WORKER SELF MANAGED ESG

A Worker-Driven Model for Protecting Labor Rights Is Successful — and Expanding

Unlike corporate models, “worker-driven social responsibility” puts workers at the center of protecting their rights.

By Derek Seidman ,

  TRUTHOUT

PublishedOctober 15, 2023

On May Day farm workers march to a Hannaford supermarket to protest the supermarket chain's refusal to purchase milk from dairy suppliers who have committed to a set of fair labor practices, on May 1, 2022, in Burlington, Vermont.

ANDREW LICHTENSTEIN / CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES

LONG READ


If you consume products from capitalist markets today — and, of course, most of us do — you’ve surely seen your share of labels on name brand items promising that your purchase is “ethical”: fair trade coffee, sustainable clothing. The list goes on.

Many of these efforts, however, amount to little more than corporate marketing, a kind of image control that became fashionable beginning in the 1990s with the exposure of horrid labor conditions across global supply chains. But one model has built up a proven record of upholding crucial protections for the most at-risk workers within those supply chains: worker-driven social responsibility (WSR).

Born out of bottom-up struggle at the turn of the 21st century by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), WSR models are based on legally binding agreements with key supply chain actors that uphold worker-shaped codes of conduct that are strongly monitored and enforced, often by workers themselves, and are backed by market sanctions against violators. While corporate-aligned models have failed, numerous studies show that WSRs have been profoundly effective, in no small part because, for workers, “the need to develop and pursue an effective strategy to define, claim, and protect their human rights is existential, affecting their very lives,” writes Susan Marquis, a Princeton University professor, in a recent report.

Marquis’s report, published by Harvard Law School’s Center for Labor and a Just Economy and Clean Slate for Worker Power, surveys the failures of corporate social responsibility and multi-stakeholder initiatives against the successes of the WSR model. Marquis, who also wrote a 2017 book about the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, shows how the WSR model is expanding, and argues that U.S. federal policies could support its further growth.

RELATED STORY

Farmworkers Push Wendy’s, Kroger and Publix to Take Stance Against Forced Labor
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers is pushing the companies to join the Fair Food Program, which deters forced labor.  By Derek Seidman , TRUTHOUT March 11, 2023

“Good for the Brand But Not Effective at All for the Workers”

Globalization in the 1980s and 1990s spurred a worldwide “race to the bottom” as corporations sought out workers whom they could pay pennies on the hour to labor under sweatshop conditions. Iconic brands like Nike and the Gap faced a slew of scandals over abuses in their supply chains. This created huge public relations headaches for corporations. In response, they set up corporate social responsibility programs (CSRs).

CSRs, writes Marquis, are corporate-run programs, sometimes containing auditing arms, with published standards around conditions in their supply chains on issues like human rights and sustainability. But as CSRs proved to be ineffective at addressing those issues, civil society groups, businesses, and other stakeholders came together to form Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives (MSIs), beginning in the 2000s and into the 2010s. These, which involve partnerships between corporations and civil society groups, and sometimes governments, were intended to address “governance gaps” in CSRs around issues like human rights abuses and sustainability.

But CSRs and MSIs have one thing in common, says Marquis: Neither really protect workers. “They were good for the brand but not effective at all for the workers,” she told Truthout. “You didn’t see any real change.”

The core problem, says Marquis, is that CSRs and MSIs fail workers by design. They are voluntary for corporations. Enforcement is lax. Neither put real power in the hands of workers, the very people best equipped to define standards, monitor violations and oversee enforcement.

“What’s inadequate about these models is that they are not centered on the workers,” said Marquis. Her claims are backed up by numerous studies, including a major 2020 report that concluded the MSI model “failed in its goal of providing effective protection against abuse.”

Anna Canning is the communications director for the Worker-Driven Social Responsibility Network, which works to promote and expand the WSR model. She says CSRs and MSIs deal with appearance more than substance.

“There are these ubiquitous fair trade labels,” she says, “but they’re failing to address the big power imbalances that colonialism and capitalism have instilled into pretty much every aspect of our food and trade systems.”

“There’s no way that you can make the kind of change that’s needed just through consumer choice,” said Canning. “All of that stuff exists in the realm of marketing. It does not exist in the tangible world of binding agreements.”
“The Power Was Not With the Growers, But With the Corporations”

In the 1990s and 2000s, another model for protecting workers’ rights was germinating in the tomato fields of Immokalee, Florida.

CSRs and MSIs fail workers by design. They are voluntary for corporations. Enforcement is lax. Neither put real power in the hands of workers

Farmworkers are not covered under the National Labor Relations Act, making unionization extremely difficult. Many are undocumented migrant workers or immigrants. Working conditions, historically, have been hyperexploitative, with violence and sexual abuse rampant, sometimes akin to slavery.

Originally a workers’ center fighting for better conditions for Florida’s tomato pickers, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers developed an analysis of their situation that centered on the broader supply chain they labored within.

Who, ultimately, held the structural power within that supply chain to improve the lives of farmworkers, they asked? It was not the field owners who hired farmworkers, but the corporate behemoths, the grocery and food service giants who dominated the retail purchasing of agricultural goods. Moreover, those corporations — the Taco Bells, the Trader Joes, the Walmarts — were susceptible to consumer pressure.

This analysis gave birth to the Campaign for Fair Food in 2001, which built an alliance between farmworkers and consumers, especially students and faith-based organizations, to educate the public about agricultural supply chain abuses and to pressure corporate retailers to end their complicity.

The first high-profile campaign was against Taco Bell. Farmworkers and their allies demanded the company sign a binding agreement to address abuses like wage theft among the growers in this supply chain. Victory at Taco Bell came in 2005, and other corporations followed: McDonald’s, Burger King, Chipotle, and more, including, in 2014, Walmart, the nation’s top grocer.

Under the banner of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, farmworkers had created a social movement. They carved out a public voice. They reframed farmworkers’ rights as human rights. The media and elected officials started paying serious attention. They were altering the power relations in their supply chain.

The WSR model that the Coalition of Immokalee Workers began led to the creation of the Fair Food Program in 2011, which, to this day, is the core partnership through which the Coalition of Immokalee Workers achieves protections and gains for farmworkers.

Under the Fair Food Program, retailers and growers agree to abide by a “Code of Conduct” that is shaped by, and protects, farmworkers. This is cemented in a signed, legally-binding agreement that is enforced, largely, by workers themselves through regular education sessions and a multilingual 24/7 hotline. An independent body, the Fair Food Standards Council, conducts investigations into abuses and undertakes serious audits. The program also includes a Fair Food Premium that retailers pay that ends up in workers’ paychecks as a bonus. Any partnering grower found violating the code of conduct risks market sanctions that could cut off sales to the nation’s top buyers.

The Fair Food Program now covers multiple products in states across the U.S. and has expanded to several other countries. Its results have been widely lauded. The program received a Presidential Medal of Honor, and the UN Special Rapporteur in Trafficking in Persons called it an “international benchmark.” One labor relations professor said it was “the best workplace-monitoring program I’ve seen in the U.S.”
“We See Each Worker as a Monitor of the Program”

It was a little over a decade ago when Lupe Gonzalo first heard about the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. She had seen the rampant abuses in the agricultural industry: the poverty, the wage theft, the sexual harassment and, in extreme cases, working conditions akin to slavery.

Around 2011, she was working on a farm that had joined the new Fair Food Program. When the Coalition of Immokalee Workers visited to explain the agreement, she experienced something of an awakening.

“That was the first time that, as a farmworker, in over a dozen years of working in the field, I heard about my rights,” Gonzalo recalled. “It was the first time I felt like I was being seen as a human being.”

She was hooked. She got involved with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and participated in protests and campaigns. She eventually joined the organization’s staff.

Gonzalo says the close and consistent contact between organizers and workers is crucial to the Fair Food Program’s effectiveness. “We go out to the farms and talk directly with workers,” she told Truthout. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers distributes materials and conducts educational sessions. They make sure everyone has the hotline number and knows what to do if there’s a problem.

“We see each worker as a monitor of the program,” she said.

Unlike with CSRs and MSIs, Gonzalo says, the Fair Food Standards Council conducts substantive investigations around complaints at farms. It tries to solve the problem. “They’re not just surface level investigations,” says Gonzalo. Audits involve interviewing “at least 50 percent of the workforce.”

She says the program’s success rests on it being worker-driven: “It’s the workers’ voice that’s leading to the solutions and protections for workers.”
“These Things Won’t Change Unless We Change Them Ourselves”

Soon, other worker organizations began to explore the WSR model. One of those groups was Migrant Justice, led by a community of immigrant farmworkers in Vermont, whose origins lay over a decade ago in the Green Mountain State’s dairy farms.

Thelma Gómez was 16 years old when she joined her father working in Vermont’s dairy farms in 2012. The icy weather was an adjustment, but worse was her boss’s refusal to pay her when paycheck time came around. “I felt in my bones it was unjust,” Gómez told Truthout.

Later that year, Gómez was invited to a farmworkers’ assembly. People discussed their experiences with ramshackle housing, poverty wages and grueling hours.

For Gómez, it was a revelation. “I realized that my situation wasn’t so unique,” she said. “Everybody was experiencing some form of labor abuse.” Moreover, it didn’t need to be this way. “The organizers of the assembly told us it doesn’t matter what country you came from: You have human rights,” she said.

Gómez threw herself into organizing with Migrant Justice. “I felt a responsibility and a commitment to this work because I came to understand that these things won’t change unless we change them ourselves,” she said.

Around that time, Migrant Justice had developed a “pyramid of power” analysis of the dairy industry that took the wider supply chain into account. The group heard about the Fair Food Program. Gómez soon trekked down to Immokalee with her young twin daughters to learn from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers firsthand.

“I was blown away by everything the CIW had accomplished,” she remembered. The key thing she took away from the WSR model was that farmworkers had to focus pressure on the top of their supply chains to win any rights for themselves.

Soon, the organization was putting these lessons into action. In dialogue with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Migrant Justice formed its signature WSR program, Milk With Dignity. The group’s first major breakthrough came in late 2017, when the Vermont-based ice cream giant, Ben & Jerry’s, signed on to the program.

Now an organizer with Migrant Justice, Gómez says the Milk with Dignity campaign has been transformational for dairy farmworkers, offering protections against sexual harassment and other abuses, as well as paid sick days and paid vacation. The Harvard Business Review has praised the effectiveness of its hotline.

Gómez says corporate-driven models in the dairy industry — for example, Chobani’s “Milk Matters” partnership with Fair Trade USA, which was lambasted by critics and media reports as ineffective — don’t empower workers to defend their rights.

“It starts with who’s driving the program. These corporate programs don’t provide the same protections for workers as WSR programs because they’re created to placate consumers,” says Gómez. “What you need is real change driven by workers themselves.”
“Learners Into Teachers”

Just as farmworkers from Vermont learned from farmworkers from Immokalee, so too is Migrant Justice passing on lessons to others.

“The dairy workers at Migrant Justice really developed from learners into teachers,” said Gómez. She invokes conversations she’s had with construction workers in Minnesota, chicken processing plant workers in Arkansas and seafood processing workers in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Marquis’s report documents the further spread of the WSR model over the past several years. Through the worker center Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en la Lucha, construction workers in St. Paul and Minneapolis established a Building Dignity and Respect Program, which aims to set and monitor standards — from a $20 minimum wage to ensuring protections from retaliation — in nonunionized sectors of the construction industry that are rife with abuses, such as wage theft. Advocates hope the program will expand beyond the Twin Cities. The London-based International Transport Workers’ Federation, aided by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, is bringing WSR to the fishing industry in the United Kingdom. Lesotho workers launched a WSR program in 2019 to fight gender-based violence in garment factories. The Fair Food Program itself has spread beyond Florida and into multiple states and countries to cover a range of produce — sweet corn in Colorado, for example, and the agricultural industry in Chile.


The Fair Food Standards Council conducts substantive investigations around complaints at farms. It tries to solve the problem.

The biggest applications of the WSR model have been in South Asia. Following the horrific Rana Plaza factory collapse in 2013, garment workers in Bangladesh, who Marquis says took inspiration from the WSR model, launched the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Safety, and a similar program was launched in Pakistan in 2022. The programs have been praised, though some major corporations, such as Levi’s and the Gap, have not joined.

The expansion of WSR can also be measured by the widening of its scope. With the intensification of extreme heat, the Fair Food Program implemented new standards, including mandatory cooldown rest breaks and heightened monitoring of heat stress symptoms. It also developed mandatory standards to protect farmworkers from COVID-19.

In her report, Marquis argues that the U.S. federal government could help promote the WSR model through new policies at federal agencies and new legislation and regulation — for example, by “conditioning public purchases and other financial incentives at the government’s disposal on participation” in the Fair Food Program, or using the Department of Labor’s International Labor Affairs Bureau to tie participation in the Fair Food Program internationally to imports. In February, the Department of Labor awarded a $2.5 million grant to the Fair Food Standards Council to help expand the Fair Food Program with “a pilot project to promote human and labor rights focused on cut flower farms in Chile, Mexico and South Africa.”

The Worker-Driven Social Responsibility Network has been a hub over the years for the promotion of WSR. Canning is excited about the model’s expansion, but also points to challenges, such as the “corporate refusal to engage.” Current WSR campaigns include the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ longtime fight to get Wendy’s, Kroger and Publix to join the Fair Food Program, and Migrant Justice’s campaign to get Hannaford supermarkets to join Milk With Dignity.

Companies have given various rationalizations for their refusal to join these programs, including that they already have their own codes of conducts for suppliers. Kroger, which says it has its own “Human Rights Policy,” made headlines as some of its agricultural suppliers have been tied to abuses like wage theft and even modern-day slavery.

Canning also emphasizes the need to keep workers at the center of the WSR model, even if things move a bit more slowly.

“Real change takes time,” she says. “Worker-led means that with expansion into new industries, workers need time to adapt to the model. It’s not a one-size-fits-all standard that’s being just pushed down on folks in different supply chains. It’s a set of principles that are adapted by workers for their workplace and industry.”

Outside of the U.S. — for example, in Bangladesh, Lesotho and the U.K., according to Marquis — labor unions have signed onto and help maintain WSR initiatives. In the U.S., farmworkers who fall under their protections are not unionized, nor is their right to unionize permitted under federal labor law, making unionization incredibly difficult, though some states guarantee collective bargaining rights for farmworkers. With WSRs, worker organizations have found ways to win substantive labor and human rights protections, including protections from employer retaliation for voicing concerns over code of conduct violations.

Organizers like Migrant Justice’s Gómez hope to see more workers develop and implement WSR models in their supply chains. For her, the journey has been defining.

“It’s the greatest pride of my life that I’ve been able to be involved in creating the Milk With Dignity program,” she says, “and seeing the transformation that it has brought about.”

Indigenous Farmworkers Hold the Key to Healing Our Burning Planet

Grape harvesters share traditional ecological knowledge to right our relationship with the land—and each other.

BROOKE ANDERSON 

IN THESE TIMES

JANUARY 26, 2022

“Escuchen a los trabajadores,” one sign reads at the Nov. 13, 2021, picket at Simi Winery. “Listen to the workers.”

BROOKE ANDERSON

Anayeli Guzman was born into a Mixtec-speaking Indigenous community in San Miguel Chicahua in Oaxaca, Mexico. Her family raised chickens on their land, and as a child she would help plant corn, squash and radishes. They ate handmade tortillas with beans, eggs and salsa. Her grandparents taught her to care for the land and to revere the rain. Few people worked for wages. Rather, families owned small plots and grew seasonal, drought-resistant crops, exchanged produce with nearby communities and helped each other with big projects.

After migrating to the United States to be with her husband, Anayeli (along with 11,000 other, mostly Indigenous, immigrant farmworkers) toils for meager wages in the $1.9 billion wine industry of Sonoma County, Calif. In the past several years, record-breaking wildfires have ravaged the area, often during harvest season. Vineyard owners routinely escort workers through evacuation zones to pick grapes in a haze of toxic smoke.

Fed up, Anayeli and her coworkers began to organize in summer 2021. After surveying hundreds of farmworkers, their committee created the 5 for Farmworkers in Fires campaign to demand language justice, disaster insurance, community safety observers, hazard pay and clean bathrooms. Workers hand-delivered those demands to dozens of wineries. When one winery, Simi, did not respond, around 300 workers and allies picketed Simi’s lavish, $145-per-ticket wine tasting. (Disclosure: I first met Anayeli and other farmworkers as a photographer hired to help document their campaign.)

Wineries not only endanger workers’ lives by instructing them to harvest in the midst of raging climate change-fueled blazes; wineries actually accelerate climate destabilization. Industrial agriculture is one of the largest contributors to climate change globally, and wineries are particularly likely to erode local ecological balance through soil depletion, intensive water use and the deployment of toxic fertilizers.

Indigenous farmworkers, however, often have access to traditional ecological knowledge passed down through millennia — about how to live in right relationship with the land, water and one another — but lack the power to steward and heal the land.

Now, farmworkers are organizing to change that.

“The reality is that, in this decade, we’re going to see serious changes,” says Davida Sotelo Escobedo, communications and research coordinator with North Bay Jobs with Justice, which is helping with the campaign. ​“The rich, the land owners, are going to talk about solutions that are disconnected from the land. But those who work the land have the knowledge and leadership to show us what we need to do. There is power in remembering and uplifting this connection with the land.”

In the spirit of remembering our way forward, I interviewed two Indigenous farmworkers at the heart of this organizing effort — Anayeli Guzman and Margarita Garcia — about their memories of home, working as a farmworker today, and what they’d change if they had the power to tend the land on which they currently labor.

Anayeli Guzman (right) shows her daughter, Dalia, how to care for a pepper plant at their home in Windsor, Calif.

Anayeli Guzman (right) helps her daughter, Dalia, with a Trabajos Con Justicia (“Jobs with Justice”) bandana before the Nov. 13, 2021, picket at Simi Winery in Healdsburg, Calif.
ANAYELI GUZMAN

RESPECT. ​“The wineries treat us like they treat the earth. There is no respect for us nor for the land. The only thing that interests them is production and money. But if the workers and the land didn’t exist, there wouldn’t be a harvest. There wouldn’t be anything.”

RAIN. ​“Our elders said that when it is time to plant, the first thing they’d do is offer something — be it liquid or food — to the land, because she is our mother. Before the first rains, they’d go to a cave carrying torches and candles and have a party with food, dancing and singing to ask God for rain. It is different here. Wineries expect the fruit to produce because they put chemicals and fertilizers on it.”

WATER, DROUGHT, FERTILIZERS. ​“The wineries use fertilizers which damage the land and water. Sometimes it is as if they make a plant produce or mature when it shouldn’t. It is as if they are forcing nature. We are also in a drought. At my home, there is no grass. But at the wineries, everything is green. It’s as if you’re transported to another world, as if they had their own river. It makes me sad because all the animals need water. They have a right to live too.”

CROP ROTATION. ​“There comes a time when we all must take a break. So too does the earth need a break. The farmers in my community let the land rest for a certain time. They let it breathe, let it regain nutrients for the next harvest. That doesn’t happen here. Here, it’s just constant work. As soon as the last harvest ends, they’re already pruning again.”

MUTUAL AID. ​“There used to be a lot of mutual aid — ​‘you help me, I help you,’ not, ​‘OK, you worked this many hours so you get this much cash.’ No. We worked as a team. We called it tequio. It’s a beautiful tradition and what I most miss. It is different here because you arrive and the boss tells you, ​‘Here is where we’ll work,’ and that’s it.”

MONEY WON’T HEAL THE EARTH. ​“They have to understand that there are things money cannot buy and that technology alone will not fix. This is true for the healing of the earth. We can’t just put up solar panels or buy different cars. We have to do it ourselves.”

WORKERS ARE THE REAL STEWARDS. ​“Like [Emiliano] Zapata said, ​‘La tierra es de quien la trabaja’ (‘The land belongs to those who work it’). The workers are the ones who spend time watching how the plants grow, how the grapes mature. We are more the owners than they are.”

Margarita Garcia wears a traditional huipil in her kitchen in Santa Rosa, Calif., which is “biodegradable” and “does not contain toxic material,” she says. The colors represent wild flowers back home, some of which are extinct.

Margarita Garcia advocates for the 5 for Farmworkers in Fires campaign outside of Simi Winery in Healdsburg, Calif., on Nov. 13, 2021. The campaign demands include, for example, clean bathrooms for workers.
MARGARITA GARCIA


WATER. ​“The wineries have damaged the land, the water and the environment. They use many pesticides to the point that the rivers are no longer clean. We have to be more conscious of caring for our water. Where I’m from, there’s always been drought, so we knew to use only what we needed and no more. Rainwater was recycled. We’d put containers outside and when it would rain we’d have water to water the plants. We had open air toilets and the waste would go to the plants. Same with the water from the wash — everything went to the plants.”

FIRE. ​“There was a lot of drought in my community, so there would be fires. It is not new for me. However, the fires never grew as large as they do here. The people themselves would self-organize to put out fires because there was no fire department. They’d surround the fire so that it could not jump, throw earth on it and hit it with branches. We’d intentionally burn certain areas in order to later plant corn. The ashes were used as compost to prevent insects without chemicals. Later, each town would take its turn to plant again and the trees would return.”

EXCHANGE. ​“In my community, el trueque is the exchange of crops. If a family has avocados and we have oranges, we’d exchange. If one town’s harvest was potatoes, plums, peaches and other things we didn’t have in my community, we’d exchange. We’d bring potatoes and they’d give us bread, or we’d bring tortillas and they’d give us chiles.”

KNOWLEDGE. ​“The bosses don’t respect the wisdom of the farmworkers. I remember this coworker of mine. The boss told her that she was born to work the fields because of the color of her skin. Instead of humiliating us like this, they should value our knowledge of the land. But they are interested neither in caring for the land, nor in the opinion of farmworkers. The only thing the wineries care about is extracting work from us to make money for them. Right now, you have to do what the boss says and sometimes it is against our will. But If the land owners listened to us, we could guide them about how to work with the land, not against it.”

Margarita Garcia (left) and Anayeli Guzman, among 300 other workers and community allies, rally at Simi Winery on Nov. 13, 2021, in Healdsburg, Calif., with North Bay Jobs with Justice.

Anayeli Guzman (bottom, facing the crowd) demands language justice and hazard pay, among other issues, at the Nov. 13, 2021, picket of Simi Winery.

As the planet rapidly escalates toward ecological collapse, those who put us on that path can no longer deny the collapse is imminent. They will propose technological solutions (more solar panels, more electric cars) while propagating the very same social and economic inequality that got us to this point. What we really need is to put stewardship back into the hands of people who recognize how to live in right relationship to the Earth and each other. Farmworkers, as grassroots ecologists with the wisdom and respect to take care of the land correctly, are the voices we need to heed.

All worker quotes have been translated from their original Spanish and edited for clarity and brevity.

BROOKE ANDERSON is an Oakland, California-based organizer and photojournalist. She has spent 20 years building movements for social, economic, racial and ecological justice. She is a proud union member of the Pacific Media Workers Guild, CWA 39521, AFL-CIO.

California drought is pushing Latino farmers and workers to make difficult decisions

Nicole Chavez - Yesterday


Joe Del Bosque roamed the 2,000 acres of his California farm knowing he couldn’t touch nearly half of the land he’s owned for decades.

“I got the land, I got the people. I have everything but no water. I can’t do it,” said Del Bosque, a 73-year-old farmer in Firebaugh, California.

Del Bosque is one of the many Latino farmers and workers whose lives revolve around California’s agriculture industry and who have been forced to make difficult decisions due to the ongoing water crisis.

Years of low rainfall and snowpack in the state have now led to rapidly draining reservoirs. Last month, the state’s two largest reservoirs reached “critically low levels” just as extreme drought conditions expanded from covering 40% to 60% of the state, according to the US Drought Monitor.

Federal officials dealt a large blow to farmers in the state’s Central Valley when earlier this year, they significantly reduced allocations for irrigation. Many of these farmers rely on underground reservoirs for their operations and officials said only a limited number of agriculture customers would receive water deliveries. They are serviced by the Central Valley Project, a complex water system made of 19 dams and reservoirs as well as more than 500 miles of canals across the state.

While farmers have previously made numerous changes in response to the drought, this year’s water limits have pushed them to leave more portions of their land idle and reduce the number of workers they hire. Del Bosque says he stopped growing asparagus and sweet corn, solely focusing on melons and almonds, which most of the world’s crops are produced in California.

Without those crops, Del Bosque was not able to hire about 100 people to work on his farmland.

“These are people who had worked for us for many years, and they’re highly skilled people,” Del Bosque said.


California drought is pushing Latino farmers and workers to make difficult decisions

Joe Del Bosque is the owner of Del Bosque Farms. - Terry Chea/AP

Researchers at the University of California, Merced estimate the drought had a $1.1 billion impact in the state’s agriculture industry last year.


Their report, released in February, says roughly 385,000 acres were drought idled in the Central Valley. They also linked the loss of nearly 8,750 full- and part-time jobs across the state to the drought.

Hernan Hernandez, executive director of the California Farmworker Foundation, said many farmworkers are now struggling to find jobs that will keep them working all year long.

Because there is less farmland being harvested or grown, some farmers are opting to hire larger crews than usual. While they are doing it to keep more people employed, Hernandez says, the work is getting done faster and farmworkers end up hunting for their next job sooner than anticipated.

“Many people come to the Central Valley because they feel like this is an area where they can have steady work throughout the year. Whether they were documented or undocumented. Now, the drought continues to plague this area and work is more scarce, it’s more limited,” Hernandez said, referring to workers who come from Mexico and other parts of California.

Worried about being able to afford rent, childcare and higher gas prices, farmworkers are starting to look outside agriculture to supplement their income.

“In the daytime, some will be at a farming operation and in the nighttime, they’ll be at packing houses. Some are now entering restaurant and retail businesses. We’ve heard of some being Uber drivers after work. There’s less work and they got to find a way to make ends meet. They’re now doing various things just to pretty much continue to live in the state,” Hernandez said.

Del Bosque, whose parents and himself were farmworkers, says he worries about the future of his farm and the potential of a massive exodus of workers.

There are more than 112,000 producers in the United States who identify as Hispanic and 60% of them live in Texas, California and New Mexico, according to the USDA’s 2017 Census of Agriculture.

California employs the most agricultural workers in the US, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says. An estimated 77% of all farmworkers are Hispanic, according to the latest National Agricultural Worker Survey.

“They can’t sit here and wait ‘till next year. They have to do something to support their family and because the whole valley is dry there’s probably other farmers in the area like me that don’t have the jobs. Some of them (farmworkers) may have to move to another state,” Del Bosque said.

Lawmakers in California are considering new legislation aimed at supporting farmworkers who lose work due to drought conditions.

Senate Bill 1066, proposed by State Sen. Melissa Hurtado, a Democrat, aims to create a state-funded project that would provide a monthly $1,000 cash payment for three years to households with at least one farmworker.

“SB 1066 will provide much needed help, and assistance to those struggling to feed their families, in an environment of increasingly rising food costs and uncertainty. Supporting our farmworkers is just the tip of the iceberg; we need to provide additional drought relief and ensure water is available for homes, and for health, and that it is truly available to all,” Hurtado previously said about the bill.

Nation: “We Are Very Worried”
FARM WORKERS ARE NOT PROTECTED WHILE WORKING IN YOUR FIELDS
“I’m scared of getting sick. I don’t have any type of health insurance, anything to help me.”

Adolfo FloresBuzzFeed News Reporter
Hamed AleazizBuzzFeed News Reporter
 Posted on April 6, 2020

Andrew Cullen for BuzzFeed News

As many in the US stayed at home to protect themselves from the global coronavirus pandemic, Teresa Mendoza, a 58-year-old undocumented farmworker from Mexico, spent six days a week picking green onions in Kern County, California, cleaning them, and tying them into bunches, just a few feet away from others like her.

Faced with the possibility of having to spend weeks in quarantine, people across the US have rushed to grocery stores to panic-buy food and supplies to tide them over while hunkered down.

Yet the agriculture and food processing plants, like meatpacking facilities, have been deemed essential by the federal government amid the pandemic, creating working conditions that most people in the US have been told to avoid. And it’s only going to get worse as thousands of migrant workers are expected to return to the US as the summer harvest picks up.

Meanwhile, for employees at food processing plants, some of which have already had cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, social distancing is virtually impossible. And farmworkers with few safety nets should they fall ill say they are toiling in fields with no information on how to protect themselves.

“We are very worried,” Mendoza, who lives in Kern County and has worked in the agricultural industry for 15 years, told BuzzFeed News. “I’m scared of getting sick. I don’t have any type of health insurance, anything to help me.”

In recent days, Mendoza switched jobs and began weeding in the blueberry fields, a more lucrative job that also allowed her more space from other workers. Still, she’s afraid: “I don’t know if someone will come to work who is sick — I just don’t know.”

BuzzFeed News spoke with multiple fieldworkers who agreed to only use their first names because of their undocumented status.

There are an estimated 2.4 million farmworkers in the US, and about half are undocumented. One of the precautions health officials have instructed people take against the coronavirus, social distancing, is difficult for them. In addition to working close to one another, they often travel to work sites in packed buses or other shared vehicles, advocates said.

Over a third of the US’s vegetables and two-thirds of the country's fruits and nuts are grown in California, according to 2018 figures from the California Department of Food and Agriculture. Mendoza said she’s continuing to work because she needs the income to survive. She also realized that her work helps a supply chain struggling to feed a country during a pandemic.

“I feel proud,” said Mendoza, who makes just over $500 a week. “I know that we are doing important work that is feeding the rest of the country. There are a lot of workers in the field. We are essential workers that this country needs.”


Andrew Cullen for BuzzFeed News
Teresa Mendoza, a vegetable picker in California's Central Valley.

Teresa Romero, president of the United Farm Workers union, has been calling on agriculture employers to extend sick leave and provide easy access to health services, since many workers are undocumented and live in rural areas.

“Some of us are blessed with the opportunity to work from home and maintain social distance to protect ourselves. Unfortunately not everyone is that lucky,” Romero said on a call with reporters. “Unfortunately, farmworkers are uniquely vulnerable in the pandemic because they work in cramped, substandard, and unsanitary conditions.”

If farmworkers are deemed essential because they help get food to the public, Romero said, then it’s important to extend protections for them because it not only affects them and their families, but the food supply.

“Farmworkers have been deemed essential workers, and they’re right — they’re the people that produce all of the food in the country,” Romero said.

The United Farm Workers union (UFW) is also asking employers to eliminate the 90-day waiting period for new workers to be eligible for sick pay, stop requiring doctors’ notes when farmworkers claim sick days, clean and disinfect frequently touched surfaces multiple times a day, and arrange for daycare assistance since schools are closed.

“Many farmworkers are single mothers,” Romero said. “They have to continue working to provide for their families, so they’re being forced to leave children at home … because they don’t have family support.”

Jim Cochran, owner of Swanton Berry Farm, an organic strawberry operation and a UFW-represented grower outside of Santa Cruz, California, said his farm is fortunate enough to provide housing for the 25 year-round employees in an isolated area, which could help decrease the chances of someone contracting the coronavirus.

Even before President Trump signed a sick pay bill, Cochran told his employees that if they got sick and needed to stay home for a few weeks, he would cover their wages.

"I couldn't afford to do it, but I offered to do it anyway," Cochran said. "It's a constant balancing act and that's what makes it interesting, because you have the human needs of your employees and the market needs and every day something is changing."


Andrew Cullen for BuzzFeed News
Farmworkers install irrigation pipes in a lettuce field in California's Central Valley during the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak.


Leticia, a 31-year-old mother of four in Bakersfield, California, normally works as a mandarin orange picker in the winter and picks blueberries in the summer. In recent days, however, she stopped working because of fears she would bring home the virus and potentially expose her 3-year-old boy, who has asthma.

Leticia, who is undocumented, said that the decision costs her family upward of $600 a week, but it was the safer choice. The family has had to cut down on expenses and rely solely on her husband, who works as a forklift driver.

“I’m really worried. I was afraid something might happen to my son,” Leticia said. “It’s been very difficult.”

Paula Schelling, acting chairperson for the National Joint Council of Food Inspection Locals for the American Federation of Government Employees, said her 6,500 members want to continue to do their jobs, but they're not being given any protective gear against COVID-19 by the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service.

"The one thing the agency keeps saying is follow the CDC guidelines, follow the CDC guidelines," Schelling told BuzzFeed News. "But social distancing is virtually impossible."

A food safety inspector has already died of COVID-19 in New York City, Schelling said. Four additional inspectors have since tested positive for COVID-19 at other sites.

"Ultimately, there's people out there ensuring the food is being processed safely and they need to be protected," Schelling said.

At least eight employees at a date packinghouse in Coachella, California, tested positive for COVID-19, said Lee Ellis, accounting manager at SunDate. After conducting a deep cleaning, which the company does every day, Ellis said, the packinghouse reopened.

Salvador, an undocumented 31-year-old mandarin picker also in Bakersfield, said work has picked up in recent weeks, forcing him to show up each day in the orchards. While he is separated from others while picking citrus, the drives to work are crammed with up to seven workers in a van.

“If I don’t work, my family does not eat,” said Salvador, who has four young children at home. “If the farmworkers don’t work, then the fruits and vegetables don’t arrive.”


Andrew Cullen for BuzzFeed News
Mandarin trees in California's Central Valley are shrouded in netting that keeps bees from pollinating their blooms, resulting in seedless fruit.

Earlier this month, Salvador’s children have asked him why he’s going to work if others are being told to stay home. Among his biggest worries is what his family would do if they get sick from coronavirus.

“What would happen to our expenses? How would we deal with bills? We don’t have family,” said Salvador.

While the agriculture industry is expected to receive $23.5 billion in aid as part of the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package, half of farmworkers won't qualify for federal stimulus benefits because they're undocumented.

The New American Economy, an immigration think tank, estimated that in 2018, undocumented immigrants contributed $20.1 billion in federal taxes and $11.8 billion in state and local taxes.

On Wednesday, Trump was asked how undocumented immigrants, millions of whom pay taxes using an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, will survive the economic slump caused by COVID-19.

“We have a lot of citizens right now that won't be working, so what are you going to do?” he told reporters. “It’s a tough thing, it’s a very terrible, it’s a very sad question. I must be honest with you, but they came in illegally.” ●


MORE ON IMMIGRATION
Trump Ordered All Immigrants Caught Entering The US Illegally To Be Turned Back To Ward Off Coronavirus SpreadAdolfo Flores · March 20, 2020
The Trump Administration Is Now Deporting Unaccompanied Immigrant Kids Due To The CoronavirusHamed Aleaziz · March 30, 2020
Three Unaccompanied Immigrant Children In US Custody Have Tested Positive For The CoronavirusHamed Aleaziz · March 26, 2020

Adolfo Flores is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in McAllen, Texas..

Hamed Aleaziz is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in San Francisco.

SEE  

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https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=TYSON

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=MEAT+PACKING

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=COVID19

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=JBS


https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=UFW

Biden’s support of California farmworker bill makes it ‘complicated’ for Newsom

2022/09/07

Joe Aguilar of Sacramento waves a United Farm Workers flag in front of the state Capitol in Sacramento after the union finished a 24- day march on Aug. 26, 2022, to call on Gov. - Hector Amezcua/The Sacramento Bee/TNS

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — As Gov. Gavin Newsom weighs whether to veto another California farmworker union bill, he has a new and unexpected voice in his ear: President Joe Biden, who has decided to inject national politics into a state labor battle.

Over Labor Day weekend, Biden issued a statement backing a bill that would allow farmworkers to vote by mail in union elections. Supporters say the measure would make it easier and less intimidating for them to organize.

“Farmworkers worked tirelessly and at great personal risk to keep food on America’s tables during the pandemic,” Biden said. “In the state with the largest population of farmworkers, the least we owe them is an easier path to make a free and fair choice to organize a union. I am grateful to California’s elected officials and union leaders for leading the way.”

Presidents seldom intervene in state legislative fights. But underlying Biden’s involvement is the tension between an unpopular incumbent and a rising national Democratic star. Newsom has criticized party leadership for failing to aggressively push back against Republican policies on abortion, climate change and other issues. Biden’s support for the bill is a little pushback of his own, some political professionals say.

“There’s some back-room positioning between the two of the biggest Democratic politicians in the country,” said Mike Madrid, a Republican Latino political consultant. “The president has taken on a much more aggressive posture with all of his critics, whether they’re Republicans or whether they’re Democrats and this is another sign of that. There’s no other reason for the president to weigh in on this other than to put Gov. Newsom in his place.”

Assembly Bill 2183, sponsored by the United Farm Workers and authored by Assemblyman Mark Stone, D-Monterey Bay, passed in the final days of the legislative session. Newsom has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto it.

He vetoed a similar measure in 2021, citing technical issues. This year, the governor has been facing pressure to sign from labor advocates backing UFW, which led a 335-mile march across California to demonstrate in support of the bill.

Biden’s involvement in the farmworker debate adds another layer to Newsom’s already complex decision, political consultants and communications experts say.

“Joe Biden just made Gavin Newsom’s life a whole lot more complicated,” said Dan Schnur, a political communications professor at the University of California, Berkeley and USC and former spokesman for Republican Gov. Pete Wilson. “It’s not unheard of for a president to weigh in on state legislation. But it’s relatively rare to put the squeeze on a governor of your own party like this.”

Newsom’s office did not respond to requests Monday for comment.

Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, project director for the UCLA Labor Center, could not recall the last time a sitting president weighed in so strongly on a state labor issue.

It’s yet another “message” sent in Newsom’s direction, said Rivera-Salgado. Lorena Gonzalez, new head of the California Labor Federation, did a similar move when she invited UFW back into the fold of the state’s labor movement.

“I would read it as trying to put some political pressure on Gavin Newsom to come through,” he said.

Rivera-Salgado added that Biden has put Newsom in an “interesting” position and further open to criticism that the governor has a “soft spot” for growers. The winery Newsom co-founded just bought a Napa vineyard for $14.5 million.

Some labor leaders were not surprised by Biden’s support. He is widely seen as the most outspokenly pro-union president in decades and made headlines in early 2021 for the 22-inch-tall bronze bust of farm labor leader Cesar Chavez behind his desk.

The UFW also endorsed Biden for president in 2020, banking on hopes he would implement farmworker safety protections and immigration reforms. And in March 2021, first lady Jill Biden visited Forty Acres in Delano, the storied birthplace of UFW.

“This shows his commitment to farmworkers.… And it shows that the farmworkers have done a really good job using their voices to share their struggles directly with individuals,” Gonzalez said.

Vice President Kamala Harris, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro have also urged Newsom to sign the bill.

UFW President Teresa Romero said the union had been in communication with the “different people” in the administration, sharing farmworker challenges to organizing. Biden’s White House director of Intergovernmental Affairs is Julie Chávez Rodriguez, Chavez’s granddaughter.

“It’s very meaningful to us and to the workers, to know that we have the support of the president,” Romero said.

Romero remains “50/50” on whether the governor will support the bill. She notes there has been no communication with Newsom’s office since the bill was approved by the Senate last Tuesday.

AB 2163 continues to face staunch opposition from the agricultural industry and grower associations. They argue UFW no longer prioritizes organizing and is ineffective in advocating for better working conditions. In its 1970s heyday, the union had 80,000 members in California and other states. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, it now numbers a little over 6,000.

Rob Roy, president and general counsel for Ventura County Agricultural Association, called the union “virtually nonexistent.” He pointed to the last five years during which UFW has not successfully filed for an election to represent California farmworkers.

“I think the president ought to keep his nose out of state laws dealing with unionization,” Roy said. “But given his background, being pro-union, I guess he just can’t help himself.”

Roy said he expected Biden to have no effect on Newsom’s decision.

During the last few days of the legislative session, Newsom signaled he may veto AB 2183 and has not taken a public stance on the measure since lawmakers approved it.

“Gov. Newsom is eager to sign legislation that expands opportunity for agricultural workers to come together and be represented, and he supports changes to state law to make it easier for these workers to organize,” Erin Mellon, Newsom’s communications director, told The Fresno Bee in August.

“However, we cannot support an untested mail-in election process that lacks critical provisions to protect the integrity of the election and is predicated on an assumption that government cannot effectively enforce laws.”

The main sticking point is whether growers would be notified about an impending union election. UFW staffers say doing so would allow employers to union bust and take action against workers for organizing, including deporting those who are undocumented.

Newsom’s office says not notifying growers about upcoming union elections goes against national labor organizing standards.

Stone, the bill’s author, said his office worked closely with both Newsom and UFW on the bill, which he thinks the governor largely supports, except for “a piece of it he does not like.” He said that’s why the bill includes a five-year sunset provision that would allow lawmakers to reconsider it.

“It was really an attempt to try and say, ‘We know we’re not completely there, but we’re willing to continue to work,’” Stone said.

William Gould IV, former head of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board and the National Labor Relations Board, said he had respect for Biden, but that the president was given “bad information” on the bill.

“President Biden does not understand farm labor law situation in California. … This is complete make believe. I’m sorry the President has fallen for this lie,” Gould said.

He echoed Roy’s sentiments and shared that, as chairman of the NLRB, UFW only filed one election petition in three years. He said farmworkers deserve protection and was in favor of more organizing. However, Gould said this bill would not help improve unionization rates.

“No one is trying to organize the farmworkers,” Gould said. “They should be organized and hopefully, at some point there will be a union that will try to organize them.”

Newsom has shown support for organized labor in certain situations. On Monday, he signed a bill that will create a fast-food council to help low-wage employees improve their working conditions. This could help to soften some of the criticism from labor if he vetoes the farmworker union bill, Schnur said.

“Newsom (doesn’t) need to sign the farmworkers’ bill in order to shore up his labor credentials this year,” he said. “He took care of that with the fast-food legislation.”

Biden’s support for the farmworker union bill could give Newsom political cover to sign it, or it could make the optics worse if he vetoes it.

Madrid said it’s dangerous for Biden or other politicians to view policies like AB 2183 as a way to appeal to the Latino community. It’s unfair to stereotype Latinos as farmworkers or undocumented residents who care only about border issues, he said.

“When you poll Latino voters ... these are not issues of huge concern,” Madrid said. “They are of symbolic concern. But when you’re the governor that has to actually deal with these issues, you have to deal with substance as much or more than symbolism.”

———

© The Sacramento Be

ARYAN FARMERS

Migrant farmworkers left out of Alberta's vaccination rollout, says activist group

Chelsea Nash
May 11, 2021

Vanesa Ortiz, her husband, and her 13-year-old daughter have been working as a family on behalf of Alberta's Mexican migrant agricultural workers since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.

Ortiz, her family and the organization they represent -- the Association of Mexicans in Calgary (AMexCal) -- started out as an anti-racism organization for the Latino community in Alberta. When COVID-19 hit the province, they directed all of their energies to supporting migrant farmworkers.

"The agricultural workforce in Alberta is migrant farm workers and it's completely invisible," Ortiz said in an interview.

A Mexican immigrant herself, Ortiz has built her connections with migrant agricultural workers and some of the farmers who employ them from the ground up.

"There has really not been advocacy in many years [specifically] around migrant farmworkers," she said.

Ortiz, her family, and AMexCal have been organizing in coordination with Migrante Alberta, who have long advocated for temporary foreign workers, undocumented workers and caregivers. They have also been mentored by the Ontario-based advocacy organization Justicia for Migrant Workers.

Ortiz said she's driven all over Alberta building relationships with workers, laughing at how quickly she has become an expert in navigating even the smallest of communities.

Throughout the pandemic, she has been delivering supplies such as hand sanitizer, Lysol wipes, toilet paper, and masks, as well as food to workers who are often restricted from leaving the farms -- even to grocery shop -- due to the pandemic.

Sometimes, when the employer of migrant farmworkers does not allow her to make deliveries or enter the farm, she drops supplies off by the side of the road after dark, where workers will collect them.

Ortiz said the migrant worker population is lower than previous years, likely because fewer workers are coming to Canada due to pandemic fears. Last year, after two migrant farmworkers died in Essex County, Ontario, from COVID-19, Mexico stopped sending temporary foreign workers to Canada, limiting the workforce here.

However, living conditions are still crowded, Ortiz said, with three or four workers often living in one shared bedroom.

Now, she says, the most pressing matter for migrant agricultural workers in the province is getting vaccinated.

On May 3, Ortiz and Luis Vazquez -- president of AMexCal -- sent a letter to Premier Jason Kenney, Alberta Minister of Health Tyler Shandro, and several other provincial and federal ministers responsible for labour, immigration, agriculture and food.

The letter laid out the situation for the province's migrant agricultural workers, describing the essential jobs they undertake to sustain communities' food chains, despite being excluded from provincial services and labour protections.

Because of the congregate work and living conditions, Ortiz says migrant agricultural workers must be prioritized in Alberta's vaccine rollout.

Not only that, but this population of vulnerable workers requires support in acquiring their vaccines, in the form of vaccination information in their own languages, and physical access to vaccination clinics.

Ortiz notes this could take the form of providing transportation to and from vaccine clinics for workers living in remote communities. She also suggests that vaccine clinics be brought to the workers so that entire farms can be offered vaccines at once. But, she points out, the process must be non-coercive.

A spokesperson from Alberta Health Services said in an emailed statement that "anyone in Alberta, including a migrant farm worker, who is 12 or older can get the vaccine…Work is underway to increase outreach to marginalized or vulnerable groups across the province."

The spokesperson also said if an individual does not have identification with their age on it, they can book a vaccination appointment by calling Alberta Health Services at 811. He did not answer questions about the issue of a lack of transportation that migrant farmworkers face.

The letter from AMexCal also featured quotes from migrant workers themselves, though their names were changed to protect their privacy.

The quotes from workers described fears that they will be required to have been vaccinated in order to return to their home countries when the season ends. They also expressed a fear of taking COVID-19 home with them to their families.

"If we get sick, operations at the farm might stop. We want to work but we also want to be protected from COVID and go back with health to our families," a worker named as Luis G. said.

Canada relies heavily on the temporary foreign worker program for its food production. In all of Canada, temporary foreign workers make up 20 per cent of total employment in the agriculture sector. In 2018 in Alberta, there were 1,900 migrant farmworkers employed on farms, or roughly six per cent of the total workforce.

Ortiz said the issues facing migrant agricultural workers in Alberta get little attention when compared to workers in Ontario or British Columbia. She also said the agricultural sector has a firm grip on public opinion in the province, and criticism of farmers is not readily accepted.

Chelsea Nash is rabble's labour beat reporter for 2020-2021. To contact her with story leads, email chelsea[at]rabble.ca.

Image credit: Faith Unlimited/Flickr

 

Antibiotic-resistant strains of staph bacteria may be spreading between pigs raised in factory farms

Findings from DNA-sequencing study raise public health concerns

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY BLOOMBERG SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Research News

 

DNA sequencing of bacteria found in pigs and humans in rural eastern North Carolina, an area with concentrated industrial-scale pig-farming, suggests that multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus strains are spreading between pigs, farmworkers, their families and community residents, and represents an emerging public health threat, according to a study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

S. aureus is commonly found in soil and water, as well as on the skin and in the upper respiratory tract in pigs, other animals, and people. It can cause medical problems from minor skin infections to serious surgical wound infections, pneumonia, and the often-lethal blood-infection condition known as sepsis. The findings provide evidence that multidrug-resistant S. aureus strains are capable of spreading and possibly causing illness in and around factory farm communities in the U.S.--a scenario the authors say researchers should continue to investigate.

The study was published online February 22 in Emerging Infectious Diseases, a journal published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The researchers in recent years have been collecting samples of S. aureus from pigs, farmworkers, farmworkers' family members, and community residents--including children--in the top pig-producing counties in North Carolina. For the study, they sequenced the DNA from some of these samples to determine the relation of the strains found in pigs and people. They found that the strains were very closely related, providing evidence for transmission between pigs and people. Most of the strains carried genes conferring resistance to multiple antibiotics.

"We found that these livestock-associated S. aureus strains had many genes that confer resistance to antimicrobial drugs commonly used in the U.S. industrialized pig production system," says study first author Pranay Randad, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in the Bloomberg School's Department of Environmental Health and Engineering.

"These findings warrant future investigations into the transmission dynamics in nearby communities and disease burden associated with these strains in the United States," says study senior author Christopher Heaney, PhD, associate professor in the same department. Epidemiologists have long suspected that S. aureus and other bacteria are transmitted from humans to pigs on factory farms, and thereafter evolve antibiotic resistance within the pigs. The animals are routinely given antibiotics to prevent outbreaks in their dense concentrations on factory farms. The drug-resistant bacterial strains may then be transmitted back to humans, becoming a potentially serious source of disease.

In recent years, Heaney and colleagues have been gathering S. aureus isolates from pigs and farmworkers at factory-scale pig farms in North Carolina, one of the leading pig-farming states. Their research has shown that livestock-associated strains of S. aureus, many of them antibiotic-resistant strains, can be found not only in pigs but also in farmworkers, their family members, and residents living nearby.

For the new study they performed whole-genome sequencing on 49 of these S. aureus isolates to characterize these strains at the DNA level and get a more precise picture of their interrelatedness.

One finding was that all these isolates, whether taken from humans or pigs, belonged to a grouping of S. aureus strains known as clonal complex 9 (CC9).

"This CC9 is a novel and emerging subpopulation of S. aureus that not many people have been studying, apart from a few reports in Asia," Randad says.

The researchers also determined from their analysis that the CC9 isolates from North Carolina were closely related, in many cases implying recent transmission between pigs and people. Moreover, virtually all of the isolates that appeared to be involved in transmission between pigs and humans were multidrug resistant, suggesting that diseases these isolates cause could be hard to treat.

The scope of the study didn't include evaluating S. aureus-related disease among people in the affected communities, but one of the pig farmworkers who carried a CC9 isolate in their nose reported a recent skin infection.

"In other countries, such as in Europe, we see a high level of coordinated research on this topic from a public health perspective, with open access to collect bacterial isolates from pigs raised on factory farms, but so far in the U.S. not as much is being done," Randad says.

###

"Transmission of Antimicrobial-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Clonal Complex 9 between Pigs and Humans, United States" was co-authored by Pranay Randad, Jesper Larsen, Hülya Kaya, Nora Pisanic, Carly Ordak, Lance Price, Maliha Aziz, Maya Nadimpalli, Sarah Rhodes, Jill Stewart, Dave Love, David Mohr, Meghan Davis, Lloyd Miller, Devon Hall, Karen Carroll, Trish Perl, and Christopher Heaney.

Support for the study was provided by the Sherrilyn and Ken Fisher Center for Environmental Infectious Diseases Discovery Program at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; the GRACE Communications Foundation; the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, among other funding sources.