Major fruit grower lays off nearly 1,000 workers

Fresh fruit is one of the most constant features of an American grocery store.

Apples, pears, and cherries may remain on shelves long after harvest season ends, but the workforce behind them often follows a far less stable calendar.

Agriculture depends heavily on workers hired to pick, pack, and move crops.

But they are released once that work is done.

For consumers, the product can feel permanent, but for the farmworkers, the job often is not.

That tension is playing out again in Washington, one of the country's most important fruit-growing regions.

Borton & Sons, a Washington fruit grower and packer, plans to lay off 928 farmworkers in November as this year's harvest winds down, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) reviewed by TheStreet.

The affected employees are general farm laborers working under the federal H-2A program.

The program allows agricultural businesses to hire foreign workers for temporary or seasonal jobs when there are not enough U.S. workers available.

Borton said the layoffs will begin on Nov. 8 and continue through Nov. 15 across operations in Yakima, Zillah, Pasco, Burbank, Prescott, Soap Lake, Othello, and Mesa.

Seasonal layoffs after harvest are common in agriculture, and Borton acknowledged as much in its filing.

What makes this notice more notable is how the company characterized the departures. Borton said all 928 layoffs are considered permanent because it has not identified specific recall dates or staffing needs for 2027.

The company also said it is not yet clear whether additional domestic workers could be affected, citing uncertainties such as weather, crop conditions, and employee attrition over the remaining weeks of harvest.

The company did not respond to TheStreet's request for more information about its 2027 staffing plans.

Thousands of farm jobs disappear with harvest

Borton's layoffs are large, but they are far from an isolated event.

From November 2024 through November 2025, Washington employers reported 20 agriculture-related layoffs affecting 14,831 mostly seasonal workers, according to the state's Employment Security Department.

The filings involved agricultural businesses as well as agencies specializing in services to agricultural employers.

Several individual filings involved more than 1,000 workers.

Stemilt Ag Services , a Washington fruit company, laid off 1,561 seasonal H-2A field workers in November 2025 as their contracts ended with the harvest season. The company said warehouse and shipping employees were not affected.