Report: Program to protect farmworkers failing

By Mark Richardson Sky Chadde and Johnathan Heddinger INVESTIGATE MIDWEST-PUBLIC

In early 2019 in Illinois, a farmworker, his wife and his son lived in a moldy house. Attempting to keep the winter cold at bay, he’d spray-foamed the windows shut. The toilet often malfunctioned.Unlikemostfarmworker housing, it hadn’t been inspected — the employer hadn’t registered it with the state.

Butthemanhadanother option. He complained toastateemployeewhose job is to advocate for farmworkers’ rights. A crucial component of the advocate’s job is visiting fields and housing and forwarding complaints to law enforcement.

Several farmworkers a week were contacted through this outreach.

Between 2018 and 2020, Illinois forwarded 10 complaints — ranging from being sprayed twice by pesticides to illegally garnishing wages for medical treatment — to authorities. For example, once the father in the moldyhousecomplained, the state employee informed the U.S. Department of Labor.

However, when farmworkers likely needed this outreach most, Illinoisstoppeddeliveringit.

WhenCOVID-19hit,Illinoisbarredtheoutreach workers from traveling andassignedsometoother duties, according to state and federal documents. Often living in crowded housing, farmworkers were particularly susceptible to COVID-19. Between the pandemic’s first summer and summer 2022, the state contactedzerofarmworkers. The state recorded one complaint.

The outreach workers in Illinois are part of a federal and state partnership known as the MonitorAdvocateSystem.U.S. DepartmentofLaborofficials oversee state counterparts who are supposed to ensure their states protect farmworkers from unsafe housing, wage theft and other abuses. Outreach is only part of the system’s duties, but it’s an essential element.

Nationwide problem

The failings in Illinois echo across the country, according to internal program documents obtained by Investigate Midwest, and other state and federal records.

Consider:

• The pandemic either impaired or completely shut down required outreach to farmworkers. States are supposed to have full-time outreach staff during harvest season.Personnelatsomelocal job centers — mainly known for providing career counseling and job referrals — also chip in.

• In the pandemic’s first years, some states — including Illinois, Ohio and Kansas — closed job centers or reassigned staff. Across the country, the number of contacts withfarmworkersfell,according to the system’s latest annual report.

• Meanwhile, more than 90,000 farmworkers contracted the virus, and

WestVirginiawhoretired in 2020, said many monitoradvocatessheworked with were dedicated and caring individuals who hadfarmworkers’bestinterests in mind.

“Most of the people I worked with were outstanding. They took their jobs to heart,” she said. But,sheadded,“Youcan’t just put somebody in that seat. You got to have somebody who has some interest or background (with farmworkers). Otherwise, the program’s going to suffer.” at least 100 died during the pandemic, according to tracking by the Food and Environmental Reporting Network, a nonprofit newsroom.

• The monitor advocate system has convulsedwithturnoverinrecent years. The system has about 60 positions: a national monitor advocate, six DOL officials overseeing states in different regions,anadvocateineach state and some support staff. Since 2020, 37 people have cycled through the system, according to Investigate Midwest’s review of staff directories.

Since 2020, four states, including Illinois, have hadthreedifferentpeople employed in the monitor advocate role. Some who technically served in the role did not perform its duties full-time. For instance, between 2016 and 2018, Iowa’s monitor advocatespentlessthanhalf of her time performing monitoring duties. (The statesaidthisiscurrently not the case.)

Janie Claytor-Woodson, the longtime state monitor advocate for

Even before COVID-19, some states did not perform the required outreach to farmworkers. The year before the pandemic started, 16 states failed to do so, according to a recent annual report. The annual reports note little contact with farmworkers generally means fewer complaints.

Yu-Mon “Luis” Chang, Connecticut’s state monitoradvocate,saidinavideofortheNationalCenter for Farmworker Health thatfrequentvisitsareessential to building trust withfarmworkers.Hedid not return repeated requests for an interview.

“If you’re just showing up once every two years tothefarm,you’renotgoing to gain the trust of the workers,” he said. “But if they see you out there all the time, and they start talking to you, they’ll get comfortable enough to disclose something that may be bothering them. That’s the key.”

InastatementtoInvestigate Midwest, the labor department said it disagreed with any characterization that the program wasn’t successful. The statement said the oversight the monitor advocate system provides focuses on reviewing states’ protections of farmworkers, the functionality of their complaint process and their compliance with regulations and directives: “This system is successful when Monitor Advocates effectively perform their specific duties,” the statement reads.

Onanationallevel,several of the performance indicators the labor department uses to determine the program’s success are being met. But, the agency acknowledged, “state-level data shows that not all (local job centers) are meeting all measures.”

The system’s most recent annual report notes weekly contacts increasedafterthepandemic’s first year. However, it reads, “it is critical to understand that the pre- pandemic contact rate may not have been adequate.”

When asked what kind of accountability existed for states not meeting the required standards, the labor department said, “Continued non-compliance can result in (the agency) formally noting deficiencies in a monitoringreportandrequiringa corrective action plan. Most states can resolve compliance issues through these steps.”

In more extreme cases, funding can be withheld, the agency said.

But, the labor department said, it was “not aware” of an instance where funding related to farmworker services was withheld.

For example, Indiana has been cited repeatedly since 2009 for inadequate outreach staff, according to a copy of the labor department’s corrective action plan for the state. Indiana said it is “currently incompliance”withstaffing regulations.

The Illinois Department of Employment Security, which houses Illinois’s part of the monitor advocate system, originally said it would answer Investigate Midwest’s questions about its role in the system and its decisions during the pandemic. It did not respond prior to publication.

The monitor advocate system was in the headlinesrecentlybecauseofa possible connection between its representative in Georgia and a human trafficking operation, according to reporting by USA Today.

The operation forced farmworkers to dig for onions with their bare hands, and to live in housing with limited plumbingandnosafewater, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. According to testimony related to the case, the traffickers paid off a state official who inspected and approved farmworker housing.

The person who inspected housing was the statemonitoradvocatefor Georgia, who retired in the wake of the DOJ’s investigation. The advocate’s sister was indicted intheDOJ’scase,andseveral of his family members owned companies that employed farmworkers, USA Today reported.

The Georgia Department of Labor did not respond to requests for comment.

Chronic issues

In an ongoing series on farmworker housing, Investigate Midwest is examining chronic issues and the systems created to uphold farmworker rights. Ensuring safe living conditions is not the Monitor Advocate System’s only responsibility, but protecting farmworkers from substandard housing — an entrenched problem — has been part of its mission since its start.

Across the country, examples of poor housing abound. In Iowa, authorities have found housing withholesinthewalland floor. In Missouri, farmworkers were forced to live in an old jail. One farmworker complained to an advocacy group of living in an “iron chicken coop” with bunk beds.

“Farmworkers are one of the worst housed groups in the United

States,” said Lance George, director of researchandinformationat the Housing Assistance Council, which studied the issue in 2002. “This is a group in the shadows.”

Oversight and enforcement need to improve for conditionstochange,said Antonio De Loera-Brust, communications director forUnitedFarmWorkers, a California labor union.

“There’sonelawonthe books,” he said. “There’s anotherlawinthefields.”

Research, government data and previous reporting show farmworkers are also vulnerable to labor abuses, human trafficking and legal violations — necessitating a government position like the monitor advocate.

Whenoneadvocacyorganization, Centro de Los Derechos del Migrante, Failing continues on A19