As Department of Labor officials noted in their opening remarks at the National Action Summit for Latino Worker Health and Safety last week, Latino workers have higher rates of occupational injuries and fatalities than US workers as a whole. They are particularly likely to work in low-wage, high-risk jobs, but may not receive or know about the training, equipment, and other safeguards to which they’re entitled.
Since no previous administration’s Department of Labor has made such a high-profile move to advance Latino workers’ health and safety, Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis and the Department of Labor staff deserve credit for taking this important first step. As the lead organizing agency, OSHA deserves commendations for bringing together 1,000 participants from government, labor unions, community organizations, and employer and industry groups to engage with each other on this issue.
What I most want to praise OSHA for, though, was getting actual Latino workers to the event and featuring several of them in the opening session. Jaime Zapata, Senior Managing Director of DOL’s Office of Public Affairs, did a great job moderating the panel, slipping seamlessly back and forth between Spanish and English (the workers all spoke in Spanish, and although there was a translator on stage, Zapata seemed comfortable speaking with the panelists in Spanish and then quickly summarizing his questions in English). The workers’ stories were the perfect illustration about how much work we still have to do to make all workplaces healthy and safe. Here’s a summary of what they told the crowd:
Celia has been working as a hotel housekeeper at a Hyatt hotel in Long Beach, California for 19 years. Previously, she’d been cleaning 16 rooms during each 8-hour shift, but then the company instituted a new program that requires housekeepers to clean 25-30 rooms per shift. Under the new program, rates of injuries among the housekeepers have increased. Celia is now disabled, even after having had knee and shoulder surgery. She explains that she suffers from pain in her back, hands, and wrists – but what hurts most is that she can’t be involved with her granddaughters’ lives the way she could be if she were healthy. She wants OSHA to make Hyatt and other hotel chains review their requirements for how much housekeepers are expected to complete during each shift, and to do something about the fact that so many housekeeper injuries are not reported.
José is a construction worker in Phoenix, Arizona. He reported a broken nail gun to his boss, but it wasn’t fixed – and a short time later, José was using the nail gun and it shot a nail through his fingers. The boss told him to go home, where he removed the nail from his hand. He couldn’t work for weeks, but he wasn’t informed about workers’ compensation. He also didn’t have health insurance because he couldn’t afford the premiums – although it probably would’ve been more affordable if he’d been paid for the hours he actually work. Although José was working long hours, often 70-80 per week, his paychecks were only for 38 or 39 hours per week.
Mauricia is a California agricultural worker who has watched two of her co-workers die while picking grapes. Beneath the grape vines, the air is wet and hot, with temperatures often between 110 and 115 degrees. Workers don’t always have access to necessary water and shade. Mauricia had told the manager about the problems and urged him to look out for the workers’ health – but, she concluded, he didn’t pay attention. In two separate instances, workers collapsed and then died from heatstroke and dehydration.
Isabel is employed by Sodexho as a college housecleaner. The company gives them too much work, which leads to accidents. When Isabel and her co-workers report problems to the supervisor, they’re just told to go back to work. One woman got a gash in her head from a showerhead, and rather than sending her for medical attention, the boss simply told her to go home. She stayed home for two days without getting better before going to the doctor, and wasn’t told about workers’ compensation. Isabel notes that the housekeeping staff doesn’t have clean facilities in which to take meal breaks – there are dangerous chemicals in the room where they eat breakfast, and rat excrement and poison where they eat lunch.
Juanito is a construction worker in Austin, Texas. Last June, he and three others were working on the eleventh floor of a condominium project when the scaffolding collapsed. Juanito survived, but watched his co-workers fall 120 feet to their death. Like José, Juanito spends far more hours on a job than he is paid for, usually working 12 hours a day, six days a week but only getting paid for 35-40 hours (and no overtime).
These stories highlight one of the issues that came up repeatedly during the panel discussions and workshops I attended: The problems these workers described fall under the jurisdiction of multiple different agencies. It’s not just OSHA that needs to be cracking down on scofflaw employers, but DOL’s Wage and Hour Division and state workers’ compensation programs. The fact that half of the states operate their own OSHA plans adds yet another layer of complication.
The complexity of the system for addressing workplace danger and injustice is certainly a challenge, but it’s a surmountable one. While I was in Houston, I heard examples from the Workers Defense Project, Community Labor Environmental Action Network, MassCOSH, and others about how they’re helping workers learn about and exercise their rights. (And, judging by the T-shirts of the opening session panelists, it was community groups and unions who identified these panelists to the OSHA conference organizers.)
What’s more challenging than complexity is workers’ fears of what will happen to them if they complain about workplace problems. OSHA head David Michaels made this statement in his opening remarks:
We want Latino workers to know that if they have questions, if they have safety concerns, if they want to know about their rights, if they seek protection from retaliation when they complain about dangerous conditions on the job — workers can rely on OSHA and the Department of Labor for help.
I know there are hundreds of committed DOL employees who will do all they can to protect workers’ rights – but OSHA’s track record on handling whistleblower complaints seems likely to discourage anyone who’s experiencing retaliation and wants help. If OSHA and DOL really want workers to rely on them, they should make it a priority to improve the whistleblower protection program.
At this event, DOL – and OSHA in particular – demonstrated that they care about the high rates of workplace injuries and deaths among Latino workers, and about the individual people who experience unsafe and illegal working conditions. The agencies probably also realized that many organizations and companies, not to mention workers themselves, are ready to work with the government to make all workplaces safe. Now we need to see what concrete steps the agencies will take toward this goal.
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April 21, 2010 at 8:09 pm
Celeste Monforton
Liz,
You hit the nail on the head, when you said “If OSHA and DOL really want workers to rely on them, they should make it a priority to improve the whistleblower protection program.” I was getting nervous at the OSHA Houston meeting when I heard DOL officials encouraging workers to speak up about safety and file complaints when they should know that protections for whistleblowers is reality is almost non-existent. Consider this:
About 60 percent of OSHA whistleblower complaints referred to the Solicitor of Labor for prosecution in federal court, have been flushed down the toilet. A mere 7% have been litigated. 33% were settled but not necessarily in terms that made the workers whole. Employers who retaliate and discriminate against workers who exercise their health rights understand that OSHA’s whistleblower protection program is nothing to fear.
April 24, 2010 at 6:10 pm
safemba
Since the summit what has OSHA done to help the workers that shared their stories? NOTHING.
The only one they can help is Juanito. He works in Texas all the others are in States that have their own plans and OSHA can not do a thing but audit the State plan and cut their planning.
The Health and Safety summit was hosted in Texas where Fed OSHA enforces safety, etc. Texas has one of the worst records in the Union.
Most State plans do a much better job than Fed OSHA.
Why do we need OSHA? Allow each State to have their own plan.
Focusing on Latino workers is all political. What is OSHA going to do?
How many bilingual employees do they have?
In DC I guess 2? Three if we include the Secretary of Labor
April 25, 2010 at 12:35 pm
Liz
As far as what OSHA can do, I know they collected feedback in the final workshop session, and I hope they’ll use it. One of the things I heard repeatedly at the event is that many workers don’t know what rights they have and what they can do when one of those rights is violated.
OSHA can certainly do national media campaigns (like the one they previewed for us at the opening session), and they can work with local groups to distribute resource materials – there are plenty of groups who were represented at the meeting who operate in state plan states.
I agree that the issue of fed OSHA having jurisdiction in only half of the states is a real problem, and I heard lots of people raise it at the summit. I’d rather see fed OSHA have more jurisdiction rather than less, because so many states seem to be doing such a poor job with their state OSHA plans (though there are exceptions, like California).
The Pulitzer-winning investigative series by Alexandra Berzon in the Las Vegas Sun and work by United Support and Memorial for Workplace Fatalities – particularly USMWF member Deb Koehler-Fergen, whose son Travis Koehler was killed on the job in Nevada – drew attention to problems with the Nevada state plan. The House Education & Labor Committee held a hearing on problems with the Nevada state plan and state plans in general, and then-Acting OSHA head Jordan Barab testified that OSHA would be conducting evaluations of every state plan. I hope we’ll soon see some action by federal OSHA to make sure these state plans are following the requirements for protecting worker health and safety.