For over 40 years, outreach workers and Monitor Advocates have provided important support to U.S. agricultural workers and employers throughout America. The Monitor Advocate System is a federal/state monitoring system that ensures migrant and seasonal farmworkers (MSFW) have equitable access to career services, skill development, and workforce protections offered by American Job Centers, so they may improve their living and working conditions.
Key components of the Monitor Advocate System
- Conducting outreach to MSFWs at their working, living, and gathering places
- Monitoring services provided to MSFWs at American Job Centers
- Facilitating the Employment Service and Employment-Related Law Complaint System, which helps resolve labor-related complaints, and
- Promoting the Agricultural Recruitment System for U.S. workers, which connects job seekers who need employment to employers who need workers.
Structure
Each state workforce agency has a State Monitor Advocate (SMA), who reviews state MSFW services on an ongoing basis. At the federal level, ETA regional offices have Regional Monitor Advocates, who provide support to SMAs, and one National Monitor Advocate, who oversees the entire system. The Wagner-Peyser Act funds the Monitor Advocate System.
History
DOL created the Monitor Advocate System to carry out the requirements of the Judge Richey Court Order (Civil Action No. 2010-72, U.S.D.C.). The Richey Order established a framework to ensure MSFWs receive services that are qualitatively equivalent and quantitatively proportionate to the services provided to all other job seekers. DOL drew upon the authority of the Wagner-Peyser Act to implement the intent of the Richey Order.