Category: Research

Work injury risks in Oakland CA garment industry (2002)

This study is one of several independent studies by largely academic-based researchers on occupational risks of specific groups of workers. This one involves Asian garment workers in Oakland. It looks at injury risks and ergonomic solutions. An absorbing study, it is also exasperatingly flawed. Like the other studies (which I will introduce soon), this study reports that an extremely small portion of worker physical complaints result in workers comp claims. This is a very serious problem. But the authors fail to take into account the severity of the self-reported complaints. They appear not to have considered the very real possibility that many injuries also may have had non-occupational factors. They used no comparison group of workers. It is impossible to figure out if the work injury experience of these workers is materially worse than that of other garment workers. (I suspect it is.) The authors turned away multiple requests to discuss the study with me.
For the complete 26 page report go to We Spend Our Days Working In Pain
I have posted below the Executive Summary and Recommendations……
California sewing factories employ over 100,000 sewing machine operators, most of whom are Asian and Latina immigrants. Health and safety violations are common in the mostly small factories that employ these minimum wage workers. This report is based on the clinical findings and survey results from sewing machine operators seen at the Oakland-based Asian Immigrant Women Workers Clinic (AIWWC), a free clinic for garment workers sponsored by Asian Immigrant Women Advocates (AIWA) and the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). Findings include:

  • Garment workers are being injured on the job and are at substantial risk of permanent disability from their injuries. Ninety-nine percent of AIWWC patients had one or more diagnosed work-related conditions, including back, neck or shoulder sprains or strains. Ninety-four percent experienced pain severe enough to interfere with their daily activities.
  • Working conditions in garment factories are frequently substandard. Approximately 94% of patients reported one or more problems with their workstations including inadequate seating (90%), awkward bending and twisting (67%), breathing problems due to fabric dust (48%), less than adequate rest breaks (40%), and being yelled at by their bosses (36%).
  • Garment workers typically work over 40 hours per week for low pay and no benefits. Patients reported earnings of $6.32 an hour, 25% less than the poverty level for a family of four. Only 22% of patients had health insurance and only 12% reported paid sick leave.
  • The overall health status of garment workers is far worse than that of the general population. A total of 66% of the garment workers in this study reported “poor” or “fair” health. This is three to four times higher than the rate for women in California.
  • Garment workers have inadequate access to occupational health care, specialty treatment services and general preventive health care. Nearly one-third of these women had never been seen by a health care provider for their ongoing musculoskeletal problems. Only a small fraction had been treated by clinicians trained in recognizing and treating occupational health problems.
  • Garment workers are effectively prevented from using the Workers Compensation system. Ninety-seven percent of workers seen in the clinic were eligible to file for workers compensation for their injuries, but refused to do so primarily due to lack of knowledge about the system or because they feared reprisals on the job.
  • Musculoskeletal injuries experienced by garment workers are preventable. Technology is not the problem. In many cases there are simple, cost-effective ergonomic solutions that would prevent the common musculoskeletal problems these workers experience.

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Nationwide survey of day labor hiring sites

The 1/22 Sunday New York Times carried an article on a just-released nationwide study of day laborers, Broad Survey of Day Laborers Finds High Level of Injuries and Pay Violations by Steven Greenhouse. (Accesssing the article may require free registration).
The co-authors are two of the most visible academic-based researchers of immigrant labor. Working Immigrants plans to introduce their prior studies on local day labor markets (such as Chicago and Washington DC) in the near future.
Co-author Abel Valenzuela Jr., is on the faculty of University of California at Los Angeles and director of UCLA’s Center for the Study of Urban Poverty. Co-author Nik Theodore is the director of the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
The NYT article recaps some of the major findings from this newly-released study, but as of today (1/22), the full study is not yet available on the Net. The following are excerpts from the study:

The first nationwide study on day laborers has found that such workers are a nationwide phenomenon, with 117,600 people gathering at more than 500 hiring sites to look for work on a typical day.

The survey found that three-fourths of day laborers were illegal immigrants and that more than half said employers had cheated them on wages in the previous two months.

The study, based on interviews with 2,660 workers at 264 hiring sites in 20 states and the District of Columbia, found that day laborers earned a median of $10 an hour and $700 month. The study said that only a small number earned more than $15,000 a year.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Forty-nine percent of those interviewed said that in the previous two months an employer had not paid them for one or more days’ work. Forty-four percent said some employers did not give them any breaks during the workday, while 28 percent said employers had insulted them.

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