|  | | |  | Sprint to August RecessDaniel Sheehan, AFOP Executive Director July 5, 2024
For those who may not be aware, Congress each year recesses for roughly a month in August to let members get out of Washington, D.C., maybe take a congressional delegation trip abroad, or, more likely, head home to meet with constituents and take a needed breather. Taking advantage of that strong desire to leave town, congressional leaders typically load up the month of July with legislative work to impel progress on key initiatives. (There is nothing quite like the smell of aviation fuel wafting over from National Airport to generate consensus.) This month is no exception.
You will recall that the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) of 2014 preserved the National Farmworker Jobs Program (NFJP) as a national system that allows professionals like you to provide important job-training, housing, and supportive services to the nation’s eligible migrant and seasonable agricultural workers and their families. Congress is now in the process of updating WIOA. |
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| The House of Representatives has already passed its reauthorization measure and its staff is working behind the scenes with Senate staff to ready a compromise deal for their bosses to consider. While that deal is still a ways off, the Senate recently unveiled a draft bill and asked AFOP and other stakeholders to comment on it. I am happy to say that AFOP voiced support for the Senate draft measure because it, like the House bill, would retain NFJP as a national program. That is very good news considering that an early version of WIOA back in 2013 would have converted NFJP into block grants to states. (I think we all know that farmworkers and their dependents would fare very poorly under a system like that.) While timing remains uncertain, I salute this progress and hope to see NFJP reauthorized sometime later this year.
To keep NFJP delivering its sky-high results year after year, Congress must fund the program. I am also happy to report that the House legislation that covers NFJP – the Fiscal Year 2025 Labor-Health and Human Services-Education Appropriations bill – fully funds President Biden’s NFJP request for fiscal year 2025. That legislation will also preserve NFJP’s 150-percent-of-poverty low-income definition and permit the United States Department of Labor (DOL) to process grant plans prior to the July 1 start of the program year. Your accomplishment in this respect is all the more impressive because the House majority wants to slash overall spending and, in the Labor-HHS-Ed bill, fully funded only NFJP and three other DOL programs, while cutting or eliminating the rest. Give yourselves a round of applause. You deserve it.
Lastly, the question hanging on everybody’s minds is that of the 2024 DOL NFJP grant competition. At this date, we don’t know when DOL will announce competition winners, but have heard that DOL might contact applicants directly ahead of its formal publishing of winners in the government’s Federal Register. As soon as we hear anything, you know that AFOP will be in touch. Hang in there, folks. We’re doing everything we can for you.
Happy Fourth of July and best to you all. |
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| | | |  | Register Now for AFOP’s 2024 National ConferenceAFOP July 2, 2024 |
| AFOP’s National Conference is less than three months away! Registration is open, so make your reservations now. AFOP members do not need an invitation to register. Early bird rates are $625, regular rates are $695. |
| | |  | CIFC Contest Deadline ApproachesAFOP July 5, 2024 |
| The deadline for AFOP’s Farmworker Children Art & Essay contest is not far off! The contest closes on July 15, 2024, and AFOP will accept all entries postmarked up to that date. Please share with your networks and encourage all the farmworker children you know between 10-18 years old to enter. There are no other eligibility requirements aside from being the son or daughter of a migrant or seasonal farmworker.
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|  | Heat Stress Awareness Campaign Starts Soon!AFOP July 5, 2024 |
| AFOP’s National Heat Stress Prevention Training Marathon starts next week! From July 14-20, AFOP NFTP trainers all across the country will be providing vital, life-saving heat stress prevention training to the farmworker community.
Soaring temperatures and suffocating heat this time of year remind us exactly why this campaign is so important. Help us raise greater awareness about the risks of heat-related illness! |
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| |  | AFOP Partners with Workforce180 to Provide Workforce Development Training in 2024-2025AFOP June 27, 2024 |
| AFOP is pleased to announce that it has selected Mike Fazio of Workforce180 as the new trainer for the AFOP Training Institute (ATI) for 2024-2025. Mr. Fazio is the Co-President of Workforce180 and Metrix Learning, both well-known industry organizations specializing in assisting both job seekers and industry professionals through training, podcasting and marketing.
This year, ATI will offer certification in TWO areas: Business Services and Leadership Development. Business Services will train participants on the most effective ways to approach and communicate with people. Leadership Development will empower you to recognize and develop your unique leadership style whether you’re an emerging leader team member or seasoned executive.
Interested? Join us!! Register here. |
| | | | |  | A Reflection on MEO’s Time with NFJPMEO, Inc. By Lee Imada June 17, 2024 |
| Maui Economic Opportunity will be ending its 49-year affiliation with the National Farmworker Jobs Program and its predecessor entities on June 30 in a reflection of the changing landscape of agriculture in Maui County.
The industry in Hawai‘i was so different when MEO launched the Seasonally Employed Farmworkers Program on March 1, 1975, with 18 participants. Large-scale sugar and pineapple plantations, which dominated farming in Hawai‘i for the previous century, were beginning to wane, facing competition from world producers with lower production and labor costs.
When pineapple plantations on Moloka‘i announced their closures in 1975, the program supported workers who were losing their jobs. This was a devastating blow to Moloka‘i with pineapple, the main employer on the island. In the 1976-77 fiscal year, MEO enrolled 205 individuals and offered job placement, education, medical and childcare.
In the early ’80s, MEO coordinated daily ferry commutes for more than 30 Moloka‘i workers to Lahaina for employment in the tourism industry.
On Maui, large farms were in need of laborers, and MEO offered a hand. Continuing a long tradition of farmworkers emigrating from places like China, Japan and the Philippines, Maui Pineapple, Wailuku Agribusiness and other farms brought in Mexican workers with MEO’s help in the late 1980s and early 1990s. MEO partnered with the Rocky Mountain High Coalition in 1994 to help recruit Mexican laborers. MEO managed worker dorms, provided acculturation services and staged cultural events. Today, more than 10% of Maui’s population identifies as Hispanic/Latino.
Large scale agricultural operations disappeared one by one. Wailuku Agribusiness ended farming activities in 1999. Maui Pineapple shut down in 2009.
The program, which became NFJP in the late 1990s, saw fewer and fewer clients with program eligibility not always a good fit. Sadly, MEO’s time with this historic program that improved the lives of farmworkers and forever impacted the economic and ethnic fabric of Maui County ran its course.
This does not mean MEO is abandoning farmworkers. MEO’s employment, training, and array of other programs from Head Start to transportation will continue to bring economic stability and improvement to farmworkers.
To MEO, AFOP says, mahalo and aloha. We will miss you very much! |
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|  | PathStone Awarded $1.8M in Fourth Round of Growth Opportunities GrantAFOP July 2, 2024 |
| USDOL has awarded AFOP member PathStone Corporation $1.8M in funding for “Growth Opportunities,” in addition to $46M that will be disbursed to 13 other organizations all across the country. |
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| According to a USDOL press release, these grants “will support programs that provide jobs, skills training and supportive services, including leadership development and mentoring to prepare justice-involved youth and young people to succeed in the labor market.” Growth Opportunities grants are part of the Reentry Employment Opportunities Program.
Congratulations, PathStone! |
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| | | Meet Darlene, a FarmworkerProteus, Inc. July 2, 2024 |
| Proteus, Inc., developed a video about Darlene, a migrant farmworker, mother, and survivor of abuse who found hope and opportunity with Proteus. Her story is one of family, community, and never giving up on yourself or your dreams. In the video, Darlene reads a letter she wrote to Proteus after being honored as the 2020 Indiana Farmworker of the Year. |
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| | | West Hills Empowers Farmworker’s Daughter and Single Mom to Pursue Her DreamWest Hills Community College District June 10, 2024 |
| Suzy is a first-generation student, a single mother, and a farmworker’s daughter. She graduated from Fresno State with her bachelor’s degree and soon after had her son.
After being unemployed and having a hard time finding work within her bachelor’s degree, she started looking for a career change to be able to support herself and her son. Suzy came back to West Hills College Lemoore and enrolled in the CNA program to kick start her career in health and to obtain her goal in eventually becoming a Registered Nurse.
Since enrolling in NFJP, Suzy has completed the CNA Program, receiving help with mileage and childcare while she attended training and clinicals. Suzy recently got hired at the Coalinga Hospital, and she remains in the NFJP Program and continues to receive support from West Hills as she moves forward with her goals to becoming a Registered Nurse. |
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| | | |  | President Biden Announces OSHA Federal Heat StandardAFOP July 2, 2024 |
| History was made last week when President Biden announced the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA’s) new proposed rule for the nation’s first-ever federal safety heat standard. This rule will require employers to: Develop an injury and illness prevention plan to control heat hazards in workplaces affected by excessive heat; Protect new or returning workers unaccustomed to working in high heat conditions; Provide training to employees; Have procedures to respond if a worker is experiencing signs and symptoms of a heat-related illness; and Take immediate action to help a worker experiencing signs and symptoms of a heat emergency.
AFOP praises the Department for prioritizing workers’ health at a time of rising heat risks. Year after year, farmworkers have fallen ill and, tragically, lost their lives when working in excessive heat. These protections will help prevent more farmworkers from suffering the same fate. |
| | |  | Georgia Sues Biden Administration Over Plan to Expand Farmworker RightsAtlanta Journal-Constitution July 2, 2024 |
| Georgia has teamed up with a coalition of Republican-led states – and with a group of Georgia growers – to halt a new federal rule that would bring expanded protections to migrant farmworkers on temporary visas.
The new rule, currently set to go into effect this summer, reinforces that farmers are prohibited from holding or confiscating workers’ passports, and requires that vehicles used to transport workers be equipped with seat belts. It also allows workers to invite guests to their employer-provided housing – in the H-2A migrant farmworker program, employers are required to give their seasonal migrant workers, most of whom come from Latin America, free housing.
The legal challenge to the new federal rule focuses on a host of additional provisions that seek to expand H-2A farmworkers’ ability to organize for better working conditions. |
| | |  | Opportunity to Learn About Quality Pre-apprenticeship Programs and PracticesAFOP July 3, 2024 |
| On July 10, USDOL will hold a webinar providing an overview of quality pre-apprenticeship programs – including key characteristics of quality programs as well as some examples and best practices. According to the Department, these programs are not regulated by its Office of Apprenticeship, however, “the Department recognizes the value and efficacy of the pre-apprenticeship model and therefor welcomes the opportunity to share guidance and recommendations in support and promotion of pre-apprenticeship programming and subsequent linkages to Registered Apprenticeship.” |
| | |  | Next Level Now Series: Trauma-Informed CareUSDOL July 3, 2024 |
| Join career coach supervisors from across the nation on July 25 to uncover resources and tools for clients’ career assessments and resume assistance. This session is part of an exclusive “Train the Trainer” cohort, aiming to enhance the skills and expertise of workforce development supervisors who manage career coaches. However, DOL is opening this webinar to the public, to encourage broader dissemination of promising practices within the realm of career coaching.
Presenter Joseph Seymore, owner of consulting firm Manifest Maximum, will delve into the principles and practices of trauma-informed care, emphasizing the importance of creating safe, supportive environments for individuals who have experienced trauma. |
| | | | New YouTube Shorts Spread Awareness about Migrant Workers’ Legal ProtectionsUSDOL June 20, 2024 |
| DOL developed a new worker rights video that draws attention to a problem some migrant workers face: bosses illegally holding onto identification documents.
Watch the video in English or Spanish.
DOL also created two other worker rights videos and posted them on migrantworker.gov. |
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| | | |  | Maria Catalan, founder of the organic Catalan Family Farms looks on from the production shed in Hollister, Calif., on Tuesday, June 19, 2024. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group) |
| ‘Grapes of Wrath’ Legacy Fades: California’s Migrant Farmworkers Settle in, Run Their Own FarmsThe Mercury News June 26, 2024 |
| For more than a century, California agriculture has depended on transient labor, with migrants moving from the winter lettuce fields of the south to the autumnal walnut orchards of the north.
But that long and dusty tradition, immortalized in John Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath” and the photos of Dorothea Lange, is fading. New research reveals a profound change in the nature of the nation’s agricultural workforce.
Since the late 1990s, the share of agricultural workers who migrate within the United States to follow the seasonal shift of crops has fallen by nearly 75%, according to an analysis of the U.S. Department of Labor’s National Agricultural Workers Survey data by the Bay Area News Group.
This trend is also reflected in a 2023 study by professor Philip Martin of the UC-Davis Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics. There is less seasonality in agricultural work, he found. While crops still require the most labor during the summer months, employment is rising during the winter and spring. |
| | |  | As Bird Flu Spreads on Dairy Farms, an ‘Abysmal’ Few Workers are TestedStateline July 2, 2024 |
| Public health officials are concerned about bird flu, which so far has been detected in three dairy farmworkers — two in Michigan and one in Texas — as well as in cattle in a dozen states.
The farmworkers’ symptoms were mild, and researchers have not found that the H5N1 virus, also known as bird flu, can spread from person to person. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there is little risk to the general public. However, flu viruses evolve, and H5N1 could mutate and gain the ability to infect people more easily.
“The reason public health authorities are and should be on high alert is because this is a potential high-consequence pathogen,” said Meghan Davis, an epidemiologist and microbiologist at Johns Hopkins University.
Advocates worry that the government is prioritizing farmers’ losses, rather than farmworkers’ health, in its response. While the risk to the public is low, the population of farmworkers shouldn’t be forgotten.
Bethany Alcauter of the National Center for Farmworker Health described bird flu threat as “kind of a ticking time bomb.”
“Maybe it hasn’t fully gone off yet. But if we don’t manage it well, it could,” Alcauter said. |
| | |  | Arcadia Labor Contractor Cited After Farmworker Suffers Fatal Illness While Harvesting Oranges with Heat Index Over 90USDOL July 3, 2024 |
| A federal workplace safety investigation found a Florida labor contractor could have prevented the fatal illness of a 41-year-old worker who collapsed while harvesting oranges at Alico Farms in December 2023 by taking required steps to protect employees from hazards associated with high temperatures.
Inspectors with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration learned the worker employed by Guerero Ag LLC had difficulty talking and appeared disoriented before becoming unresponsive and collapsing — symptoms consistent with a person suffering from heat stroke. Sadly, the worker died three days later in intensive care. OSHA determined the heat index reached approximately 92 degrees the day of the incident. |
| | | | |  | Gen Z Plumbers and Construction Workers Are Making #BlueCollar CoolWall Street Journal June 13, 2024 |
| On social media, younger Americans have begun showing their lives working in blue-collar fields like construction and the trades. On TikTok, the hashtag “bluecollar” has amassed more than half a million posts this year, trending quicker than it did the year before.
Among the posts and accounts growing in popularity are those that show what a day in the life of someone working in construction, electrical, plumbing, or any other manual labor or trade job is like.
Some who have started to grow their accounts spoke with the Wall Street Journal about their experience, including 27-year-old electrician Lexis Czumak-Abreu, who has more than 2.2 million followers across her social media accounts.
“You feel just like a normal person until you actually get confronted by people, and you’re like, oh, my goodness, this is real. People know who I am,” Czumak-Abreu said.
The clips Czumak-Abreu posts show her on roofs installing utility outlets or doing wiring inside homes. Now, she rakes in over $200,000 a year from social media alone, on top of her electrician salary. |
| | |  | Shiny Monolith Removed from Mountains Outside Las Vegas. How It Got There Still Is a Mystery.Is it Elvis Welcoming AFOP? AP News June 24, 2024 |
| Strange goings-on in Vegas ahead of AFOP’s national conference. An odd monolith found jutting out of the rocks in a remote mountain range near Las Vegas has been taken down by authorities.
How it got there is still unsolved.
“It remains unknown how the item got to its location or who might be responsible,” Las Vegas police said Friday in a series of posts on X announcing the removal of the glimmering, 6-foot-4 prism.
Members of the Las Vegas police search and rescue team found the object near Gass Peak, part of the vast Desert National Wildlife Refuge where bighorn sheep and desert tortoises can be found roaming. |
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