Midstate Council for Occupational Safety and Health receives grant

Midstate Council for Occupational Safety and Health (COSH) is the recipient of a $150,000 grant by Jobs for the Future (JFF), Ascendium and the World Education Services Mariam Assefa Fund. Funding will go toward Midstate COSH’s ongoing campaign to support and improve the working conditions of essential workers in the Finger Lakes and Southern Tier.

“It’s important to note that we are part of a national organization, so there are plenty of groups like ours across the country,” said Tom Joyce, board chair of the Painters and Allied Trades Union. “In New York state there are four or five other COSH groups, so that gives us a lot of resources and a large pool of ideas for workers and fundraisers, since we are a nonprofit.” 

Midstate COSH is just one of 10 groups across the country that are part of the Rural Immigrant Success Exchange (RISE). The grant will go toward their work with this program. RISE focuses on peer-centered learning and support to create the best possible work environments that are safe and offer long-term opportunities. It is a two-year initiative that will convene a team of organizations from across the country to break down barriers to education, training and employment for immigrant and refugee workers residing in rural communities. 

“We learned when we got the grant about this wide network of groups that are doing different things but are reaching for the same goal,” Joyce said. “Ours is fairly unique because of our connection to the building trades and specifically the painters’ union. That gives us the opportunity to get people into better-paying and longer-term jobs.”

Midstate COSH will partner with the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, District Council 4 (IUPAT DC 4), to recruit and train Spanish-speaking rural immigrants for upwardly mobile jobs in construction, painting and drywall finishing. 

“We are constantly working on fundraising to provide more for our workers,” said the secretary of the Tompkins County Workers’ Center, Carlos Gutierrez. “Right now, we are largely focused on agricultural workers and dairy farm workers, and immigrants, or course. We have mainly provided occupational health and safety training, but along the way there have been other things happening in the state.”

In 2019, agricultural workers were granted the right to organize and to negotiate contracts with the farms where they were employed. There was also a shift to provide workers with the ability to apply for and receive a driver’s license, even if they do not have a U.S. Social Security number. This has increased the potential job opportunities for immigrants and has given them more capacity at their current jobs. 

Gutierrez’s role at the Workers’ Center is to reach out to people around the community to share what Midstate COSH is and to provide information and resources on worker health and safety to people who may not otherwise know their rights and protections. He has been working in health and safety for 13 years. 

“We have a lot of information, and know about, people who have died at work unnecessarily,” Gutierrez said. “Our main objective is to go out into the community and train workers in health and safety – and especially workers who might not know their rights or legal protections.”

Across the country, immigrants play a key role in rural communities. These jobs are often unstable and unsafe for immigrants, refugees and migrants in rural areas, making access to quality jobs and economic advancement a challenge. 

Midstate COSH provides advocacy, support and training to various immigrant and multigenerational worker groups because they believe the two should not be in opposition to each other and should work together for everyone’s benefit. 

Immigrant labor has been essential in the U.S. economy and throughout the midstate New York region. According to the Midstate COSH press release, most midsize and large dairy farms in New York rely on workers from Mexico and Central America to survive, as outlined in the report “Milked: Immigrant Dairy Farm Workers in New York State.” 

In its RISE initiative, Midstate COSH and IUPAT DC 4 will offer job training for construction trades and support of the IUPAT union for workplace challenges. Midstate COSH Spanish-speaking organizers will use their extensive relationships within the immigrant community to train workers on workplace rights, recruit them for IUPAT DC 4 membership and apprenticeships and help them obtain their driver’s licenses. DC 4 will enroll them in their Finishing Trades Institute, train them for employment in the trades and place them in employment with stable living wages and benefits. 

Midstate COSH will honor the life and work of immigrant and multigenerational essential workers who died on the job in a Workers’ Memorial Day event. The public is invited. The event, titled “Honoring the Sacrifices of Essential Workers,” will be on Friday, April 28, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. at UA Local 81, 701 W. State St., Ithaca. 

They will honor and memorialize all workers in central New York, the southern Finger Lakes and the Southern Tier who have died in workplace fatalities, including farm worker deaths, COVID-related deaths and others. All partner worker groups and unions, including Spanish-speaking immigrant farm workers, domestic workers, food service workers, Bangs paramedics and EMTs, workers from the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, D.C. 4, the United Food and Service Workers Union and more are invited to join.

In addition to Midstate COSH’s national RISE funding, it receives funding from various local sources, including the Tompkins County Recovery Fund, the Community Foundation of Tompkins County, the Park Foundation, and the New York Department of Labor Hazard Abatement Board.