week with the House approval of HB872. The bill aimed at bringing pesticide and herbicide application for farmers back under FIFRA and not under the CWA. The bill corrects a change that was made by the 6th Circuit Court that would have required farmers in certain situations, to have to get a permit to apply pesticides. While not required for general farming practices, a permit would have been required for situations that commonly come up on farms.

We would like to thank the House members who passed the bill with strong by-partisan support.

More information can be found on the National Cotton Council’s site.

http://www.cotton.org/issues/2011/pestup.cfm