Well, good morning, everybody. We are going to get started, because it is a tight time frame. And we have a great session, so I don't want you to miss anything there. And welcome. I know there's some seats in the back, if somebody's having trouble finding a spot. But thank you to those of you that are here bright and early, and we appreciate your attendance. I want to thank the ACOM staff, as well, who have been, as always, awesome and worked tirelessly to make things successful. Also if there are any past presidents in the audience. Anybody here now? I can't see too well from here, but we would recognize them. And any military that are present here? Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for your service. Okay. So let's get underway. So this is Section 403. And as we've done typically in past years, this session is dedicated to Workers Memorial Day, April 28th of every year since 1970, as was originally set up with the AFL-CIO. And I think everybody here knows that to recognize workers who have died or had serious injuries or illnesses from workplace exposures, that's basically a description per the CDC. And then to promote ways and help us think about ways to prevent and make things safer and healthier, which is, of course, our specialty. So something to be proud of and well worth dedicating our time and efforts to. This is a quick case, and then we're going to get to the speakers quickly. This is so current still. So this incident actually took place last October 1st, but was reported in Washington State's Labor and Industry Newsroom on May 15th. But a worker who died going into a fruit storage confined space where the oxygen had been depleted. They're supposed to know they have oxygen sensors, and they're never supposed to go in by themselves. They're from a company called Pace, and the workers, or the growers, were stem mill growers, and they're supposed to be making sure that things are going safely and nobody goes in by themselves and has their oxygen sensor on. And unfortunately, this worker died because he went in by himself and his oxygen sensor was outside. That's the confined space entrance, 24 by 36 inches, 25 inches off the ground. Yeah, and he was allowed to go in there. The oxygen was depleted to between 1.9 and 2.9 percent versus our normal 21 percent. And that's his oxygen sensor, which was found outside the confined space afterwards. So really tragic and completely preventable. So just want to make sure everybody knows this is still a very current problem. Okay, so your three speakers, and then time's limited, so please put your phones on mute. We're going to save questions until the end, and I think you'll be very excited and have a great session. We'll start with our first speaker, who's no stranger to this stage, Dr. Linda Forst. Linda is Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health Services at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She does research, teaching, and clinical work in occupational health and occupational medicine. And she's the head of the new NIOSH Center for Ag Safety and Health, the Great Lakes Center for Occupational Safety and Health. And she also directs a WHO Collaborating Center in Occupational Health. Linda. This is forward? This is forward. That's forward. Okay, great. Hi, everybody. It's great to see all of you, a few people I know very well, and some people I don't know well yet. I have no conflict of interest to disclose, just to say that the work is supported in part by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. We have a NIOSH Ag Center. So what I'm going to talk about is, first, I'm going to tell you about a case of a worker who's a child. I'll talk about laws that regulate child labor and violations in the United States. I'll talk a little bit about new pending legislation and also how we can respond. So I'm going to read this case. This comes from the New York Times article, maybe many of you saw this, by Hannah Dreyer. She outlined lots of cases of child labor in the United States. And here's one of the horrific cases that she outlined. In February of 2022, Marcos, who had just turned 14, went to work on the night shift cleaning a chicken slaughterhouse in Virginia. Purdue Farms, which was the owner, is part of the small monopoly of animal slaughter and meatpacking in the United States. About 1.5 million chickens get processed there every week. The cleaners hose down grease and blood with pressurized hose, shooting 130-degree water on the equipment in order to sanitize it. Marcos' family borrowed against their land to pay a coyote to get him to the United States. He went to an adult cousin in Virginia, and he obtained false documents listing his age in the mid-20s. Again, he was 14 years old. He made $100 per six-hour shift. And when he was at work one day, Marcos' hand got caught in a conveyor belt system. His entire arm got pulled into the machine. He was taken to the hospital, where he stayed for weeks, followed by six months of physical therapy and multiple surgeries. Of course, he was unable to go back to that job after that. He said, they won't take me back because of the accident. He still couldn't lift his arm well, as of the time this was reported. It often hung limp at his side. It was approaching 90 degrees, but he wore — oh, and sorry, and temperature, but he wore long sleeves to hide his scars. He continued to live in a mobile unit with his cousin in a company housing park called Dreamland. If you go to the U.S. Department of Labor website, you'll see the notorious cases that they're finding in a lot of meat processing, food processing plants. And these are some of the fines that they've issued. They had a $1.5 million penalty against a company for employing more than 100 children in hazardous occupations. This was in Wisconsin, in a sawmill operation, also in Wisconsin, so USDOL is obviously very active in Wisconsin. They saw nine children who were illegally employed to operate hazardous machinery. Another plant that was in Minnesota paid over $140,000 after they found nine teenagers who were employed illegally to operate hazardous machinery. And so, you can find this stuff all over the web. Just search child labor, United States, and unfortunately, you'll see many, many cases reported in all sorts of different outlets and so on. We all know this stuff well, so we know it was violated in Marcos's case. What are the health hazards of child labor? Obviously, work, especially in hazardous industries, disrupts child development. It interferes with school. Kids drop out of school. It deprives them of sleep, so then they have mental and physical health issues. And if you look at the rate, the number and rate of occupational injuries from 2017 to 2021, there were 66 deaths of children under 16 who died at work. In the 16 to 17-year-old age range, there were 62 deaths. And then, as far as injuries with days away from work in 2020, 14 and 15-year-olds, there were 180 reported injuries, and for 16 to 19-year-olds, there were over 32,000. So what is the law that governs all of this? The Fair Labor Standards Act is a federal act that is replicated in the states, and some states are more protective than others, of course. So what are the minimum standards? 16 to 17-year-olds can work unlimited hours except in hazardous occupations in general, and 14 to 15-year-olds can only work outside of school hours, which is determined by the local public school, of course. And they're only allowed to work less than three hours on a school day, less than eight hours on a non-school day, less than 18 hours per week when school is in session, and less than 40 hours per week when school is out. And they are frequently working in areas like newspaper delivery, acting, minor chores, babysitting. All of those are allowable. And then, in the center column here, you can see all the prohibited tasks. And I won't read those off, but the prohibited tasks are the most hazardous ones, like the one that Marcos, our 14-year-old, was working at when he got injured. But the really horrifying thing to me is that in the agriculture sector, all of this falls apart. In agriculture, kids 16 and 17-year-olds can work in any farm job at any time. At least that's the federal standard. And during the school year, they can work any job, any hours, even if they're 14 and 15 years old. If they're 12 and 13, they can also work. They can work in non-hazardous jobs. They need parental consent. And they only are allowed to work on farms with a minimum wage requirement. And then, 10- to 11-year-olds are able to work in hand harvesting with short-season crops. So, there are a lot of kids, little kids, working in summertime on farms. And then, you might know already that on family farms, people can work at any age. So, that's what the Fair Labor Standards Act says, agricultural exceptionalism. And, you know, one of our favorite industries in the U.S., McDonald's, was just fined for hiring 305 minors who were working in violation of the Federal Labor Standards Act in 62 McDonald's locations across multiple states. They even found two kids who were 10 years old working at the time. And there were all kinds of problems with this employment besides the fact that kids were being employed, which is that they were being asked to work more hours and outside the hours of legal permission in these jobs. They failed to pay overtime. They even had a 10-year-old kid operating a deep fryer in one of the McDonald's shops. So, if you look at children employed in violation of U.S. labor law by fiscal year, look at the 5792 eye-popping number of kids employed in 2023. And my guess is that there were a lot more kids employed in earlier years, but there's a big effort now to look at this. And so, we're actually getting closer to real numbers now, I believe. So, I think it's important to pay attention to the state laws that are coming down the pike now. There's one of our favorite governors, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who we all know from being the spokesperson during the Trump—the press coordinator from the Trump administration. And there are violations of child labor laws, but proposals now to roll back those labor protections across the country. The number of minors employed in violation of child labor laws increased 37 percent in the last year, and at least 10 states now have introduced or passed laws rolling back child labor protections. And there are a lot of attempts. Again, there are a lot of attempts to change these laws and override them. We had a case of child labor trafficking in Chicago, a horrible case of a woman that had 10 undocumented Guatemalans, which she brought across the border and were living in Cicero, Illinois, which is a suburb of Chicago. And they were living in the basement, and the neighbors who saw them leaving the house every morning and getting in a van and taken to a worksite was shocked when this operation was busted by the feds. So, this happens all over the place. Again, just Google it, and you'll find many, many violations listed in the media. So, what are the conditions leading to migrant child labor exploitation? Of course, people are leaving their home countries because of poverty, limited opportunities, violence, war, exploitation. And all of those things lead to food insecurity, stress, physical injury, psychological injury. And these kids have a drive to save themselves and their families, so they immigrate to the U.S. where they no longer have family or advocates for them. Their education is interrupted. They're socially and economically unstable and isolated, lonely, impoverished, and so on. And many of them become illegal child laborers, as I've described already. They're in debt bondage so that their family can pay back the debt to the coyote that got them here. There's all kinds of exploitation that happens to these kids. Here are the health impacts of child labor trafficking. I don't have to read this off to this audience. And I am constantly coming back to this Venn diagram that these kids and many of the issues of underserved working populations live at the intersection of health laws, labor laws, and immigration laws, which are unfavorable and discriminatory towards them and leads to this situation. So what can we do? We need to monitor child labor laws in our own states and oppose bad laws. We should hold our legislators accountable. We of course need to raise the minimum wage, and we should end agricultural exceptionalism. It doesn't make any sense. We need to promote immigration reform, of course, so that our food supply chain continues to be serviced because this is the only way we have a food supply chain in the United States. We should figure out how this issue interacts with all of our work and call it out when we have the opportunity. And really, if you go into restaurants yourself, McDonald's and so on, you could be aware of who is serving you, waiting on you, working for you, and of course stay mindful of the interaction between labor, immigration, and health. Thank you. Thank you, Linda. Really poignant, and thanks very much, as always, excellent. By the way, quick note, the section for underserved occupational populations, actually I just found out yesterday, and I've been the chair since 2008, we're over 20 years old now. So we're, yeah, we're maturing. So all right, the other thing I wanted to encourage people to do, if you're not a member of the session already, then please consider joining. We could definitely use your support and your energy. And we've seen some really passionate people, new individuals to the session or section recently. So our next speaker is Dr. Brett Shannon. Brett's an advanced registrar with the Australian Faculty of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, and he trained through the Royal Australian College of Physicians. He's currently working at LIME, L-I-M-E, Medical, Legal, and Phoenix Occupational Medicine in Brisbane, and has undertaken occupational and environmental medicine work with clients in the mining, construction, and aviation industries. He's completed a PhD at UIC on indigenous occupational health, and is himself an Australian indigenous descendant. He's past chair and director of the Brisbane Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community Health Service. Please welcome Brett. Thank you, Scott. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for coming to such an early session. Before I begin, I'd like to acknowledge the work I did that I'm going to present today was done in Chicago. I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the Chicago, which is the Miami Three Fires people. I'd like to acknowledge their elders, both past and present. I'd also like to acknowledge my elders, the Indigenous, Aboriginal, and Torres Strait Islander people of Australia. A lot of elders helped me get to where I am today, and some of this work that I've done was paved the way by them, so I want to acknowledge them as well. Like Scott said, I'm going to talk about Indigenous occupational health today, and I just thought I'd give a bit of background information to start with before I dive into my study. There's still some large disparities in employment for Indigenous people globally. 42% of working Indigenous people have no formal education, compared to 16% of non-Indigenous people. Labor force participation, unemployment rates are much lower and higher, and median personal income is still about 21% to 37% less in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. There's also many health disparities for Indigenous people, particularly in the United States, that can impact either gaining employment, particularly in safety-critical roles, or maintaining employment in various sectors. In the United States, for Indigenous adults, 81% are overweight or obese. Smoking rates are still twice the rate of non-Hispanic whites. About 10% are said to have a substance abuse disorder. Injury is the leading cause of death in young people. Suicide is the second leading cause of death in young people. About 15% have diabetes, and we still have disparities in cardiovascular stroke and sleep disorders. And all these things can impact on employment outcomes for Indigenous people. We conducted a systematic review on Indigenous occupational health in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States. It was published in the BMJ in 2022. And these are some of the gaps that we identified. There's only 51 studies ever peer-reviewed or non-peer-reviewed published on Indigenous outcomes and occupational health in those four countries in the past 50 years. So a real paucity of research. And today, I'm really going to focus on that bottom one about uniform race-ethnicity definitions and how that impacts some of the data we have in the United States. The last bit of background I wanted to share was in 1997, a lot of you have probably seen this. There was a U.S. directive number 15 that came out about race-ethnicity and health datasets. Race is broken up into those five categories there, and then ethnicity is Hispanic or Latino or non-Hispanic. But if you look at the fine print, the definition for Indigenous or American Indian and Alaskan Native is actually inclusive of if you're Indigenous anywhere in North America, Central America, or South America. So it's a large Indigenous population, and it's probably changed over time since this document was done in 1997 because of the immigration of Indigenous people. So now I'm going to jump to one of my studies I did for my PhD. So we really wanted to characterize occupational determinants for Indigenous people in the United States. And unfortunately, Indigenous status isn't on occupational health datasets, so we had to look elsewhere. So we extracted the National Health Interview Survey data, the last three years of data. For those that don't know this survey, it's a cross-sectional sort of household survey with a multistage, very rigorous probability design that's covered across the United States. We use the adult sample vials from those three years, and we really wanted to describe occupational outcomes, employment outcomes, health outcomes, and sort of demographic characteristics of Indigenous people in the United States. And what was really useful about this survey is it actually breaks Indigenous people in the United States up into three groups. Those that are American Indian and Alaska Native only, those that are American Indian and Alaska Native and Hispanic, and those that are American Indian and Alaska Native and another race, ethnicity. So we really wanted to look at, is there differences between these three groups? And then we compared them in a descriptive analysis to Hispanic and non-Hispanic whites. And we also did some multivariable modeling where we compared the three Indigenous groups to all non-Indigenous people, comparing indicators of quality of employment and quantity of employment as well. So I'm just going to dive into the results. I know these tables are probably pretty difficult to read, but as you can probably imagine, once you start breaking down the descriptive characteristics of these three Indigenous groups, they're very different. Firstly, the American Indian and Alaska Native only group most commonly resides in non-metropolitan areas, so rural areas in the south and west regions of the United States, is younger than the non-Hispanic white population and much lower levels of education. But then when you compare that to the American Indian and Alaska Native and Hispanic group, this group is very predominantly living in large central metropolitan cities, even less educated than the American Indian and Alaska Native only group. And what was also interesting was only 60% of this group was born in the United States. So a large proportion, nearly half, were immigrants. And then you compare it to the American Indian and Alaska Native and other group, and this group is kind of a mix where it's a mix in urban residents versus regional versus rural. A little bit higher levels of education and a bit older than the other two Indigenous groups as well. So they kind of had contrasting differences in demographic characteristics. And then we started looking at employment outcomes for the three Indigenous groups, and as you can imagine, labor force participation was much lower, particularly for the American Indian and Alaska Native only group. That rural group had the lowest, with only 48% saying they worked last week, compared to 59% of non-Hispanic whites. And you can see the American Indian and Alaska Native and Hispanic group kind of is much higher at 59%, and very similar to the Hispanic group. But what I found very interesting was when you start looking at why people are not working in these Indigenous groups, those not able to work because of health reasons was actually 30% of the American Indian and Alaska Native and other group. So I think a lot of people have this misconception that a lot of Indigenous issues are just in rural reservations, but there's access issues to health care in urban areas. There's actually large urban Indigenous populations as well. And you can see that those not able to work for health reasons was very high in the American Indian and Alaska Native only rural group and the American Indian and Alaska Native and other group, compared to only 14% of non-Hispanic whites. And lastly, we looked at the only indicators for quality you get off this survey of employment was paid sick leave and health insurance provided at your job. And these were actually lowest in the American Indian and Alaska Native and Hispanic group, which is kind of reflective of what you'd expect if around half were immigrants, maybe working in certain roles that don't provide these characteristics of employment. We also got industry and occupation data for the Indigenous groups off this survey. I just wanted to point out one thing. Health care and social assistance industries was actually in the top two industries of all three Indigenous groups. Yet if you look at occupation data, health care support occupations was number four for the American Indian and Alaska Native only group, and that was the only health care occupation in the top five for all three groups. So it kind of beckons two things. One, when we look at industry data, we really need to look at occupation data as well, because the Indigenous workers are probably working in a lot of these support roles, low-paying roles, roles that are high risk for injury and illness. And secondly, that health care support occupations has the highest rate of work-related injuries and illnesses out of any occupational category based on national BLS data. So it warrants this might be an industry and an occupation group that we need to look into further for Indigenous workers. We did some multivariable logistic models that just kind of reiterated what our descriptive statistics told us already. Labor force participation was much lower in the American Indian and Alaska Native group and the American Indian and Alaska Native and other group. Employment quality indicators were borderline non-significant for the American Indian and Alaska Native Hispanic group. And then employment in high-risk industries was borderline non-significant for the American Indian and Alaska Native only group. So just to summarize all of this for you, I think this is a very interesting study for us to do, some of the first data on Indigenous sort of occupational health descriptive statistics. And it showed us that there's three very different Indigenous populations out of this survey. The American Indian and Alaska Native only group was mainly born in US territories, which should be entitled to federal and state protections. However, it's probably got limited access to healthcare and education, predominantly residing in rural areas and stark differences in employment and much more employment in high-risk industries. The American Indian and Alaska Native and Hispanic group, over one-third were not born in the United States. There's actually a high number of immigrants in this Indigenous group. They had lower education levels and a high number of workers without benefits. And the American Indian and Alaska Native and other group resided more in an urban setting, had increased levels of education, but we were still seeing lots of health disparities that were impacting employment in this group as well. I think I just wanted to quickly finish this talk off by just saying these indicators that we use in these surveys is not typically what we use for Indigenous data. They're very Western deficit measures of health and well-being and occupational health. Most of our work in Indigenous health, we try to use broader strengths-based concepts of health and well-being to focus on relationships and community capacity. And these are the things we should look for in occupational medicine as well when working with Indigenous groups. So, on the right-hand side of this slide are some of the things that we try to use in terms of self-determination, cultural attachment, relationships with the community, with the land, what social capital is invested. And I tried to bring this back to an occupational medicine setting where what are the relevant areas for occupational health for Indigenous people? And I think about my uncle back in Australia is the park ranger for our Indigenous reservation and he just ripped his bicep off the bone a couple of weeks ago. And I've been talking to him and these are the things that are impacting him is that without his work now, he's lost sort of his community memberships. He's not seeing his friends at work. His job as a park ranger is sort of his personal success. He feels very proud that he's giving back to his community. Things like resilience, your supports at work, your personal successes. Work is actually a strategy to reduce stress for Indigenous people as well. And then other things that are more broad than the individual acculturation. So Indigenous cultural identification in workplaces, discrimination, prejudices are obviously going to impact Indigenous workers. And then workplace cultural engagement is sort of the respective local Indigenous cultures and workplace responsiveness to the Indigenous workers' needs are obviously going to impact them as well. So I think these are some of the things we can look for as occupational physicians. I think I'll move through this. Obviously, a lot of these data sets don't record race, ethnicity well, and we can't use them to identify issues in Indigenous occupational medicine, and therefore they become policy gaps. And then broadly, I'll just finish off saying our recommendations were out of this report to start defining Indigenous groups for occupational health research, begin capturing Indigenous status in various data sets, and start oversampling Indigenous persons in some of the surveys we do for occupational medicine so that we can better understand this group and really expand the current research agenda and develop Indigenous occupational health indicators. And these are my acknowledgments, and thanks for having me today. I really appreciate being able to give this talk. Thank you. Thank you, Brett. And we didn't ask him to speak just because of his accent, so I want you to know he actually spoke for us last year. All right, so we have one more speaker for you, so please contain your enthusiasm. And there are still seats up at the front. So our last speaker is Dr. Vanessa Casanova, and she is a PhD who serves as a professor within the Department of Preventive, Occupational, and Environmental Medicine at the University of Texas Tyler School of Medicine. She earned her degrees from the University of Alabama and Auburn University, completing her postdoctoral training at Rutgers University and the University of North Texas Health Science Center. She is the director of the NIOSH-funded Southwest Center for Agricultural Health, Injury Prevention, and Education. Dr. Casanova is actively involved in addressing health equity and building resiliency in rural communities throughout Northeast Texas. She's also a research mentor to junior faculty, residents, and graduate students. Vanessa? Good morning, good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for being here at such an early hour. I'm going to go ahead and get started. I know I have 15 minutes. Yes, ma'am. Okay. So no conflicts of interest to disclose. And some of the work is supported through a cooperative agreement with CDC and NIOSH with the Southwest Center. Okay, so let me just give you a quick little rundown. I'm going to give you a background on the industry. I'm talking about forestry, hidden in the understory. We're talking about forestry and forest workers. I haven't seen a lot of forestry presentations in my time here at ACOM, so I hope it's something new and interesting to you all. I will talk about forestry workers in the South, geographic South, the work that they do, some of the research that has been conducted by me and others within the Ag Center, and then future directions. So really quickly, background on the industry. I'll just tell you a little bit about myself and my experience in the Southeast. I actually moved to Alabama in 1995. I lived in West Alabama after I got out of college, and I worked for the extension system in Alabama, and so I was in a very rural community. And when I'd go to the post office or the supermarket, especially in the winter, I noticed a lot of people that looked like me, spoke Spanish, and I mean, this is very rural Alabama, and I'm looking around going, how did you get here? What are you doing here? Who are you? And it's not one or two people. It's 10 or 20 people at the Piggly Wiggly or at the post office. And it turns out that they were planting trees. And so, of course, this piqued my interest, and when I got into grad school, this is where I started really looking at the kind of work they did, how they came into the U.S., you know, how did this happen? And so, again, 90s, mid-90s, the Southeast had really become this magnet for immigrants and migrants, people that come and go, and it was something new, right? They were coming into rural communities out of gateway cities, L.A., Houston, New York, and so since then, I really have focused a lot of my work on the forest products industry, particularly reforestation and then some other kind of adjacent areas. So, again, looking at the industry itself, the southern United States and the forests are really the wood basket of the country. More than 55% of U.S. timber is harvested from the south, and southern forests produce 25% of the world's pulpwood. This is what you need to make paper, and when I was trying to put this presentation together, I came across this slide again, and I used this in my dissertation a long, long time ago, but the projections still kind of hold true. This was a projected reforestation. How, you know, are we going to continue to grow trees? Is the trend going to continue? And so far, I think we're on trend, and so reforestation is a thing. This work group is a thing in the United States. This is just geographically what I'm talking about when I talk about the south. I did most of my work, of course, in Alabama and Georgia, a little bit in northern Florida. I am now in Tyler, Texas, and we do have sort of a secondary timber, pretty active timber production area in what we call the Arklatex region, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. Okay, so now let me just tell you about the workforce. Again, when I was in grad school and talking to these guys out in the woods, I'm still shocked that my mentor and my chair let me go out into the woods in the 90s without a cell phone, with a map, really, right? I didn't really even have a good GPS system. But luckily, I found a very incredibly kind, talkative group of folks that had come into the U.S., primarily on an H-2B guest worker visa. And so, very large numbers of folks that were recruited from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, so Central America, and in fact, at the time, it really was, we were seeing sort of a transition away from Mexican workers to many more Guatemalans and Hondurans in this industry, and I think it's kind of a trend across other industries as well. I was told flat out, you know, that they have too much experience working in the U.S. They might have a cousin in Atlanta, and so we want a workforce that maybe has very limited experience working in the U.S. And so, again, that was fascinating. My background was not health and safety, right? I have a forestry degree. I have managed to kind of weave myself into this world, and so at the time, it really was looking at social networks, how people come into the U.S., the kind of work they do, and so, again, it was a mix of primarily H-2B guest workers, some undocumented immigrants, and settled out immigrants with legal status in the U.S. And this is, again, I could talk for days about this, but very remote area in West Alabama. They, transportation, they rode in that little white truck, and the work they do, I think you can see the little belt packs, put seedlings in there, and walk for miles. I mean, you talk about calorie deficits. It's hard, hard work, all outdoors. So, again, the work, if we look at forest management, this is where we're talking about reforestation, brush clearing, site prep, planting, herbicide application, and then once I got into that field, I really noticed this sort of adjacent area of pine straw harvesting. I don't know if any of you are from the southeast, but golf courses, construction, you'll see pine straw used in place of mulch. And, again, I just wanted to demonstrate the kind of work that they're doing. I have some photos from, you know, back in the 90s, early 2000s, but the two photos of mechanized tree planting are actually quite recent, and those are from the Arklatex region where there has been a little bit of a shift from hand planting and H-2B workers to local folks who might be looking for a job today and maybe not tomorrow, and so there's very limited training. And then the bottom left photo is also mechanized tree planting, but it is wild to watch. I have video, but I don't have time to show it. But there have been some shifts and changes, although H-2B guest workers are still the primary workforce for forest management and reforestation. Another part of their role, as I said, site prep and brush clearing, so a lot of herbicide application as well. Looks pretty good. They're, you know, gloved up, and, however, again, coming in on a guest worker visa, you might come in October, November when the weather starts to cool. By the time you finish your planting sort of across the southeast and sometimes even up into the northeast and the northwest, it's summertime and it's time for clearing brush. Okay. So, again, this sort of what we call an adjacent kind of joint operation with forestry was pine straw harvesting. I did work. This is mostly northern Florida, southeast Georgia, and this is something that folks do between the time they plant and harvest their trees. You're out in the woods, sort of middle of nowhere, and you are harvesting pine straw. You're baling it, homemade box balers load it onto trucks. Pretty labor-intensive, and I was fascinated at the time that a lot of the workers here had sort of their rules with a guest worker visa, right? You can only work for that one employer. You have certain geographic areas that you can work in, but somehow folks were hearing about this kind of work, and so they would just kind of move over and not maybe go back when they should have. So a lot of workers that I had met in reforestation were now doing pine straw harvesting. Again, incredibly hard work, but as I said, it really, the woods provides this sort of shield, I think, and so when I say hidden in the understory, folks were literally hidden in the understory, right? They could do the work, support a family. There was a lot of debt peonage, unfortunately, in this field as well, and so again, hard work, fascinating to talk to these workers and figure out how it is they came to arrive at this kind of work and to learn how to make a box baler, things like that, but really quite different from forest management. Okay, so again, as I said, I, at the time, was really interested in social networks and how people came to the U.S., however, we always kind of went back to this topic of illness and injury, and then, of course, you know, with further training and really an emphasis on occupational safety and health, have gone back and had a study with mechanized tree planters, but really looking at some of the factors that contribute to illness and injury. So again, if you think about, and maybe I didn't describe the work well enough, but there is a lot of economic pressure. Linda mentioned a lot of having to pay somebody, you know, a coyote, if you will, to bring you across the border. Even with a guest worker visa, there was some of this going on because you had somebody in the country of origin organizing all of this for you and connecting you to employers, and so there was some element of that happening there, so a lot of economic pressure to really make this worth your trip. There's also pressure to plant faster, and again, there are, you know, we have really strict rules, but there seems to be a piece rate for tree planting, and so back in the day, and again, late 90s, early 2000s, it was about 1 to 1.5 cents per tree planted, and so you really had to move it, right? And so I saw people go from planting, you know, native-born American workers that planted 800 trees in a day, whereas a Guatemalan worker would plant 4,500 trees in a day. So the speed, the productivity increased at such a rate that there's no way we're ever going to go back to the American, you know, worker, college kid that's on Christmas break, and so this really is something that's here to stay. A lot of peer pressure, you know, you're bringing your cousin over with you or your brother, and you really, you know, you don't want to look bad to your boss, and so that kind of pressure. There was something that was really interesting, and I did work with the ERC in Alabama, stature. You know, folks are built smaller, and the tools that we have in the United States to plant trees are actually designed for the average American male who is taller than I am, right, 5'3", 5'4", so small stature, and so we were able to cut down one of the ho-dads, you know, and make it to where it was more effective. You weren't, you know, using much more energy than was required to do the work. Again, high pain and high discomfort thresholds, probably very likely because you're really far away from healthcare. Physical and social isolation, lack of adequate safety equipment, I can go on and on, and then lack of training at the proper level of understanding. They did get some training, but it was a pamphlet, here's what you do, here's a phone number, and, you know, you just kind of learned as you go. So, again, some solutions, some easy fixes, as I mentioned, considering stature when you're looking at the kinds of tools you're giving folks. Offer training for workers that suit various levels of educational attainment. I was very naive and thought that they all spoke Spanish, and some of them didn't even speak Spanish as a second language, right, and so really had to figure out how to reach the folks that didn't even speak Spanish as a second language. And then, of course, the not-so-easy fixes, the economic and peer pressure that goes along with this kind of work, lack of adequate safety equipment, and physical and social isolation, as I mentioned. Again, I'm a director of one of the 12 agricultural centers that focus on protecting workers in ag, forestry, and fishing, and this is some of the work that we have done related to forestry. I really was sort of brought into this role to build up research in forestry and logging, and we've done a fair amount of work over the last 10 years in forestry and logging, so I'm really proud of this, but it really is, you know, very safety-oriented. We're focused on reducing the burden of illness and injury. So as I mentioned, the HTB workers are kind of here to stay. Sorry, I'm going over. I'm sorry. Okay. And so I was, every time I talked to folks, we really, this industry relies on this workforce, and there is a lot of work that goes on in D.C., you know, geared toward immigration reform, really expanding guest worker programs. Forest Resources Association is one of these really big, big groups that really are really pushing hard to increase the cap on HTB visas, especially for this particular industry, and forestry used to be, like, the biggest taker of these visas, and now they really compete with landscaping, so if you see a landscaping crew in your city, very likely they are guest workers. And then a 2021 article in Journal of Forestry, again, land management service businesses that contract out services to accomplish those and other tasks found that most of their positions are filled by legal HTB non-immigrant workers, and so the trend continues. I don't think it's going away. And then I wanted to talk a little bit about, and just future directions, as I mentioned, our Ag Center is doing a lot of work in forestry and logging. We really have a safety focus, but there are some research issues that we have not taken on, and so some of these are very policy-oriented, but there really needs to be more research that is really looking at the impact of visa status and being a guest worker in this country on safety and health outcomes, and so really looking at, you know, what does that mean, and what does it mean for workers? You have certain protections. What's the level of knowledge? And so we really haven't done that, and so hopefully, you know, if you're interested, please see me after. Mental and behavioral health is one issue that comes up time and again just across ag, forestry, and fishing. Another item, because they are, it's highly migratory work, sexual and reproductive health, and then, of course, crossover into other industries, as I mentioned, and the implications of varying occupational exposures, not just in the one job you were brought in to do, but as you move into other adjacent industries as well. That's it. Thank you all so much. Thank you. Thank you, Vanessa. All right. Well, we have some time for questions. And it looks like the word's getting out about the session and the section, so more people are showing up. Okay. By the way, this is the founder of the section, Dr. Joe Fortuna, who passed away in 2015, unfortunately. And I'm sure many of you in here know him or know of him. Kathy, do you have a question? Yeah, I don't know how to do this. Is that on? Yeah. Oh, good. Okay. So, next year, AOHC is going to be in Austin, Texas. And Texas isn't that big, so you're not that far, right? Do you think we could go maybe have a field visit to one of the forestry areas? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yes. I'm always happy to take folks out and see the work, absolutely. We bring our residents out there. Several of our Tyler residents are here and have been on logging sites, and they've been on commercial shrimp vessels. And yeah, they've gotten the full Ag-F forestry and fishing experience. Let's do it. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Oh, Australia. Yeah. It's really close to Austin. Right. All of these presentations were great. I'm wondering, does anyone know whether ACOM has written a statement about child labor yet? And if not, we've got to get on it. Thank you. Hello. So, I had two questions. One was that we started the session with the story of a worker who went into apple storage and had asphyxiation. So, they are using oxygen monitor, but we all know that we can monitor people's health status now by using smart watches, whether there's any thoughts about we can implement easier, safe way to protect workers. And the other question I have for Dr. Shannon, I heard that in your bio, you mentioned that you're working with indigenous population and mining. I heard that right now in Bolivia and in the lithium triangle, a lot of indigenous people are being forced out of their land, basically, because they are living on top of the white gold or like the lithium. I was wondering whether this is an issue in Australia and whether developed countries have any role in trying to help advocate for their rights. Thanks. That's a great question. The island my family is actually from is a silica mine. So, it's a sand island and we've gone through that whole process with the mining companies to reclaim the land and the mine was shut down. I would say the issues have been different based on the local indigenous community and the mines and how the companies have worked with the communities has been different provincially in Australia. There's a lot of bad stories. There's some good stories. And I think one of the issues we have in mining as well as the coal mine workers health schemes don't record race, ethnicity at all. So we don't understand sort of health disparities in this sector, employment outcomes. So there's still a lot of work going on and hopefully it improves. But yeah, that's just a little bit of context. And to your other question, yeah, that's a great idea. And I didn't explain with this particular incident, the alarm had gone off as they opened the door. So the company, the grower is supposed to then warn the worker that you can't go in now and he's also supposed to not let them or she not let them go in alone. So in this case, the monitor, even though it was found outside, didn't protect them. But that's certainly a great idea to use a smart technology. I'm not aware of whether or not they're doing that yet, but yeah. Thank you. All right. I guess. Sorry. Go ahead. No, no. You go. You go. I was going to ask you a question. Oh, okay. Not really. Go ahead. No, no. No. Could you please. Okay. Okay. Thank you. This is a very polite section, so very respectful. So I would like, again, to thank you all for attending. Hope you enjoy the food. And then thank my illustrious panel and they've traveled and for their knowledge and experience. I'm humbled to have them here speaking for us. So thank you all. Thank you.

workers

industries

forestry

child labor

mining

safety issues

health disparities

economic pressures

guest workers