How Hidalgo County is helping displaced sugar mill workers

Rio Grande Guardian's Podcast

EDINBURG, Texas - Jaime Longoria is executive director of Hidalgo County Community Service Agency.

Recently, Longoria participated in a zoom meeting organized by Hidalgo County Prosperity Task Force. The task force was set up by Hidalgo County Judge Richard Cortez to address poverty in the county.

In his remarks on the zoom call, Longoria spoke about an event he organized to help around 500 workers who are about to lose their jobs at the sugar mill in Santa Rosa. The cooperative that runs the sugar mill is closing operations due to a lack of irrigation water.

The meeting Longoria set up was held at the city hall in La Villa. It was held to launch Operation Soft Landing and was billed as the Rio Grande Valley Sugar Growers Resource Fair.

“So, we put together under the auspices of the Prosperity Task Force, really a kind of a strike team of agencies that went out… it wasn’t just a resource fair, it wasn't just where we offer people benefits as we like to call them in social services. But, we actually offered them opportunities to apply for jobs on the spot,” Longoria said.

The local workforce board was present, along with different social service agencies, and educational institutions like South Texas College and Texas State Technical College.

“We offered, really, hope for many of those families that came in,” Longoria said. "We hope to head off what I called it in the paper the bumps and bruises associated with unemployment and being displaced.”

Longoria said that even after the event he still had employers calling his office offering positions and assistance to the displaced workers, be they trained or unskilled.

“We're really excited about that,” Longoria said.

Here is an audio recording of the remarks Longoria made at the Hidalgo County Prosperity Task Force zoom meeting.

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