A Worker Center’s Work is Never Done

MassCOSH is actively involved in three campaigns to aid immigrant workers who have been treated unjustly on the job. Working in partnership with La Comunidad, Inc., the Worker Center is supporting bakery workers whose employer is attempting to use their undocumented status against them. The workers, many of whom have worked for the bakery for half a decade, were recently asked to reapply for their jobs through a temp agency, effectively rendering themselves new employees. The bakery then used their new employee status as a reason to fire them while also refusing to pay wages owed.

A temp industry is also at the heart of the campaign for a group of Boston hotel workers who sought our support on health and safety, wage theft, and retaliation issues. The temp agency demanded they use unlabeled and toxic cleaning products without gloves or other PPE to protect them from chemical exposure. They also required workers to work outside of hours they were clocked in without pay and retaliated against workers that needed to use sick time to care for themselves or their families.

Finally, the Worker Center is supporting workers at a restaurant distribution center who were unjustly fired after having to quarantine themselves for two weeks without pay after a potential SARS-CoV-2 exposure on the job. The workers, some of whom have worked for the business for decades, are protected by the Families First Coronavirus Response Act law that protects workers who are forced to quarantine and provides them wages as they stay home to protect the public.

Over the past weeks, MassCOSH has trained and supported workers to help them organize their colleagues, document injustices, and hand-delivered demand letters to employers. Follow MassCOSH on Facebook for updates on these cases.