By Sophia Lada
Capital News Service
As farmworkers from other states and countries come to work in Michigan, the need for safe and affordable off-farm housing options is becoming increasingly important, a recent task force report said.
To help address that problem, the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development has appointed a new Migrant Labor Housing Advisory Board to provide recommendations for safe and affordable housing for farmworkers.
The new board is made up of five agriculture seats, five migrant labor seats and four seats from other migrant agricultural worker-related organizations. It includes members from Manistee, Grand Rapids, Lake City, Holland and Suttons Bay.
Grand Rapids Business Journal
Miller Johnson welcomed senior counsel Hillary Scholten and associate attorney Julia Schall to its firm.
Scholten specializes in immigration law in the firm’s employment and labor group. She also leads its government affairs practice. She was the former 2020 Democratic Congressional nominee for Michigan’s 3rd District.
Prior to joining the congressional race, she was an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice and later served as an attorney for the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center. While there, she defended the legal rights of immigrants and migrant farmworkers in Michigan through community organizing, political advocacy and federal litigation.
Twelve hour shifts, six days a week. A persistent, chemical smell that caused eyes to water, throats to itch and heads to ache. Two hundred workers and only two bathrooms.
These were the conditions inside an asparagus processing facility in Oceana County in 2019, according to two workers who’ve filed a federal lawsuit seeking damages from the owner, Todd Greiner Farms.
One of the workers alleges the smell from the chemicals became so overpowering, she passed out in a bathroom and had to be rushed to the hospital by ambulance.
“[She] Rodriguez was frightened and thought she was going to die,” the lawsuit alleges. “She worried for her children who were young and depended on her.”
Nearly 80,000 food processing and agricultural workers in Michigan are eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine as of Monday, weeks earlier than originally planned.
The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services moved last month to prioritize those workers to help ensure the health and safety of Michigan’s essential food and agriculture workers and keep the state’s food supply chain moving, the department said in the announcement. Mortuary workers also were moved up in priority.
The move doesn t just allow workers in high-risk industries such as meatpacking and farm work to become vaccinated. It paves the way for some of Michigan s most vulnerable residents who work in those industries – refugees and undocumented migrant workers – to receive shots.
Some state have left farmworkers out of their COVID-19 vaccine rollout wisfarmer.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from wisfarmer.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.