farmworkers

The White House says it will propose a compromise on immigration built on four pillars: “Securing the border and closing legal loopholes; ending extended-family chain migration; canceling the visa lottery; and providing a permanent solution on DACA.” The announcement by White House press secretary Sarah Sanders left open the question of undocumented farmworkers.

The chairmen of the House Judiciary and Homeland Security committees unveiled a broad-scale immigration reform bill that might piggyback on a legislative resolution of the “dreamers” issue.

Growers and contractors in California recruited 14,252 foreign guestworkers last year, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis of data from the U.S. Department of Labor. The figure was up 28 percent from the previous year.

As farmworkers become harder to find, California growers are providing better pay and benefits, attracting some U.S.-born workers. Still, experts say, mechanization will be the long-term answer.

In announcing his retirement at the end of 2018, House Judiciary chairman Bob Goodlatte said his goals in his final year in office include "bolstering enforcement of our immigration laws and reforming the legal immigration system." Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican, is the sponsor of divisive legislation to create a year-round H-2C agricultural guestworker program to replace seasonal H-2A visas.

A team of graduate students at USC's engineering school are turning an idea from a high school student into a reality – a mobile computer application that will alert California farmworkers when temperatures top 95 F and to allow them to report unsafe working conditions to state regulators, says Civil Eats. "The next big step will come this summer, when they launch a pilot project of CalorApp with farmworkers at two companies, Fabbri Farms in Bakersfield and the Grapery in Shafter."

Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez, sponsor of a bill that would give legal status to undocumented farmworkers and their families, says he will retire after 13 terms in the House.

The California Supreme Court unanimously upheld a 2002 state law that allows mediation of deadlocked contract negotiations between growers and farmworker unions, including the power of mediators to set the contract terms, reported the Associated Press. The decision was a victory for "the union launched by iconic labor leader Cesar Chavez against one of the largest U.S. fruit farms," said AP.

The United Farm Workers union likened legislation for a new guestworker program, scheduled for a vote today in the House Judiciary Committee, to the post-war bracero program in that it would "undermine the wages and working conditions of all agricultural workers." The bill, by Judiciary chairman Bob Goodlatte, will be considered at the same session as a bill to require all employers to use the E-Verify system to check if applicants can work legally.

The organizer and human-rights activist, Greg Asbed, co-founded the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, (CIW) which has worked with major retailers and food companies to guarantee better pay and treatment for farmworkers through the coalition’s Fair Food Program. Asbed recently won one of the 24 MacArthur 'genius' grants, worth $625,000, for his leadership. As he told The New York Times in a phone interview, he plans to turn over all of that money to the coalition.

An Idaho state lawmaker says she plans to sponsor a bill in the 2018 legislative session that would expand a program allowing agricultural businesses to use state inmate labor if they can't hire enough workers. Six businesses — two fruit companies and four potato-related companies — use the program now with a fluctuating number of inmates, varying from 150 to 261, at work, says Capital Press.

With wildfires still blazing in Northern California and 222,000 acres already destroyed, vineyard workers are breathing particulate-filled air as they bring in the grape crop. Many of the workers are undocumented and can't afford to lose a paycheck even if their homes were destroyed in the fires that have consumed the region.

The MacArthur Foundation awarded one of its $625,000 "genius grants" to Greg Asbed, one of three co-founders of the Coalition for Immokalee Workers (CIW). It said Asbed "is a human rights strategist developing a new model — worker-driven social responsibility — for improving conditions for low-wage workers within the 21st Century labor market."

In a first for the dairy industry, the ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s has signed an agreement to eventually buy all of its milk from Vermont dairies that uphold rigorous standards for treatment and pay of employees. The standards, known as Milk with Dignity, were devised by the workers themselves and based on the Fair Food Program established by tomato workers in Florida under the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW).

When heat waves blanket regions of the country, an uncomfortable situation for many people can turn deadly for farmworkers laboring in fields. "That’s especially true in the Central Valley, where a major portion of the nation’s fruits and vegetables are grown. If farmworkers don’t drink enough water, are unable to take breaks in the shade, or simply aren’t acclimatized to working at such high temperatures, they can suffer heat exhaustion, heatstroke, even death," writes Ingfei Chen in FERN's latest story, published with Mother Jones.

President Trump’s decision to end DACA, the Obama-era program that gave work permits to children of undocumented immigrants, is likely to touch off a “civil war” over immigration among congressional Republicans, reports DTN. Trump urged Congress to replace the program with legislation before it expires next March.

With a shortage of farmworker labor and growing concerns about food safety, one of the largest produce companies in the Salinas Valley of California is turning to mechanized harvesting and robotic processing of its vegetables, forever replacing the workers who once performed these jobs, says the San Francisco Chronicle.

Arizona health officials said two workers employed at poultry farms have recovered from mild cases of bird flu while the public health agency in Marin County, north of San Francisco, said it was investigating a possible bird flu infection of a child. If confirmed by the CDC, the U.S. total for bird flu infections would rise to 61 people in eight states this year.