Fe y Justicia Worker Center

Worker center success: Houston workers organize for safer conditions at insulation plant

kkrisberg — Fri, 23 Oct 2015 16:25:24 +0000

Worker center success: Houston workers organize for safer conditions at insulation plant

When Mirella Nava began her new job at Rock Wool Manufacturing Company in Houston, Texas, she had no intentions of becoming an advocate for worker safety. But when she witnessed how fellow workers were being treated and the dangerous work conditions they faced on a daily basis, she felt compelled to speak up.

Eventually, Nava and a group of Rock Wool workers — with the help of the Houston-based Fe y Justicia Worker Center — got the attention of local OSHA officials, who earlier this year cited Rock Wool Manufacturing for seven serious and two repeat violations for exposing workers to a variety of workplace hazards, including amputation risks. OSHA also cited staffing agency C & C Personnel, which provided the company with more than 50 temporary workers a day, with four serious safety violations. The case is a near perfect example of how worker centers are empowering some of the country’s most vulnerable laborers with the knowledge and means to fight for and secure safer working conditions.

“These workers were just too vulnerable to stand up by themselves,” Nava told me. “But once they see that they have support, that they’re not standing alone — it just made a huge difference.”

Hired through a staffing agency, Nava began working at Rock Wool Manufacturing in February 2014. The company, which is headquartered in Leeds, Alabama, manufactures industrial insulation — the insulation is manufactured in Alabama and sent in bulk to the Houston plant, where workers cut and ready the insulation to ship to clients. At Rock Wool, Nava was responsible for various administrative, scheduling and shipping logistics as well as taking client orders and relaying specifications to workers in the warehouse. As such, Nava was regularly in the warehouse where workers were doing the actual insulation cutting. And that’s where she said she began to notice that workers were consistently being exposed to serious safety risks and working in dangerous conditions.

During our lengthy phone interview, Nava gave me numerous examples of the conditions and incidents she witnessed at Rock Wool. Table saws with no protection guards, freezing temperatures in the winter and “hotter than hell” temperatures in the summer, broken drinking water stations, and machinery that was “always breaking down and never given proper maintenance.” She said workers often had to bring in their own water and would get yelled at if they stopped to drink water and weren’t on an official break.

One warehouse worker’s finger was cut so severely on the table saw he had to have it sewn back on. On more than one occasion, the chemical paint thinner workers used to clean off industrial glue got into a worker’s eyes. There was no eyewash station and so Nava would bring the worker to the bathroom and help him wash it out in the sink. Another worker was looking inside a machine to see why the blades had stopped moving when the door to the machine’s insides, which she said didn’t have proper latches or locks, fell on his head. He had to get stitches, she said, but he wasn’t allowed to leave work until he got the machine working again.

“It just broke my heart to see things like that,” Nava said.

Nava said she never witnessed anyone receiving safety training — “employees would come in sent by the staffing agency and thrown on the line and that was it.” Nava couldn’t stand by and say nothing. So, she spoke with the manager numerous times about the dangerous conditions.

“He said he didn’t have the money (to make the warehouse safer) and that plenty of people would be happy to do this work,” she told me.

In one instance, officials from the Alabama headquarters came to visit the plant. Nava took her chance to point out dangerous conditions in the warehouse, such as unsafe stacking practices. Just as they were talking, a forklift incident caused a pile of boxes and a palette to topple to the ground right behind her. Still, management did nothing.

Speaking up for the workers in the warehouse was creating a lot of tension between Nava and her manager. Things were getting tense, but she said the workers in the warehouse begged her not to leave. But eventually in March 2015, she lost her job at Rock Wool. After falling in the warehouse and injuring her hand, her manager said she was spending too much time out of the office going to medical appointments. He fired her.

Organizing for change: ‘Workers were ready to take every step to accomplish justice’

Immediately after being fired, Nava filed a Department of Labor complaint for unpaid wages (she eventually received the wages she had earned). And then she began searching for a way to help the workers she had been forced to leave behind. She called her local Univision station and they gave her the number to the Fe y Justicia Worker Center. Soon after, she and a group of Rock Wool workers began attending the worker center’s Monday night labor law workshops. They began learning about proper and lawful occupational health and safety standards. Working with one of the center’s trainers, Nava and the Rock Wool workers mapped out all the hazards they could remember from the warehouse.

“The workshop was a big eye-opener for all of us,” she told me. “The (trainers) pointed out all these (workplace) hazards to us that had previously seemed like normal, everyday things.”

Fe y Justicia helped the group of workers — nearly a dozen — build a formal OSHA complaint and connected them with a Spanish-speaking OSHA inspector, who met with and interviewed former Rock Wool employees as well. After an inspection at the Rock Wool plant in April 2015, the OSHA official issued the company a list of safety recommendations. (Following that inspection, workers said that management threatened them for going to OSHA. The workers filed a retaliation complaint with the local Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.)

Still, workers were worried the company wouldn’t take any action on the OSHA recommendations, said Martha Ojeda, executive director at Fe y Justicia. So that’s when the worker center rallied its supporters and drove its Justice Bus to the plant site to demand safer conditions in person. About 60 people came out in support.

“The workers were ready to take every step to accomplish justice,” Ojeda told me. “Everyone was committed.”

A few months later in August, OSHA officially cited Rock Wool for seven serious and two repeat violations, and cited staffing agency C & C Personnel for four serious violations, including failing to establish an energy control program to disable potentially hazardous machinery. (Serious violations are those in which the working conditions could have resulted in serious injury or death.) The agency proposed penalties of $64,350 for Rock Wool and $21,600 for C & C Personnel. Among the serious violations against Rock Wool include not providing adequate employee training on energy control programs, lack of proper machine guarding, and having equipment in damp and wet locations. According to an informal settlement agreement with OSHA, Rock Wool and C & C Personnel have agreed to the proposed penalties.

Joann Figueroa, OSHA’s area director in the Houston North office, told me the agency also looked into the allegations of dust exposure. In this case, cutting rock wool insulation generally results in mineral fiber dust. However, OSHA has no specific permissible exposure limit for this type of dust, relying on its general particulate exposure standard instead. Figueroa said the agency did take samples to test for respirable dust and did not get an overexposure result. (It’s important to note here than on many occasions, federal OSHA Administrator David Michaels has said OSHA chemical exposure standards are outdated and so employers should not necessarily rely on the standards to keep workers safe.)

In regard to citing the temporary staffing agency in this case, Figueroa said OSHA considers worker safety a “joint responsibility” between both the staffing agency and the host employer. With temporary staffing arrangements becoming much more common in the workplace, she said OSHA is hoping to communicate the message that all of the employers involved need to ensure compliance with OSHA standards.

“A temp worker, at times, is not treated or viewed as being the same as a permanent employee in the same workplace, although OSHA strongly believes they should be treated the same way,” she told me. “Depending on the circumstances…they could be more vulnerable and potentially not as well trained.”

Figueroa also noted how important worker centers are in helping OSHA connect with hard-to-reach workers.

“It’s a beneficial relationship,” she said. “We’re able to reach workers we might not have been able to reach in the past and educate them on their rights.”

Back at Fe y Justicia, Ojeda said the worker center will continue to track and monitor safety conditions at Rock Wool Manufacturing. She noted that in Texas, where employers aren’t required to have workers’ compensation insurance and there is no state occupational health and safety agency, worker centers are critical to protecting the most vulnerable workers.

“This was a big victory,” Ojeda told me. “It gave workers the confidence that they have rights and they can help enforce them.”

For Nava, the experience has turned her into a devoted volunteer at Fe y Justicia, where she hopes to soon become a certified health and safety trainer.

“We just need to stop being afraid,” she said. “We need to start speaking up and we need to let the community know that there are centers that exist that will help you and hold your hand step by step. There’s nothing wrong with looking for that help or seeking that support.”

Visit Fe y Justicia to learn more about their mission, work and success.

Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for more than a decade.

kkrisberg Fri, 10/23/2015 - 12:25

‘Statistics can’t tell stories’: Houston domestic workers release personal anthology

kkrisberg — Fri, 16 May 2014 15:01:50 +0000

‘Statistics can’t tell stories’: Houston domestic workers release personal anthology

Two years ago, domestic workers in Houston, Texas, took part in the first national survey documenting the conditions they face on the job. The experience — a process of shedding light on the often isolating and invisible world of domestic work — was so moving that Houston workers decided they didn’t want to stop there. Instead, they decided it was time to put their personal stories to paper.

The result is “We Women, One Woman!: A view of the lived experience of domestic workers,” which was officially released last month. The anthology features the stories of 15 nannies, house cleaners and caregivers — all are members of La Colmena (The Beehive), a domestic worker group that’s part of Houston’s Fe y Justicia Worker Center and that works to organize domestic workers and educate them on their rights. The anthology’s release follows two years of domestic workers meeting regularly to share their stories, participate in writing workshops and ultimately, use their own words to illustrate the experience of working in the largely unregulated, oversight-free workplaces that are people’s homes.

“We always talk about how there’s no statistic that can accurately capture what it’s really like,” Laura Perez-Boston, executive director of Fe y Justicia, told me. “Statistics can’t tell stories.”

The anthology’s stories, published in both English and Spanish, cover a range of topics, often exposing issues such as wage theft as well as unsafe and unfair working conditions. The women also write about their personal lives — single motherhood, poverty, immigration, leaving their native countries and families behind — and why they felt it was so important to speak out about their workplace experience. For example, Consuelo Martinez, an elder care provider, wrote in the anthology: “I’d like to express what we have to go through because for many people being a domestic worker is a job that doesn’t mean anything. …I want everyone who hears me to remember this warrior woman who helped her children get ahead in life with an honorable job and a lot of pride.” Other La Colmena members, such as Lucy Quintanar, were less personal in their narratives, instead using the opportunity to call for better working conditions and collective power.

“We need to get a union to get our rights, to make people conscious of the situation and the circumstances of this employment,” Quintanar told me. “I hope everybody reads it…I would like to let (other domestic workers) know that there’s a place called La Colmena where they can get help to learn their rights. Don't be afraid to speak out.”

One of the many handcrafted covers of the new domestic worker anthology. Photo courtesy La Colmena

Quintanar originally sought out Fe y Justicia after an employer refused to pay her wages she had earned — more commonly known as wage theft. (The National Domestic Workers Alliance survey that originally inspired the anthology found that 23 percent of domestic workers are already paid below state minimum wage.) At the time, Quintanar was working as a live-in domestic worker, taking care of children, cleaning the house and doing typical household chores. One day, her employer asked her to clean the swimming pool, which Quintanar refused to do as it wasn’t among the job duties to which she’d agreed. The employer fired her on the spot and never paid Quintanar the $450 she was owed. It was the second time an employer refused to pay her hundreds of dollars in wages that she had earned, Quintanar said.

Quintanar told me that the women of La Colmena have become like family for her.

“When you’re working, you don’t have the opportunity to have friends,” she said. “La Colmena is very important to me…I like belonging to a group. Now I can organize with other women to improve our labor conditions.”

It’s easy to see how much effort and emotion was poured into the anthology, as the women who wrote its stories also handcrafted the covers of each book. One La Colmena member fashioned tiny fabric aprons that tie around the book, while another woman used Guatemalan weaving fabric to create original covers. One worker used a picture that her daughter drew of a woman with long, dark braids hugging the Earth. All of the book covers are wrapped in a scrapbooking material printed with the shape of a honeycomb.

Mitzi Ordoñez, domestic worker organizer at Fe y Justicia, said she and the members of La Colmena hope the anthology will reach both employers as well as other domestic workers. Ordoñez said plans are in the works for a second anthology, which would focus on success stories and how domestic workers are empowering each other to fight for better conditions.

“We want to make employers aware of the true value of this work,” she told me. “Nannies and caregivers — these are jobs that make other jobs possible. For domestic workers, we want to let them know that there’s a place where they can come and they’re not alone.”

The anthology experience has put the power of storytelling front and center, Perez-Boston said. Narrative can be a strong tool for organizing and building a common identity, she noted, especially for domestic workers, who often work alone in isolated environments.

“Storytelling can help us move toward social transformation,” she told me.

The anthology’s initial publishing run of 500 copies is nearly sold out; however, more copies are expected to come out soon. To inquire about purchasing a copy, email Ordoñez at mordonez@houstonworkers.org. Click here to learn more about La Colmena and the Fe y Justicia Worker Center, and click here and here to learn more about the domestic worker survey that originally inspired the Houston anthology.

Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for more than a decade.

kkrisberg Fri, 05/16/2014 - 11:01

Worker victory in Houston: City passes ordinance punishing wage theft

kkrisberg — Fri, 22 Nov 2013 13:56:05 +0000

Worker victory in Houston: City passes ordinance punishing wage theft

This week, Houston became only the second major city in the U.S. South to pass a law to prevent and punish wage theft. It’s a major victory for all workers, but it’s especially significant for the city’s low-wage workers, who lose an estimated $753.2 million every year because of wage theft.

Passed unanimously by the Houston City Council on Wednesday, the new wage theft ordinance provides workers with a formal process to lodge wage theft complaints and puts in place real penalties for employers convicted of stealing workers’ wages. Businesses convicted of wage theft — either civilly or criminally — will be listed in a publicly accessible city database and will become ineligible for city contracts or subcontracts. In addition, any employer with a criminal conviction of wage theft won’t be able to receive occupational permits and licenses. The ordinance, which automatically went into effect, is the first such measure in Texas. Miami-Dade County was the first major southern metropolis to pass a wage theft ordinance.

“At the deepest level, this affirms that any Houston resident does have the right to participate in the political process and help determine how their city runs,” said Laura Perez-Boston, executive director of Houston’s Fe y Justicia Worker Center (Faith and Justice Worker Center), which spearheads the local Down With Wage Theft campaign and whose worker members rallied and testified in support of the ordinance. “What this victory means is that if you’re committed to a vision for change and to justice, just don’t give up. We can win.”

Two years in the making, the ordinance is an encouraging example of community-driven change. Led by Fe y Justicia and its partners, workers spoke out at community forums, organized rallies and marches, and met with local officials — “it took a lot of work in the streets to earn our seat at the table,” Perez-Boston told me. In fact, the employer penalties and language included in the new ordinance came directly from conversations with workers who had experienced wage theft, she said.

With such an ordinance in place, Perez-Boston said she hopes more workers will feel safe coming forward to report wage theft. The ordinance will also boost the worker center’s efforts to recover stolen wages. Now, when center staff send letters to employers regarding a wage theft complaint, they can use the new ordinance to get their attention. The Down With Wage Theft coalition will be working closely with the city to make sure the ordinance is effectively implemented and to monitor the results, said Jessica Alvarenga, communications coordinator for the campaign. In addition, Fe y Justicia will continue to assist low-wage workers in recovering stolen wages on their own.

“Given that this was a two-year campaign, first we want to celebrate,” Alvarenga told me. “We want to make sure this law goes into effect correctly before we start pushing for more. This is just the first step of many steps for workers.”

As Perez-Boston said: “We want to make sure it’s a living, breathing protection for justice.”

For 25-year-old Houston resident Adalinda Guajardo, the wage theft ordinance is a particularly personal victory. Three years ago, her father, a truck driver, was hired to transport milk from Houston to destinations around Texas. Unfortunately, the employer never paid him the more than $2,300 he was owed. Guajardo’s father was the sole income earner for the family and the missing wages had a devastating result — they weren’t able to pay for rent, utilities, her college tuition or her mother’s diabetes medication.

“At first, we didn’t know what to do, we were in shock,” she told me. “We felt humiliated.”

Eventually, Guajardo and her family went to the Fe y Justicia Worker Center for help in recovering the wages. Unfortunately, they’ve only been able to recover about $40 so far, but in the process they became strong supporters of the Down With Wage Theft campaign. In fact, Guajardo was among residents who testified before the City Council.

“I finally feel like there’ll be some justice,” she said. “If you’re a victim of wage theft, speak up, don’t be afraid. Wage theft is a crime and it deserves to be punished.”

According to a 2012 report from Fe y Justicia (which was then known as the Houston Interfaith Worker Justice Center), more than 100 wage and hour violations happen in Houston every week. For example, just this week a Houston-based commercial maintenance company agreed to pay more than $273,000 in back wages to 266 janitors after a federal investigation. Nationwide, 68 percent of low-wage workers surveyed by the National Employment Law Project reported experiencing wage violations in the previous week.

To learn more about Houston’s wage theft ordinance, visit http://downwithwagetheft.org. And read our previous coverage of Houston’s worker movement here.

Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for more than a decade.

kkrisberg Fri, 11/22/2013 - 08:56

Houston lawmakers poised to tackle wage theft

cmonforton — Thu, 25 Jul 2013 12:33:10 +0000

Houston lawmakers poised to tackle wage theft

The fourth largest city in the U.S. may be the next major metropolis taking action against wage theft. Members of Houston's City Council held a public hearing this week to discuss a proposed city ordinance targeted at employers who fail to pay the minimum wage or legally due overtime pay, force employees to work "off the clock," or simply skip out on paying owed wages. In Houston alone, an estimated $750 million are lost every year due to wage theft perpetrated against low-wage workers. The economic consequences for the victims and their families is profound, as is the potential effect on their health. One of the single biggest risk factors for ill health is poverty.

The hearing this week was called by Council Member Ed Gonzalez, chair of the Public Safety Committee, to discuss a proposed City ordinance on wage theft. The preamble to the draft measure reads:

"wage theft, including the non-payment or underpayment of earned wages owed by employers, is a practice typically inflicted on the weakest and poorest segments of our society, locally, statewide and nationally; and those subjected to wage theft are generally without any adequate remedy to redress the injury suffered at the hands of unscrupulous employers."

Workers who have been the victims of wage theft spoke at the hearing. They weren't seeking redress for their own situation, but rather to make the case that addressing Houston's wage theft problem will benefit the community at-large. Jose Perez explained

"If workers get the wages that belong to them, their families will be able to spend them on groceries, transportation, utilities and rent. As result, responsible employers will be able to do more business and our economy will continue growing. This is a pro-business ordinance becauseit will provide a more equal environment of competition among businesses by insuring irresponsible businesses cannot unfairly compete because they do not pay of the wages they owe to workers."

Beatriz Arboleda testified that she and her husband supplement their income with a small specialty cleaning business.

"We face many challenges in this business because it is impossible to compete with irresponsible employers who avoid paying taxes and permits and are stealing wages from the workers. ...As responsible business owners, we endorse the wage theft ordinance. ...It will make our city a pioneer model to be followed by the other cities in the state of Texas."

Stan Marek, CEO of one of the largest commercial interior contractors in Texas, told NPR's Wade Goodwin:

"There's no way you can compete. ...When someone is paying less per hour, no workman's comp, no payroll taxes, [no] unemployment — we can't overcome that."

Marek was also at this week's hearing.

The proposed ordinance was drafted by City attorneys, following a two-year campaign by the Fe y Justicia Worker Center to focus attention of City leaders on the problem. The proposed wage theft ordinance would, among other things:

prohibit the City from entering into any contract or other business arrangement with any entity or individual convicted or otherwise sanctioned for wage theft;
establishes a wage theft coordinator who will receive and review wage theft complaints and notices of convictions;
instructs the coordinator to maintain a "watch list" of wage theft violators and distribute the list to City departments;
instructs the coordinator to monitor the City Council's agendas to determine if any employer on the "watch list" is seeking any City contract;
create a publicly available database of all employers, including prime and subcontractors, located or operating in Houston, that have been convicted of, assessed a penalty, or determined by a court to have engaged in wage theft.

Olga Castro de Leon, a restaurant worker who has been a victim of wage theft by her employer put it simply:

"If our legal system requires that violations like stealing will be penalized, why isn’t wage theft?"

Houston's full City Council is expected to take up the matter and consider the proposed ordinance in the next few weeks.

cmonforton Thu, 07/25/2013 - 08:33