VNLA Field Day
Wednesday, August 19at Merrifield Garden Center at their new location Gainesville, VA 
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VNLA Summer Tour
Behind the Scenes tours of the gardens at Mount Vernon and the American Horticulture Society's Headquarters at the River Farm
Thursday, August 20
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Project Evergreen:
Buck it Up
proceeds will go to:
Create a scholarship program for military family members seeking a career in the horticultural industry, and
Increase our infrastructure to better handle the 7,500 military families and 2,100 volunteers participating in GreenCare for Troops.
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Click here to Donate
or for more info
on Buck It Up
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2 Great publications with websites for resources and ideas for garden centers
Ideas for a profitable garden center
Leading the Revolution in Garden Retailing
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Immigration Enforcement Guidance
New DHS-ICE immigration enforcement guidance. ANLA sees the new guidelines as significant because they establish as a matter of official policy that ICE is focusing on employers first and unauthorized workers secondarily. Shifts in focus and approach, consistent with the new guidelines, have already begun to manifest themselves on the ground in ICE enforcement activities. As an example, in some ongoing investigations, unauthorized workers have been given temporary visas including work authorization so that they can participate in the investigation process, potentially even as witnesses against their employers. This is in stark contrast to the typical approach under the Bush Administration, in which unauthorized workers were detained or released under surveillance as deportation proceedings took place.
If you are an optimist, you will hope or assume that truly abusive and egregious employers will be the focus. If you are a pessimist, you might worry that employees who are pulled into an investigation will face coercive questioning regarding the employer's knowledge of workers' illegal presence, or problematic employment practices. Realists will review their hiring and I-9 practices to ensure that they are fully consistent with the law.
We are clearly headed into a period of close scrutiny of employment practices - both ICE and the Labor Department will be players, and as we have seen in past union-friendly administrations, users of the H-2 programs are likely to be disproportionate targets of compliance audits.
Here is a link to the ICE fact sheet describing the new guidance.
http://www.anla.org/index.cfm?page=Content&categoryID=208&area=&ID=627
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NEW!! All Employers Required to Use Revised Form I-9
Employment Eligibility Verification
as of April 3, 2009
for details and to download the new I-9
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Do you need to get your employees licensed as Registered Technicians for applying pesticides?
If so, below is information for an Online Study Course through Virginia Tech Pesticide Programs.
REGISTERED TECHNICIAN ONLINE COURSE
VTTP is offering an online training course to assist employers who are required to provide core training for their registered technicians (RT).
Virginia law requires employers to provide 20 hours of core training (and 20 hours of additional on-the-job training in pesticide safety) to qualify an employee as a registered technician (RT). For those not familiar with an RT - they are a pesticide applicator who has not completed the requirements for commercial certification. RTs can apply general use pesticides themselves, but applying restricted use pesticides requires supervision by a commercial applicator.
An RT can now go online and get help with studying the core content (they still need to study the core manual). The course has 15 modules that correspond to the 12 chapters of the Virginia core manual. In addition, we offer a set of practice exams to help users gain confidence in taking electronic exams (those taken at the DMV). The course is open to anyone seeking to become an RT in Virginia. There is no charge for its use as long as a user has purchased a Virginia Core manual. (Until we change the core manual we will be allowing applicators to register without this
requirement.) Individuals have 90 days of use before they are un-enrolled in the system. Employers can remain on the system longer.
Note that the on-line course is based on Core Manual content only; hence, people preparing to take the exams leading to Commercial Applicator certification will also need to study one or more category-specific manuals -- and may wish to attend a category-specific training course. However, the on-line course may be of interest for these people if they want to review Commercial Core exam material.
For users to gain access, they must contact Ms. Rachel Parson in VTPP ( rparson@vt.edu or 540-231-6543).
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BMP for VNLA Members
$75 plus tax and shipping
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