NYC NOW - September 28, 2023: Evening

Episode Date: September 28, 2023

The operator of the Brooklyn construction company found responsible for a deadly wall collapse in 2018 will serve 2 to 4 years in prison. Also, what would a U.S. government shutdown mean for New Yorkers? WNYC's Giulia Heyward reports. Plus, New Jersey is one of the top producers of blueberries, asparagus, and other crops in the U.S., mostly because it's fueled by thousands of farm workers. WNYC’s Karen Yi reports on the increased health threats these workers face

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. I'm Sean Carlson. The operator of the Brooklyn Construction Company found responsible for a deadly wall collapse in 2018 will serve two to four years in prison. Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez says Jimmy Liu of Staten Island ignored worker safety concerns at a construction site on 39th Street in Sunset Park before a wall collapsed, killing worker Louis Sanchez Almante. Lou was convicted in March of criminally negligent homicide. other charges, the foreman from the site was also convicted of criminal mischief and is awaiting sentencing. What would a U.S. government shutdown mean for New Yorkers? WDMIC's Julia Hayward reports. Republicans in Congress are pushing for steep budget cuts that Senate Democrats are almost guaranteed

to reject. If a deal isn't reached, government agencies won't get much of the funding that they need. Here's Murad Awada, who heads the New York Immigration Coalition on what it means for New Yorkers. This is going to be horrible for the agencies that are supporting migrants right now, but it's also going to be horrible for the people who are relying on the resources coming out of the federal government. Federal employees won't receive a paycheck, while New Yorkers could lose out on SNAP, WIC, and other benefits programs. It also means the White House will be limited in helping with the city's migrant crisis. Stay tuned. More after the break. New Jersey is one of the top producers of blueberries, asparagus, and other crops in the U.S.

And it's a $1 billion industry fueled by thousands of farm workers. W.D.N.C's Karen Ye reports these workers are facing increased health threats on the job as summers get even hotter. Edgar Gonzalez Murillo is heading home after 10 hours of picking melons on a Salem County farm. His co-workers call him El Grillo, which translates to the cricket because he's always singing on the job. He lives half the year here in the southwest corner of New Jersey. It's a strikingly rural part of a state that is the densest in the nation. Murillo spends most of his time in a radius of just a few miles, the fields where he works

six days a week, and the labor camp where he sleeps at night. He eats a rebranda of sandia fresh. slice of watermelon that he just picked as he waits his turn to shower. Murillo lives in a single-story building with 17 others. The camp is overgrown with grass, a sort of graveyard for broken down 18-wheelers, torn nursery tarps, and discarded watermelon rines. Murillo says the heat and humidity get worse every year he comes back to the farm. On days where the heat is suffocating, he prays for cloud cover.

He says when a cloud finally does come, he feels relief, even if it's just for one second. New Jersey is one of the fastest warming places on the planet, and climate experts agree. Summers are only getting hotter. That's leaving outdoor laborers like Murillo at greater risk. An international study says agricultural workers are 35 times more likely to die of heat-related illnesses than other workers. But there aren't any federal or state laws offering them protections from the heat.

Dr. Lori Talbot has treated farm workers since the 1980s. Drink water, she urges after checking a worker's blood pressure. We miss you, the worker says back. Talbot used to run a walk-in clinic nearby, but recently retired. She still visits the Cumberland County Farm sometimes, checking in on her former patients and their families. Talbot says, most of her patients don't seek care for heat exposure.

It's never the thing they come and complain about. It was hot today. Of course, it's hot today. This is what they do. Exposure to extreme heat can cause heat stroke, kidney failure, or death. The state expects the number of heat deaths to double over the next three decades because of climate change. But no state lawmaker has proposed bills to mandate paid breaks or access to shade during

the hottest days. In 2021, the Biden administration began developing a federal heat safety. standard that could limit working hours at high temperatures. But that process could take seven years. We're not talking about, you know, an ice castle. Elizabeth Strater is an organizer with United Farm Workers, the nation's union for agricultural laborers. We're not talking about air conditioning, the outdoors.

We're talking about cool water, shade, and rest. United Farmworkers successfully lobbied for heat rules in a handful of states, such as California. When it's hotter than 95 degrees, workers need to get 10-minute break. every two hours. But Strader says it's hard to organize in New Jersey, where farm workers can't legally unionize. In 1935, the National Labor Relations Act excluded agricultural and domestic workers from basic labor protections, like the right to form a union. The agriculture worker is the last worker in these United States to come into the fold.

Workers in the field were disproportionately black, and carving them out was part of President Roosevelt's compromise with the Southern Democrats. to get them to support his agenda. In the 1960s, California became the first state to extend collective bargaining rights to all farm workers on its own. New York and Hawaii followed over the years, but New Jersey and others haven't.

In most places, this legacy of the Jim Crow era still stands. On a late August afternoon, Dr. Emma Cortez stops at a few blueberry farms in Hamilton and Atlantic County, the heart of the state's $80 million blueberry industry. She distributes paper bags filled a donated toothpaste, cotton bandanas, clothing pins, and soap to dozens of mostly Haitian workers. She says they have to depend on their employer for rides to buy personal hygiene products. You can see where we are right now.

It's not exactly walkable, you know. I mean, you can walk it, but it's not close at all. There's no sidewalks. Cortez founded the Migrant Health Collaborative of South Jersey to boost health access for migrant workers. She says many prioritize sending money back home, rather than taking care of themselves. Most of the state's 25,000 farm laborers

are undocumented immigrants. They generally don't speak English or have health insurance. Others are seasonal employees from southern states or on work visas from Mexico or Central America. Long-time farm worker Martin Vera Aguilar is driving a tractor with a flatbed trailer through a field of plump, green peppers. Rows of laborers dump peppers into a line of bins behind him. Before he was a driver,

he used to be the one crouched over picking vegetables, sometimes in temperatures over 100 degrees. They're much going to decommitre at least. The pieces, very canzao, the hands too. Sometimes you feel like throwing up, he says. Your feet are really tired. Your hands, too. You can't work. While some workers like Aguilar are paid by the end. hour, others are paid by how much they harvest, which gives them little incentive to take extra breaks. You imagine in the summer when it's 100, 102. Farming has run in Tom Shepard's family since the 1600s. He owns 700 acres in Cumberland County. We try to start them as early as we can in the morning and get them done by noon so that they're not out in the worst part of the heat

in the day. Labor organizers say he's an example of how growers can treat their workers better. Shepard recently built new labor camps, equipped with central air conditioning and washer dryers. We want to treat our men well, you know. They work hard for us, and while they're here, we want them to enjoy it. But there's little incentive for growers to modernize worker housing. Some of them operate on the margins, and upgrading housing camps means complying with new building codes. Farmer representatives and labor organizers say most labor camps don't have air conditioning. But that might have to change. Temperatures in New Jersey. New Jersey are expected to rise by five degrees by 2050. This summer is said to be the hottest on record. Murillo says he's staying in New Jersey through October,

before returning home to Mexico, where he has a beekeeping business. But here, he's one of thousands keeping the domestic food supply alive, getting through the hottest days, the only way he knows how. Karen Yee, WNYC News. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC, I'm Sean Carlson. Catch us every weekday, three times a day. We'll be back tomorrow.