OLYMPIA — The Washington State Employment Security Department has done a good job engaging the industry in drafting an agricultural wage and prevailing practices survey but key issues about survey questions remain unresolved, says the farm labor association WAFLA.

ESD will send the voluntary survey to about half the state’s approximate 6,000 agricultural employers in September. It asks about wages, bonuses and housing and is used by the U.S. Department of Labor to set minimum piece-rate wages and employment standards for employers using H-2A-visa foreign agricultural guestworkers that affect pay for domestic workers.

DOL uses a separate mandatory USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service survey to set a minimum hourly wage for H-2A workers known as the Adverse Effect Wage Rate.

“The 2016 survey is a clear improvement from the 2015 survey and comes much closer to the standards required by the Department of Labor,” said Dan Fazio, WAFLA executive director.

ESD was “extremely responsive” in working with WAFLA and other stakeholders and adopted “nearly all our recommendations,” Fazio said.

WAFLA remains the subject of a state attorney general’s investigation regarding whether it violated state or federal laws by advising growers to report hourly wages instead of piece-rate wages in ESD’s 2015 wage and prevailing practices survey. ESD concluded WAFLA’s advice skewed lower how much workers earn picking Granny Smith, Golden Delicious and Fuji apples.

Fazio has said he’s confident the guidance was legal, that the survey made growers choose between reporting hourly wages or piece-rates at peak of harvest.

WAFLA warned farmers reporting piece-rates when labor demand is highest could artificially inflate prevailing wages for the next season.

WAFLA and ESD will meet in late August to discuss the investigation, Fazio said.

WAFLA will host webinars for its members with ESD staff to explain the 2016 survey to growers.

The biggest change is ESD plans to separately survey workers to test the veracity of employer responses as required by DOL, Fazio said.

The survey will be conducted by the University of Washington.

The most important unresolved issue is determination of piece-rate wages, Fazio said.

Survey guidance was written over 30 years ago when employers were allowed in many places to pay solely by piece rate without any minimum hourly guarantee, he said. Federal survey guidance documents require ESD to indicate when a piece rate carries an hourly guarantee, he said.

He said the ESD survey must quantify the hourly guarantee employers offer to accurately determine the true wage.

“Piece rates are a dynamic, market-driven pay scale that are not amenable to government surveys, mandates and wage setting,” he said. “How do you capture the difference between my hourly guarantee and yours if we’re not required to report it?”

Gustavo Aviles, an ESD program manager, said DOL does not require reporting of both piece rate and the hourly guarantee. He said ESD is only trying to establish the prevailing wage of wages actually paid, whether hourly or piece rate.

Surveys will be sent to about 3,000 employers and 6,500 workers with greater chance of employers with more workers getting one, said Zoe Zadworny, an ESD economic analyst. Responses are due in mid-November, she said.

The H-2A program requires free housing for workers and could also require free housing to non-employee family members if it is a prevailing practice among employers who do not use the H-2A program, Fazio said.