People who work outside increasingly risk their income, illness and even death as climate change ramps up extreme heat. That’s according to a first-of-its-kind study from the Union of Concerned Scientists, titled “Too Hot To Work.” The study focused on workers who spend some or all of their work time outside, including construction workers, emergency
On a recent Saturday, white vans shuttled small groups of migrant farmworkers from the southern Illinois orchard where they work to St. Joseph’s…
Friday December 11, 2020 Today’s headlines: Governor JB Pritzker’s administration is sending Illinois National Guard medical staff to assist with Coronavirus testing and screening at three of the state’s four veterans’ homes. The governor’s office last week announced the 50 counties in Illinois that would be first in line for vaccine distribution for healthcare workers, a demographic
In late July 2019, a group of migrant farmworkers from south Texas was working in a cornfield in DeWitt County, Ill., when suddenly a crop duster flew…
En las afueras de Rantoul, en el centro-este de Illinois, unos 100 trabajadores agrícolas migrantes están viviendo en un viejo hotel localizado en una…
On the outskirts of Rantoul, in east-central Illinois, about 100 migrant farmworkers are living at an old hotel in a sleepy part of town. Every day at…
CHICAGO – The U.S. food supply depends on millions of migrant and seasonal farmworkers, who are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 because of circumstances in which they live and work. Outbreaks of COVID-19 on farms have killed more than a dozen farmworkers nationwide, and infected thousands more, according to tracking from the Food and Environment Reporting
CHICAGO – Thousands of workers travel to Illinois each year to work on farms, with the largest influx to central Illinois in the summer and fall. Amid concerns about COVID-19, the state’s department of public health is partnering with medical clinics to make testing available to farmworkers. The Community Health Partnership of Illinois, based in
CHAMPAIGN – Maricel Mendoza is familiar with the work migrant and seasonal farmworkers do. Growing up, her family traveled from Texas to central Illinois every year for her parents’ jobs as contractors with a large seed company. “All of my parents’ siblings were migrants, my grandparents were migrants,” Mendoza says. “So it’s just something that