The American Rescue Plan was signed into law on March 11^th and will send close to $6 billion to cities, counties, universities, school districts, and state agencies across Oregon. While the Department of Education and the U.S. Treasury are still developing the detailed spending criteria, funds are expected to be dispersed starting in mid-May.

This is welcome news for Oregon’s public institutions, as well as for workers around the state. Federal assistance can be used to cover pandemic-related expenses, to provide premium pay to essential workers, to shore up infrastructure from buildings to broadband, and to assist businesses and community organizations hard-hit by the pandemic.

Based on federal funding formulas, and the way the Oregon Department of Education allocated previous stimulus monies, LERC faculty member Mark Brenner has pulled together a detailed estimate of how much the American Rescue Plan will provide every city, county, university, and school district across Oregon.

Download Detailed ARPA Funding Estimates here, and feel free to contact Mark Brenner mbrenner@uoregon.edu with any questions.

We will continue to update these estimates as more details are released from the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Treasury, and the Oregon Department of Education.

Experiences of Immigrant and Refugee Food Processing Workers During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Rural Washington

A research report by Lola Loustaunau, Sociology Doctoral Candidate, University of Oregon

In the past several months, food processing workers have made the headlines of newspapers across the U.S. and the world. Usually invisibilized, these workers came under the spotlight due to their suddenly salient precariousness and importance. Food processing plants, where the majority of workers are immigrants and workers of color and where production entails long shifts in crowded closed environments, become sites of some of the largest COVID-19 outbreaks. The high incidence of cases of COVID-19 in the industry renewed conversations about the working conditions and the overall sustainability of the U.S. food supply chain. Based on 40 in-depth interviews with immigrant and refugee workers and labor and community organizers living and working in an area of rural Washington with a high concentration of food processing plants, an analysis of publicly available information for agencies and news-media, this new report seeks to illuminate the main challenges faced by these workers both at their workplace and as they tried to access public relief.

Using the Center for Disease Control’s safety recommendations for the food processing industry as a guideline, the report examines these underrepresented workers’ experiences with the regulations implemented to ensure their safety. Overall, workers expressed that companies were slow to implement the recommended changes,even as more and more cases of COVID-19 infections amongst food processing workers were reported. According to workers, some recommended measures were never implemented at their workplaces and even as companies partially followed the recommendations,workers discussed the practical limitations encountered and the impacts on their safety. Shifting governmental guidelines and a lack of mandatory regulations to protect these workers contributed to extensive variation in company responses and increased health risks. The report also found that the majority of the workers struggled to access benefits or economic support. Workers and advocates described facing contradictory or inaccurate information, a fragmented and overwhelmed bureaucratic system, and language and technology barriers. Finally, workers also called attention to the medium and long term consequences for their economic stability, emotional health and family well-being and the lack of policies that addressed this. The report concludes with future policy recommendations.

Download the report here

New studies from the Labor Education and Research Center (LERC) at the University of Oregon with homecare workers in Oregon find the need to invest in strengthening labor standards and raising wages and that, under COVID-19, homecare workers are “essential yet invisible.”

The first study, The State of Homecare Work in Oregon: The Need to Invest in Raising Wages and Strengthening Labor Standards, shows that Homecare work has one of the highest projected growth of any occupation. The homecare industry is growing rapidly while nonunion private agency homecare workers’ wages stagnate. In total, the median cost to clients of homecare in Oregon is $4,957/month. However, the median homecare worker monthly wage is $1,350. Long devalued, homecare workers exhibit skill and remarkable dedication in their profession. This study details how raising wages and standards in this industry is necessary to recruit and retain the skilled and dedicated workforce Oregon needs.

A second, follow-up LERC study with homecare workers in Oregon examines how COVID-19 has made already hazardous and complex work even more risky and challenging to navigate, as homecare workers often must figure out on their own how to adapt care routines and take on additional health and safety precautions at work. Because homecare work is primarily conducted by women and is one of the most racially and ethnically diverse professions nationally and in the state of Oregon, these new challenges disproportionately affect women and women of color specifically.

Homecare workers expressed that, despite being classified as essential, they feel sacrificial and undervalued. Underpaid homecare workers are often paying for necessary supplies out of pocket and must navigate anxieties from both increasingly unstable hours and earnings and fear of contracting the infection while working.