Migrant Farmworker Project
CWJC’s Migrant Farmworker Project is a state-wide program that provides services to the state’s low-income agricultural workers and other migrant laborers. The Project offers community education and advocacy regarding:
- Employment issues such as wage and hour law, employment discrimination, and eligibility for unemployment benefits;
- Immigration issues such as employer obligations under certain work visas, DACA, and other forms of immigration relief;
- Housing issues; and
- Other issues that impact migrant and agricultural laborers.
Farmworker Medical-Legal Partnership
To help better reach farmworkers in need of legal services, in 2023 CWJC launched its Farmworker Medical-Legal Partnership (MLP). The Farmworker MLP is a collaboration between CWJC’s Farmworker Seasonal and Migrant Farmworker Project and Baystate Brightwood Health Center’s Farmworker Clinic “la cliniquita.”
As part of the Farmworker MLP, CWJC Staff Attorney Maya McCann is embedded part-time at Baystate Brightwood Health Center, where she trains medical practitioners and community health workers to spot when a farmworker’s health is being impacted by an issue that can be improved with a legal intervention. Examples include the threat of eviction or an employer’s failure to pay a worker the wages they are owed. The medical provider refer those farmworkers to McCann, who investigates the cases and provides advice and representation to farmworkers in housing, benefits, and employment matters to help address the patient’s health-harming legal needs. In addition to individual client representation, the Attorney McCann leads Know-Your-Rights trainings on site for farmworkers and develops and shares legal resources with patients and providers.
The Farmworker Medical Legal Partnership launched as a pilot project in Spring 2023 as part of Attorney McCann’s Equal Justice Works Fellowship and CWJC is grateful to Health New England for awarding the project the 2024 Dr. Keroack Health Equity Grant to sustain it for another year.