 Career
Center News
By The Associated Press
Recruiters fill void after immigration raids nationwide
Aug 16 20:51
By CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN
Associated Press Writer
McALLEN, Texas (AP) -- The largest single-site workplace raid in U.S. history
may have cost a kosher slaughterhouse in Iowa nearly half its employees, but it's been a boon to
labor recruiters around the country.
After federal immigration agents raided Agriprocessors, Inc., and arrested
nearly 400 undocumented workers, Gavino Bravo's phone started ringing.
Suddenly a steady -- though mostly illegal -- stream of workers willing to toil
long hours in difficult conditions for low wages had dried up. And the northeast Iowa meatpacking
plant needed hundreds of new employees. Fast.
From a cluttered office suite a block off Main Street in this city near the
Mexican border, Bravo, his father Jose and their Bravo Labor Agency set out to fill the void. So
far, they've recruited about 200 workers for Agriprocessors, sending them north on buses in batches
of 10 to 15.
Bravo and other recruiters applaud the recent crackdowns by U.S. Immigration
and Customs Enforcement agents at jobsites in Iowa, Texas and elsewhere.
"That's great for us -- they're going to have to come to us for workers," said
Gavino Bravo, who is paid a flat fee -- he would say how much -- for each worker he recruits.
Under normal circumstances, meat processors and other large employers that rely
on immigrant labor have little need for outside recruiters. Agriprocessors had established labor
supply lines from Mexico, Guatemala and some Eastern European countries. The company also operates a
plant near Gordon, Neb.
"New employees come to Agriprocessors mainly through word-of-mouth," its
company Web site says. "As a result, many of Agriprocessors' new employees found their jobs through
family members already working for the company."
But with nearly half its workers jailed and awaiting deportation, those lines
were suddenly severed.
"They're just trying to reconstruct the migrant labor supply that was blown to
pieces by the raid," said Lourdes Gouveia, director of the Office of Latino/Latin American Studies
of the Great Plains at the University of Nebraska-Omaha.
Gouveia, a sociology professor who has studied food processing plants and their
ties to immigration, said that while some of the largest companies, such as Tyson Foods, recruit
internally, more and more companies depend on outside agencies to refill the labor pool after a
raid.
"It happens more with raids because they're desperate," Gouveia said.
The depth of that desperation was apparent in Amarillo earlier this summer,
when a recruiter for the Iowa plant cruised homeless shelters and the bus station in search of
potential hires.
Cathy Manes, director of employment services at Faith City Ministries in
Amarillo, said the recruiter asked if he could discuss job opportunities at Agriprocessors following
the shelter's regular chapel service.
Manes said she had questions about the company and safety and welfare of its
workers and decided not to recommend the jobs to her clients.
"I didn't want to uproot someone and them be treated poorly," Manes said.
Jacobson Staffing, a temporary worker agency, took over recruitment for the
Iowa plant in early June. Ryan Regenold, who oversees the Agriprocessors account for Jacobson, said
the Amarillo recruiters were already working for Agriprocessors when Jacobson came on. He said in
most cases the Amarillo recruits didn't pan out.
"They were people that came up here looking for a handout," said Ryan Regenold,
who oversees the Agriprocessors account. The company offered them bus tickets back to Amarillo and
most accepted, he said.
Things went badly for workers another staffing agency sent to Agriprocessors in
May.
Ten days after sending about 150 workers to the plant, Labor Ready pulled them
out citing concerns over safety conditions, said Stacey Burke, spokeswoman for Labor Ready's parent
company, True Blue. She declined to detail the safety issues.
Regenold, however, said Agriprocessors decided to send the Labor Ready workers
home after safety incidents.
The spring raid came amid investigations into labor, food safety and
environmental violations at the plant. The company has been accused in recent years of mistreating
animals and employees.
Labor officials have said they were investigating possible wage violations at
the plant and the state has accused Agriprocessors of violating child labor laws.
Since June 2, Jacobson Staffing has supplied about 900 temporary workers to
Agriprocessors, with about 480 still on the payroll as of Aug. 1, said Regenold.
Jacobson started with ads in local newspapers, exhausted the labor pool within
driving distance and expanded the search, adding another recruiting firm and using four of its own
recruiters.
Jacobson runs all of its potential hires through the government's E-Verify
system to make sure applicants are in the U.S. legally and are able to work.
The search was easier for Bravo.
His agency ran ads in Spanish-language newspapers and on Mexican radio stations
in the Rio Grande Valley and had little trouble finding workers though only about one quarter were
skilled in meat processing. Bravo's simple ads only said that the jobs were out of state and the
applicants must have permission to work in the U.S. Bravo does not use E-Verify, but requires
applicants to show original documents indicating they can work legally in the U.S.
Bravo has been sending laborers to sugar cane fields in Louisiana, dairy farms
in Maine and grain silos in South Dakota for years, Bravo said.
The $10 per hour starting wage offered by Agriprocessors is enough to get
workers to relocate to Iowa, he said.
"There are not that many opportunities for work here and the opportunities
there are, are low paying," Bravo said. A new pile of applications in Bravo's office from friends
and relatives of the first batch of workers he sent to Iowa indicate that a new labor pipeline is
already forming.
An attempt at comprehensive immigration reform failed late last year amid an
immigration crackdown at work sites nationwide. In fiscal year 2007, Immigration and Customs
Enforcement agents made 4,000 administrative arrests of workers who were in the country illegally
and 863 criminal arrests for more serious offenses. The arrests were ten times the number made five
years earlier.
Through the first eight months of this fiscal year, ICE has matched the
criminal arrests from last year and made 2,900 administrative arrests.
Bravo said business has improved along with enforcement.
"I don't think they'll be able to go back to undocumented workers because
they're being scrutinized so much," Bravo said.
"I knew sooner or later it was going to catch up with them," he said.
--------
Associated Press Writer Anabelle Garay in Dallas contributed to this report.
Officials: Nursing shortage could become crisis
Aug 16 14:27
NEW BRITAIN, Conn. (AP) -- Connecticut's nursing shortage could reach crisis
proportions if more education programs and funds are not made available in the next few years,
according to health care advocates.
Several nurses, instructors and others in the field say they are awaiting word
on whether a proposed $185,000 federal grant will be approved for the Connecticut State University
System's nursing programs.
That could spur federal and state leaders and the private sector to work
together to help reverse the nursing shortage and prevent it from getting worse, said U.S. Rep.
Christopher Murphy, D-Conn.
Murphy gathered Friday with nursing professionals from throughout the state to
draw attention to the nursing shortage.
They attribute it, in part, to a shortage of instructors and the limited number
of spots available in existing nursing programs statewide for people who want to enroll.
"They are unable to secure a seat in a program in the state of Connecticut,"
said Mary Jane Williams, professor and chairwoman of the University of Hartford's nursing
department.
About 1,100 qualified nursing applicants were turned away last year from
programs across the state because there weren't enough seats, Williams said. Nationally, that figure
was 40,000.
Murphy said federal reports estimate that over the next eight years, health
care institutions across the country will need 1 million new nurses.
He said he believes the U.S. House of Representatives will approve the proposed
grant for the state's university system, which would use it to add seats in nursing programs at
Central, Western, Southern and Eastern Connecticut state universities.
It also would help fund programs for more graduate training opportunities,
scholarships and equipment, authorities said.
Recent reports say Connecticut continues to struggle with a shortage of
registered nurses, despite increases in recent years in the number of nursing graduates at colleges
in the state.
A 2007 report by the state Department of Higher Education said 1,076 registered
nursing degrees were issued by Connecticut colleges in 2006.
That figure was 25 percent higher than in 2005, but fell short of the number of
annual registered nurse job openings predicted by the state Labor Department.
------
Information from: The Bristol Press, http://www.bristolpress.com
Facing worker shortage, W.Va. to hold job fairs
Aug 14 13:10
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) -- Worker shortages are looming across state government
in a variety of jobs, and the situation could worsen as employees retire.
The Department of Administration is working to fill the gaps. It plans to hold
job fairs across West Virginia to attract applicants.
Department of Administration spokeswoman Diane Holley says the agency is trying
to build the pool of applicants for all fields.
Some fields already are experiencing shortages, including health services,
nurses, correctional officers and counselors, law enforcement, engineers, architects and
accountants.
The first job fair will be held next Wednesday in Fairmont. Others are planned
in Wheeling, Martinsburg, Elkins, Huntington and Bluefield but the dates haven't been determined.
------
On the Net:
W.Va. Division of Personnel: www.state.wv.us/admin/personnel.
------
Information from: The Charleston Gazette,
http://www.wvgazette.com
Pittsburgh recruiting minorities for police, fire
Aug 14 09:34
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- Pittsburgh is using job fairs for minorities and women to
make sure the city's police and fire bureaus reflect the citizenry they serve.
About 10 percent of the city's 613 firefighters are minorities, and less than 2
percent are women. About 19 percent of the city's 903 police are minorities and the same percentage
are women.
The city's population, however, is about 33 percent minority.
Public Safety Director Michael Huss says the city wants to employ more
minorities and women, but says more need to apply for jobs for that to happen.
------
Information from: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, http://pghtrib.com
Column: Fired and rehired; save on gas; more
Aug 12 14:14
By TALI ARBEL
AP Business Writer
FIRED AND REHIRED: So you got downsized. It's happening a lot this year --
579,260 job cuts reported so far, according to outplacement consultants Challenger Gray & Christmas
Inc. -- but experts say you shouldn't see it as career death. In fact, it can be a rebirth.
"A majority of people end up telling you it's the best thing that ever happened
to them," said Marc Cenedella, CEO of jobs site TheLadders.com.
How to get beyond the trauma:
-- Get rid of the negativity. Write an angry letter to your boss, then rip it
up. Take a week of vacation. Get relaxed and refreshed so you can be positive in interviews later.
-- Make a plan. Interested in a new field? Here's your chance. Investigate
retraining programs, take classes. "Reassess what you want to do with your career," said Tony
Santora, senior executive at Right Management, an employment consultancy. Take note of your
strengths.
-- Update your resume. Cenedella advises seeking out a professional resume
writer. Work on talking up your achievements in the past.
-- Network, network, network. "Over 50 percent of the jobs out there are found
through networking," Santora said. Reach out to friends, family, former colleagues. Use online sites
like LinkedIn.com. Call up trusted recruiters.
-- An interview is not a chat with friends, said Cenedella. Remember to sell
yourself hard and be aggressively positive about past work experiences and achievements.
NO REST FOR THE WEARY: Can't sleep? Welcome to the 3 a.m. club.
A survey in the September issue of Consumer Reports found that 44 percent of
U.S. adults are what the magazine calls "problem sleepers." That means, for at least eight nights
out of the month, they toss and turn before finally drifting off, wake up in the middle of the
night, or get up before planned.
Almost one-fifth of those surveyed use drugs to counteract sleeplessness at
least once a week, and 24 percent of those said they had sleep-medication dependency problems.
Sleeping pills are normally not recommended for regular use for more than two weeks, but the
magazine found that 38 percent of those who had taken a sleep aid in the past month said they had
been doing so for more than two years.
The most common cause of sleeplessness was stress. Respondents said they
worried about family, money, health and their jobs.
The survey, conducted by Consumer Reports National Research Center in April,
randomly recruited 1,466 U.S. adults by telephone for the online survey.
INFLATE TIRES, BUY LESS GAS: Barack Obama got ribbed by John McCain when he
advised drivers to fill their tires with the appropriate air pressure, but the Car Care Council, a
nonprofit funded by an auto trade group, agrees with the Democrat.
Car maintenance, the group says, can do a lot for your fuel economy.
Car Care recommends the following steps from fueleconomy.gov, the Web site of
the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency, to save money:
-- Once a month, check that your tires are properly inflated. Gas savings: up
to 12 cents a gallon. Boost in fuel economy: up to 3 percent.
-- Replace clogged, dirty air filters. Check them every 3,000 miles. Gas
savings: up to 40 cents a gallon. Boost in fuel economy: up to 10 percent.
-- Use the right grade of motor oil, and change it regularly. Gas savings: less
than a penny a gallon. Boost in fuel economy: 1 to 2 percent.
-- Tune up your engine, about once every 30,000 to 100,000 miles, depending on
the car. Gas savings: 16 cents a gallon. Boost in fuel economy: 4 percent. Taking care of a serious
problem, like a bad oxygen sensor, can greatly improve your gas mileage, sometimes by as much as 40
percent.
The savings are based on $3.96 a gallon gas.
The Car Care Council also recommends keeping your gas cap on tight and
replacing spark plugs during tuneups.
Previous Watercooler Column
Previous Edition's Headlines
| Endangered species: Teachers, accountants, nurses |
| WNBA leads in sports diversity study |
| Professionals find jobs back in rural hometowns |
| WORKLIFE: What germs lurk inside your keyboard? |
| Column: Execs flee; Green U;
more |
| Supplement: Economy's impact at work |
|
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