Concerted Services, Training and Employment (CSTE), a cooperative program of HEW, Agriculture and Labor, costing each department around $30,000 a year, which provides funds to train and support a local program developer who assists rural communities in obtaining the various federal grants for which they are eligible;

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Local

the Small Communities Project. This project, developed in the early 1960's, has now been extended to 19 states. For the most part, it has not involved additional funds. offices are encouraged to redirect existing ES rural job slots from farm placements to the assessment of rural job market needs and of the problems of workers who might meet those needs. The work is done out of a central office in mobile units. The Department of Labor does not have extensive documentation of performance under the program. In 1970, it reported 38,000 placements out of 515,900 applicants; the program appears to operate principally as a data collection operation.

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DOL has also invested experimental funds in migrant projects. The Interstate Program for South Texas Migrant Workers, a special two-year program designed to assist migrants in moving out of the migrant stream and securing more stable employment, was funded at $140,000. The Department has no figures on the actual number of persons who achieved the project goals. The project has been discontinued.

The Department's own assessors reached the following conclusions about state performance under this program:

"Little has been done in Illinois to improve
the employability of migrants. . . . It is
state policy not to disrupt the workers'
contractual obligations with the employer."

"The objective of providing supportive ser-
vices to migrants during their stay in Northern
states was not met very successfully in Indiana
... Both state and local regular Employment
Service staff in Indiana lack any substantial
commitment toward the migrant project. Atti-
tudes among various staff are remarkably con-
sistent: the key function of the employment
service is felt to be that of connecting
workers and jobs.'

"The Michigan Migrant Project has not been
successful in providing services to migrants

no activity has been directed toward set-
tling out in Michigan . . In short, the poli-
tics of Michigan and the orientation of the

Farm Placement Service towards serving the
employers and providing employment to mi-
grants have left little room in Michigan
for a program oriented toward serving
migrants. "38/

It is unlikely that such limited programs will have a substantial impact on the manpower problems of the rural poor. The fact that many of them are run as short-term "Experiment and Development" projects raises questions about RMS commitment to permanent reform. In total, over 40% of the individuals required to register with the ES under the proposed welfare reform live in rural areas. Unless substantially more resources are allocated to rural manpower programs, and steps are taken to reorient ES staff, these rural welfare recipients will not be able to receive the required "employability development" services.

Most of the RMS offices, when faced with the choice of training workers for the nonfarm sector or meeting the harvesting needs of the growers, opt for the latter. The Farm Labor Division of the California Department of Human Resources Development, for example, stated in its FY 1971 plan of service that its major objective is to "insure an adequate work force with the skills necessary to meet the needs of California agriculture and agriculture-related industry." The growers' influence extends to the national level as well. One USTES official relates that in 1967 the DOL announced its intention to create 31 rural CEP's. The response of a major grower was "do you mean to tell me you'll use federal dollars to train our stand-by labor supply so it won't be available when we need it in the harvest season? If that's so, we'll have the program transferred to the Department of Agriculture." Only 13 of the 31 proposed programs were initiated.

2. Farm Labor Services. The taxpayer's investment in rural areas is, by and large, buying assistance for wealthy growers rather than meeting the needs of the migrant laborers. By far the greatest percentage of RMS resources are spent assisting farmers and agri-businessmen to obtain sufficient farm hands to harvest and process crops even though the growers, unlike other employers, are not required to pay the unemployment insurance payroll tax, and therefore make no financial contribution to the service. The RMS recruits migrant labor in 38 states, some from urban offices for "day haul," a single day's work in outlying farm areas in the same state. Others are recruited through "interstate arrangements" worked out between growers and employment service offices to meet the needs of specific crops or harvest seasons.

The service to farmers and growers works in this way: where possible jobs are filled with local workers, provided on either a day or a crop basis. If the local supply does not meet the grower's demand, ES places an interstate order on behalf of any grower who is willing to make specific commitments concerning the amount of work available, the number of workers needed and the duration of work, housing, pay and other conditions of employment. Job orders from demand states (the northern and mid-west states such as Michigan, New York, and New Jersey) are circulated in supply states (Texas, Florida, Arizona, etc.). This information is disseminated in supply areas by the local ES. The ES deals primarily with "crew leaders" who round up work groups and sign them up with the local ES, agreeing to transport them to the demand state. Each ES office participating in the program is required to prepare an Annual Work Plan; the plans are supposed to develop comprehensive itineraries for family groups and crews, indicating worker schedules, the names of the crew leaders, and transportation and housing provisions. actuality, the ES performs little more than perfunctory registration.

In

The ES has specific authority under a number of federal laws and regulations to insure minimum rights and protection to migrant workers. Most of these laws go unenforced, and the migrants remain subjected to dehumanizing, substandard conditions. The Farm Labor Contractor (Crew Leader) Registration Act, for example, requires each crew leader contracting for ten or more migrants to register with the Secretary of Labor, showing that he has adequate liability insurance to cover the workers during transit and that he has disclosed to the workers the conditions of employment. Crew leaders who pay wages must keep payroll records. The Secretary may revoke a crew leader's certification for violation of any of these provisions. In addition, the crew leader is subject to criminal prosecution.

These laws were passed by the Congress because of the key role crew leaders play in the lives of migrant laborers; controlling all facets of their travel, living conditions and wages and in many cases cutting them off from contacts with the growers and the outside world. The Act has not been enforced despite constant, flagrant violations. The RMS has only five staff people assigned to enforcement (none of whom are stationed in California despite the heavy reliance of that state's agriculture on migrants) and only two prosecutions have been brought under the law since its enactment in 1963.

The RMS is also required to enforce the federal housing standards that have been imposed on growers whose workers are involved in interstate travel. These regulations were issued under the Wagner-Peyser Act after the 1969 Fifth Circuit decision in Gomez v. Florida State Employment Service, 417 F.2d 569, which held that the DOL was responsible for insuring adequate housing for workers recruited through the interstate system. In most states, there is no adequate policing.39/ The housing regulations have become another set of "paper rights." In some states such as Texas, growers have reduced their formal recruitment activities through the ES (there is no paper record kept) in order to avoid the regulations; major processors now conduct their own recruitment, relying on support from ES office facilities and personnel.

In other states, such as Michigan, there is evidence that the ES has "relaxed" the regulations to such an extent as to render them ineffective. The case of Garcia v. Michigan Employment Security Comm., pending in U.S. district court, contains well-documented evidence that the Michigan ES has: (a) obtained variances in the housing regulations that violated the intent of those regulations to the prejudice of the workers, and (b) processed job orders for individual farms knowing that the housing supply could not accommodate the workers without illegal overcrowding. In early 1971, in reaction to the Garcia case, Michigan ES officials discouraged growers from using the ES interstate recruitment system, stating that a surplus of migrant labor was expected in the state. They also indicated that the "binding commitments growers must make at the time they apply for interstate clearance. . . are now so stringent that they [ES officials] cannot recommend the growers sign [such commitments]."40/

A similar attitude was reflected at the national level, when a DOL official with rural manpower responsibilities complained in an interview that the government's "tough" housing regulations have "driven the farmers away from us." This, he said, was particularly true of orders from Michigan, which used to flood the Texas ES.

In April, 1971, 16 prominent organizations, including the NAACP, National Organization for Women, Mexican-American Legal & Educational Defense fund and American G.I. Forum, and 398 individual farm workers, petitioned the Secretary of Labor to use his administrative power to abolish the present groweroriented Farm Labor Service and replace it with a manpower and placement operation staffed and directed by migrants themselves. The 42-page factual complaint, supported by over 1500 verified exhibits, charges the farm labor service offices in fifteen states with, among other things: