labor rights
egrossman | July 24, 2013On July 15 and 16, about two dozen farmworkers paid an unprecedented visit to Capitol Hill to ask Congress, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the White House to support increased protection from exposure to pesticides. Farmworkers have lobbied Congress before, but this is the first time such a visit focused entirely on pesticide exposure issues, explained Farmworker Justice director of occupational and environmental health, Virginia Ruiz. Farmworkers are asking Congress to support strengthening the EPA’s Worker Protection Standard for pesticides, a regulation that has not been…
kkrisberg | July 19, 2013When I asked Teresa Schnorr why we should be worried about the loss of a little-known occupational health data gathering program, she quoted a popular saying in the field of surveillance: "What gets counted, gets done."
Schnorr, who serves as director of the Division of Surveillance, Hazard Evaluations and Field Studies at CDC's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), was referring to the Adult Blood Lead Epidemiology and Surveillance program (ABLES), a state-based effort that collects and analyzes data on adult lead exposure. For more than two decades, NIOSH has been…
kkrisberg | June 28, 2013Sharon Thomas-Ellison works hard for her paychecks at Jimmy John's. On occasion when no one else is available, the 19-year-old has worked from 11 in the morning until 1 a.m. at night with just a 30-minute break — and it's okay, she says, she needs the extra income.
After a long day's work on her feet, often working split shifts, the St. Louis resident goes home to the one-bedroom apartment she shares with her brother, who also works for Jimmy John's, a fast food sandwich chain that's become a billion-dollar a year enterprise with more than 1,500 stores nationwide. It's a struggle to pay the…
cmonforton | June 25, 2013Civil rights groups filed a petition today with the Organization of American States' (OAS) Inter-American Commission on Human Rights asserting that the U.S. government has failed to protect poultry and meatpacking workers from permanently disabling and life altering work-related injuries and other abuses.
“The United States has not acted with due diligence nor has it taken proper steps to prevent abuses of meatpacking and poultry processing workers’ human rights, and is inasmuch violating the rights of workers in the poultry industry through its negligence."
The petition was filed by the…
lborkowski | June 7, 2013by Kim Krisberg
Every Tuesday night, the Austin-based Workers Defense Project welcomes standing room-only crowds to its Workers in Action meetings. During the weekly gatherings, low-wage, primarily Hispanic workers learn about their wage and safety rights, file and work on wage theft complaints, and organize for workplace justice.
Once a month, a representative from the local OSHA office would join the Tuesday meeting, giving some of Texas' most vulnerable workers the chance to meet face-to-face with the agency charged with protecting their health and safety on the job. Unfortunately, due to…
lborkowski | May 14, 2013by Kim Krisberg
Earlier this month, Florida lawmakers wrapped up their latest legislative session. And nearly 500 miles south of Tallahassee in Miami-Dade County, workers' rights advocates breathed yet another sigh of relief.
Ever since Miami-Dade adopted the nation's first countywide wage theft ordinance in 2010, it's been under attack. For the first two years after its passage, state legislators tried to pass legislation to pre-empt local communities from passing their own wage theft laws; this last legislative session, they tried again but included a carve out for Miami-Dade and for…
cmonforton | May 8, 2013The rate of work-related fatal injuries in some States is more than three times the national rate of 3.5 deaths per 100,000 workers. That's just one disturbing fact contained in the AFL-CIO's annual Death on the Job report which was released this week. In Wyoming, for example, the rate of fatal work-related injuries is 11.6 per 100,000, based on 32 deaths in the State in 2011 (the year for which the most recent data is available.) North Dakota's and Montana's rate is 11.2, based on 44 and 49 deaths, respectively. The rate in Alaska is 11.1, based on 39 deaths. In total, 4,693 workers…
lborkowski | April 29, 2013by Elizabeth Grossman
On April 24th, hundreds of workers at fast-food restaurants in Chicago staged a one-day walk-out to demonstrate for a raise to $15 an hour and the right to form a union. Striking workers included employees of Dunkin’ Donuts, McDonald’s, Subway, Popeyes Chicken, Macy’s, Nordstrom Rack, Sears, Lands’ End, Victoria’s Secret and Whole Foods. Some stores were unable to open or forced to close when all workers who were not management either walked out or did not report to work. Photos from Chicago show lines of striking workers stretching for several blocks.
Among them was…
cmonforton | April 25, 2013USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack seems determined to implement a new poultry slaughter inspection system, despite strong calls from the food safety and public health communities for him to withdraw it. At an April 17 congressional hearing before the House Appropriations Subcommittees on Agriculture, Rural Development, FDA and Related Agencies, Vilsack indicated that the new regulation would be completed soon, according to Congressional Quarterly.
Opponents say the proposal will do little to improve food safety, at the same time reducing USDA's ranks of poultry inspectors and shifting their food-…
lborkowski | April 19, 2013by Kim Krisberg
Eric Rodriguez and his colleagues at the Latino Union of Chicago quite literally meet workers where they're at — on the city's street corners. Many of the day laborers who gather there during the morning hours are hired to work construction at residential housing sites. Work arrangements are hardly formal, to say the least, and day laborers are frequently subjected to unnecessary and illegal dangers on the job. Unfortunately, worker safety is often kicked to the curb in the street corner marketplace.
For years, Rodriguez, who started as an organizer and is now the union's…
cmonforton | April 17, 2013A comprehensive, bi-partisan immigration reform bill was filed today by the "gang of eight" U.S. Senators. We've written previously about the abuses endured by many workers under the existing guest worker programs (here, here, here, here) and I am particularly curious to see the remedies proposed in the bill. It will take me a few weeks to digest the 844-page bill, but I took a quick peek for provisions related to labor' rights and workplace safety. Here is some of what I read:
(1) The bill would create a new visa program (a W-visa) for low-skilled immigrant workers. (See Subtitle G at…
Cracking down on deadbeat bosses: Wage theft victory a milestone in Chicago's worker center movement
lborkowski | April 15, 2013by Kim Krisberg
For Angel Nava, Chicago's newly adopted wage theft ordinance is particularly personal.
Until recently, Nava had worked at the same car wash business in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood for 14 years. The 55-year-old employee did it all — washing, detailing, buffing — for about 50 hours each week. Then, his boss decided to stop paying overtime.
In fact, Nava didn't receive the overtime he was owed for the last four years he worked at the car wash. He told me (though a translator) that none of his co-workers were receiving overtime either — "everyone was very upset." Nava said he…
cmonforton | March 28, 2013According to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), 477 individuals died along the U.S.-Mexico border in 2012 during their attempt to enter the U.S. That's an all-time high rate of 13.3 deaths per 10,000 CBP apprehensions. It compares to a rate of 8 deaths per 10,000 in 2010, and 4 per 10,000 in 2005.
The data was assembled by the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) in the policy brief "How many more deaths? The moral case for a temporary worker program." At a time when fewer migrants are attempting to enter the U.S. illegally, the author attributes the escalating…
lborkowski | March 1, 2013by Kim Krisberg
Texas construction workers who've lost their lives on unsafe worksites may be gone, but they certainly haven't been forgotten. Earlier this week, hundreds of Texas workers and their supporters took to the streets to demand legislators do more to stop preventable injury and death on the job. They took their demands and the stories of fallen workers all the way the halls of the state capitol.
Just two days ago, workers from every corner of the Lone Star state made their way to Austin to take part in the Day of the Fallen, a day of action to memorialize construction workers…
lborkowski | February 22, 2013by Kim Krisberg
For many migrant farmworkers, the health risks don't stop at the end of the workday. After long, arduous hours in the field, where workers face risks ranging from tractor accidents and musculoskeletal injuries to pesticide exposure and heat stroke, many will return to a home that also poses dangers to their well-being. And quite ironically for a group of workers that harvests our nation's food, one of those housing risks is poor cooking and eating facilities.
A group of researchers and advocates recently decided to take a closer look at such facilities among migrant farmworker…
cmonforton | February 21, 2013Outdoor carnivals, with their thrill rides, the carousel, cotton candy and arcade games, connote fun and happiness. But for the immigrant workers employed in the U.S. carnival and fair industry, happiness and fun don't describe their employment situation.
"They treat us like dogs."
"Sometimes we work 20-hour days, and even if it's raining...there's no time to rest doing this kind of work."
"He called us '[f***ing] Mexicans or [f***ing] tortillas."
"I worked 98 hours a week, and earned $2 per hour. I could take a brief break during the day, but only to go to the bathroom or eat."
"We couldn'…
cmonforton | February 12, 2013It's one thing to say your agency is committed to environmental justice, but actions speak louder than words. That's why I'm eager to see how USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack and his Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) respond to the environmental justice concerns raised about the agency's proposed regulation to "modernize the poultry slaughter inspection system" (77 Fed Reg 4408.)
A disproportionate share of workers employed in poultry slaughter and production are Latinos and women. Many earn poverty-level wages. Their work environment----which is already associated with adverse health…
cmonforton | February 4, 2013Leonel Perez put a human face on contingent workers in the U.S., during an interview with HuffPost Live's Jacob Soboroff. Perez is an immigrant farm worker from Imokolee, Florida. He explains the piece rate for picking tomatoes in the fields is about 50 cents for 32 pounds, a rate that hasn't changed in over 50 years. It's a poverty wage for an individual supporting himself, and worse yet for a farm worker who's trying to support a family.
The HuffPost interview also features University of Maryland law professor Rena Steinzor. She's president of the not-for-profit Center for Progressive…
lborkowski | February 1, 2013by Kim Krisberg
Texas may boast a booming construction sector, but a deeper look reveals an industry fraught with wage theft, payroll fraud, frighteningly lax safety standards, and preventable injury and death. In reality, worker advocates say such conditions are far from the exception — instead, they've become the norm.
Such conditions were chronicled in a new in-depth report released earlier this week. Researchers, who surveyed nearly 1,200 construction workers in Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, Austin and El Paso, found that one in five construction workers experienced a workplace injury…
cmonforton | January 29, 2013[Updated below (6/24/2013)]
The Huffington Post's Dave Jamieson has a story today from the Kentucky coal fields that has my head shaking in disbelief. Reuben Shemwell, 32, says he was fired by Armstrong Coal after complaining about safety problems, including asphyxiation hazards and inappropriate respirators. As provided by the federal Mine Act (Section 105(c)), Shemwell filed a complaint with the U.S. Labor Department's MSHA for wrongful discharge. Now he finds himself being sued by his former employer in Kentucky state court. Armstrong Coal claims that Shemwell filed a "false…