A reader posted the following note on The POORHOUSE STORY website Forum
(Message Board).

If any reader on this list can confirm this or provide any additional
information it would be greatly appreciated.

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It is true the [Ulster County] Poorhouse was formally closed down but it was
reopened for an emergency in the late summer of 1979 when farm workers from
Puerto Rico arrived and refused to work the Apple harvest because the
original terms and working conditions were not being lived up to by the
N.Y.S. Department of Labor and the Growers themselves. An immediate strike
ensued and no work was being done for weeks. It was covered in the Daily
Freeman and Poughkeepsie Journal

The farm workers set up picket lines at all the major Apple growers places
of business. The United Farm workers Union was unofficially involved because
the bill giving farm workers the right to organize and strike had been
started in the N.Y.S. Legislature just before the strike -- a bill which has
continued to be submitted to the legislature and remains still not passed
into law to this very day. Leaving farm workers outside the protections of
the law enjoyed by other industrial workers.

Finally, the growers with the help of local human services agencies
convinced the leaders of the strike to go to the poorhouse. Because the
poorhouse had been closed so long and could not hold some 3,000 or more farm
workers and its infrastructure antiquated the county agencies then started
offering the farm workers a trip back to Puerto Rico.

Those farm workers who determined not to go back to San Juan were then
housed at local at a motel off of the N.Y.S. Thruway. I know this bit of
history because I was an active particpant.  I was there for the strike, the
piket lines, the Poorhouse and the motel. I then worked with the farmworkers
who stayed and relocated. Many of which resettled in Ulster and Dutchess
County and remain here as part of our community.

At the time I was working with the United Farm Workers organizing committee
and Mid-Hudson Legal Services Inc.as a paralegal. We sued the N.Y.S.
Department of Labor and the Growers Association.  The late Howard Reiley,
Esq was the attorney of record and he worked with Gene Reibman, Esq. The
cases I believe were utimately won and the N.Y.S. Department of Labor and
the Growers Association have not tried this since.
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Thanks for your help.
Linda Crannell
(aka=The Poorhouse Lady)
host of The POORHOUSE STORY at http://www.poorhousestory.com