Immigrant Worker Rights PROJECT

DLT Director Says `Yes' to Worker Rights

At a mass meeting of Progreso Latino/United Workers Committee in November, RI Department of Labor & Training director Adelita Orefice (R) agreed to demands to recognize the rights of immigrant workers. Progeso Latino/United Workers Committee is a partner with the Institute in the Immigrant Workers Rights Project.

Stopping Worker Abuse

Greg Pehrson, United Workers Committee organizer, looks on as an immigrant worker displays a check for several weeks back pay which had been illegally withheld by her employer. Her victory was a result of a recent action by the Immigrant Workers Rights Project.

ILSR LAUNCHES IMMIGRANT WORKERS' RIGHTS CAMPAIGN

With grants from the Rhode Island Foundation, the Institute for Labor Studies & Research in collaboration with Progreso Latino, ChisPA and the Rhode Island Coalition for Immigrants & Refugees has been conducting a public education and organizing campaign to empower immigrant workers to achieve justice in the workplace.

The main goals are create stronger labor laws and more rigourous enforcement, and to educate and empower workers to access labor protections.

The strategic objectives are to empower immigrant workers by:

• providing one-on-one support for individual worker needs.
• educating workers about their rights
• providing workers with the skills to act on their rights
• providing the community and organizational supports that protect and enable workers

To create stronger unions by:

• organizing the unorganized.
• ensuring that unions have the internal capacity and leadership to organize, protect and enable immigrant workers.
• holding unions accountable for inclusion of immigrant workers.

Create stronger labor laws and enforcement including:

• tougher penalties for employers that violate worker rights.
• reforming labor law protections to relect the changed nature of the workplace and the special needs of immigrant workers
• adminstrative and enformatne agencies with the coacity and funding to enforce worker protections.
• a minimum wage that reflects a living wage.

New immigrant workers often face discrimination and abuse by unscrupulous employers, these employers interfere with immigrant's rights to improve wage and working conditions through unionization, and they threaten INS deportation when immigrants try to enforce their workplace rights.

The Immigrant Workers Rights Campaign will focus on the needs of this rapidly growing population of more than 50.000 new immigrants, documented and undocumented, who have entered in RI in the last 10 years.

Specific to the campaign, the ILSR will educate immigrant workers on their rights on the job through the Workers' Rights Hotline, education programs, the workplace rights education project, School to Career, newsletter, cable television and bilingual radio shows, and a series of workplace rights workshops for community, religious, labor organizations, immigrant groups and social services agencies.  The ILSR will also produce literature in multi languages.

For information about the Immigrant Workers' Rights Project, please call Carolina Bernal at (401) 463-9900.

LCLAA (Labor Committee for Latin American Advancement) Chapter is being formed in Rhode Island.  For more information, call Carolina Bernal at 401-463-9900 or e-mail her at cbernal1@att.net

As a result of the Institute for Labor Studies' Immigrant Workers Rights Project, the Rhode Island AFL-CIO recently sponsored an organizational meeting of union members from the Latino community to establish a Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA) chapter in Rhode Island. The response was overwhelmingly positive, with nearly 40 individuals committing their participation.  LCLAA works with Latino union members to advocate for the rights of all Latino workers and their families at all levels of the American trade union movement and the political process. LCLAA strives to achieve social and economic equality by developing programs that reach out and educate Latino workers about the importance of participating in the political process in order to ensure a strong voice for Latino working families.   The Rhode Island chapter of LCLAA hopes to increase organizing activities, voter registration, local activism and political participation in the Latino community.   For more information about the union movement's commitment to improving the lives of immigrant workers, you can download the "Nation of Immigrants Resolution" approved by the AFL-CIO Constitutional Convention in December 2001 at www.aflcio.org, or visit the LCLAA website.

If you know of any Latino union members who would be interested in participating in the Rhode Island LCLAA chapter, please contact Carolina Bernal at the Institute for Labor Studies at 401-463-9900.

A call from a worker who heard our monthly radio program in Spanish about workers' rights,  resulted in 61 out of 70 workers at a factory signing union authorization cards.

Your Rights on the Job, in Spanish, is broadcast the first Sunday of each month, 10-11 a.m. on  PODER 1190 AM.

Reaching out to Latino Workers

Latino workers are the fastest growing minority workforce in the state and often are exposed to dangerous work. One out of every two new workers in the U.S. are immigrants.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Hispanic workers have the highest rate of industrial injuries compared to white and black workers. Some experts believe that workplace injuries are under-reported because immigrant workers fear deportation or losing their jobs, or an unscrupulous employer fails to file an injury report.

As part of an ongoing effort to educate immigrant workers about their rights on the job, the Institute for Labor Studies, in conjunction with the Education Unit of the RI Department of Labor and Training, has expanded its outreach program by offering information in Spanish through the workers' rights hotline, workshops, and educational literature. A radio show is broadcast at 10:00 a.m. every first Sunday of the month on PODER 1190 AM.

The Education Unit has contracted with the Institute to provide a bilingual interpreter at the Education Unit hotline in order to assist Spanish-speaking callers and inform them about their rights under the RI Workers' Compensation Law.

The Institute and the Education Unit at the Division of Workers' Compensation will develop new bilingual programs this year to educate Hispanic workers on health and safety on the job.

For more information or for bilingual assistance, call Carolina Bernal at 401-463-9900 or 401-462-8125, the Spanish information line at the Divison of Workers' Compensation on Tuesday mornings only.