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Secretary of labor tours Immokalee, encourages workers to share concerns
By KATY BISHOP
IMMOKALEE
— The president’s ears were in Immokalee on Monday.
At least that’s how community leaders, students and farmworkers felt
when they spoke to U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis.
Solis made three stops, including a visit to the Coalition of Immokalee
Workers, a roundtable at the
“(Her visit) is really very important, especially for a community like
Immokalee,” said Lucas Benitez, a founder of the Coalition of Immokalee
Workers, in Spanish. “It is a community that usually has little power or
voice, and the secretary is basically the ears of the president. She is
carrying our voice to a much higher level.”
After a meeting with Coalition members and a tour of their modern-day
slavery museum, Solis spoke about a new Department of Labor initiative
in the wages and hours division called “We can help.” The program’s goal
is to help “vulnerable workers,” she said, including people who work in
home health care, construction and in the fields.
Her representatives handed out posters at each stop with information
about who to call in case of workplace problems.
Reports issued by Congress showed a lack of enforcement of wages and
hours laws in the past, Solis said, so the Department of Labor has hired
250 investigators in its wage and hour division. Those new hires include
people who speak many languages, as it is important that workers feel
comfortable communicating their concerns and may not speak English.
“We want to let the public know that we are protecting the workers as
well as working with businesses that want to step up to the plate,” she
said.
Solis also spoke about her plans to begin issuing U visas, which were
created in 2000 but haven’t been used, she said. U visas are for victims
of substantial physical or mental abuse who are willing to assist law
enforcement. Recipients who help officials investigate or prosecute can
stay in the
At 11:30 a.m., the roundtable at the Immokalee Technical Center began,
and eight community leaders including farmworker advocates, work-force
training officials, charities and educational institutions answered
Solis’s questions about their organizations and the community’s needs.
About 150 people sat in the audience, including students from
Wage theft is a big problem for rural and urban workers, said
Other leaders spoke about workers’ fear of reporting wage and hour
violations, the fine structure for those violations, education and
retraining opportunities and more.
Students from the technical school got up and spoke, some telling
stories of working, studying and raising kids all at once, and others of
retraining for a new career in mid-life.
“I feel that this is a very strong community, that you’re very united,
that you know how to pull together and believe me, you will have a
friend in the Department of Labor,” Solis said at the end of the
roundtable.
On her last stop, Solis visited a community center and rental housing at
Immokalee Housing and Family Services, off
Finally, Solis visited the home of Elizabeth Adame, 47, who lives in a
rental house in the community. The secretary spoke with the mother of
three about her work history and the community she lives in.
“It was a blessing and also a surprise,” Adame said in Spanish.
“Because, wow, she’s Hispanic. Wow.”
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