The American Civil Liberties Union is battling on behalf of injured undocumented workers, according to an article in the Nation:

“On Monday [March 16, 2015] at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a division of the Organization of American States, activists presented the stories of the undocumented to demand accountability from a government that they say systematically abets injury and abuse. The National Employment Law Project (NELP), the ACLU and other advocates, argued before the IACHR that a combination of regressive court rulings, draconian immigration enforcement, and restrictive state policies turn the law into a source of further trauma for harmed workers.

The ACLU highlighted the case of Zumaya as an example of how worker safety and health is undermined by the malign neglect of these policies. The root of these problems, they say, is the Supreme Court’s decision in Hoffman Plastic Compounds v. NLRB, which laid the legal foundation for Zumaya’s hard landing in 2002. The court ruled that an undocumented worker who is wrongfully fired is—because of his status—not entitled to back wages. (That is, the label branding these workers “illegal” becomes essentially a “get out of jail free” card for bosses who actually abuse the law themselves.)”

 

 

The American Farm Bureau today issued a report that forecasts declining production and higher imported food prices if immigration reform is not enacted.
The report, Gauging the Farm Sector’s Sensitivity to Immigration Reform via Changes in Labor Costs and Availability, looks at three policy options: (1) enforcement only, as today, (2) general legalization, and (3) guest worker program for agriculture.
The report says that “the hardest-hit domestic food sectors under an enforcement-only scenario are fruit production, which would plummet by 30-61 percent, and vegetable production, which would decline by 15-31 percent. The study also pointed out that while many consider fruit and vegetable production the most labor-reliant sector, livestock production in the U.S. would fall by 13-27 percent.”
“Over five years, an enforcement-only approach would lead to losses in farm income large enough to trigger large scale restructuring of the sector, higher food prices, and greater dependence on imported products.” Stallman said.
The report says that “For a number of reasons, agriculture serves as the bottom rung on the undocumented labor ladder. Many undocumented workers start working in agriculture but move on from agriculture as quickly as possible—particularly if/when changes in their legal status gives them entry into the labor market outside agriculture.”
The press release for the report is here.

The Center for Popular Democracy reports that:
Our review of 2003-2011 OSHA investigations of construction site accidents involving a fatal fall from an elevation revealed that Latinos and immigrants are disproportionately killed in fall accidents.
In 60% of the OSHA-investigated fall from an elevation fatalities in New York State, the worker was Latino and/or immigrant, disproportionately high for their participation in construction work.
In New York City, 74% of fatal falls were Latino and/or immigrant.
Narrowing further, 88% of fatal falls in Queens and 87% in Brooklyn involved Latinos and/or immigrants.
86% of Latino and/or immigrant fatalities from a fall from an elevation in New York were working for a non-union employer.
In 2011 focus groups, Latino construction workers reported fearing retaliation as a key deterrent to raising concerns about safety.
Its report, Fatal Inequality: Workplace Safety Eludes Construction Workers of Color, is available on its website.

The Migration Policy Institute reports on a settlement between the state of Alabama and plaintiffs who had tied up the implementation of HB 56, enacted in 2011 to crack down on undocumented persons. Plaintiffs prevented the law from being enforced through a suit in federal court and a federal Court of Appeals decision to enjoin the state from enforcing the law. The Supreme Court declined in April 2013 to review the decision. The state threw in the towel, signing a settlement on October 29. The text of the settlement is here.
This settlement might blow the winds out of the sails of those trying to pass draconian, anti- undocumented worker statutes. The Alabama statute was the most far-reaching such law. Per the MPI, Arizona led the charge in 2010 by enacting SB 1070, which served as the blueprint for this forceful new activism toward unauthorized immigrants, rooted in the idea of “attrition through enforcement.” Five states — Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina, and Utah — quickly followed Arizona’s example in 2011.
The MPI says that under the settlement, Alabama state officials agreed to block components of HB 56 that would have:
Required K-12 public schools to collect information about the immigration status of their students
Made it a criminal offense for noncitizens to fail to carry their alien registration documents
Made it a crime for unauthorized immigrants to solicit work
Made it a criminal offense to offer a ride or rent housing to an unauthorized immigrant
Infringed on the ability of individuals to contract with an unauthorized immigrant.
In addition to agreeing to block these provisions, the state will pay organizations that brought the lawsuit — including the Southern Poverty Law Center, American Civil Liberties Union, National Immigration Law Center, and Mexican American Legal and Education Defense Fund — $350,000 for attorney fees and expenses incurred in the litigation.
The MPI goes on to say that in the months leading up to the Alabama settlement, federal courts have been inhospitable to state omnibus immigration enforcement laws.

Common sense suggests that Limited English Proficiency among the 15 million or so immigrant workers who work in average or about average risky jobs contributes to the rate of injury. It’s impossible to document this because so many injuries sustained by immigrant workers, and undocumented workers especially, go un-reported.
A study looked national survey data and reported a close correlation between LEP and working in higher injury risk jobs.
“Our results indicate that differences in observable characteristics, such as English ability and education, play important roles in the tendency of immigrants to work in riskier jobs. Workers’ ability to speak English is inversely related to their industry injury and fatality rates, indicating that immigrants who speak English fluently work in safer jobs. The CDC (2008) attributed the high number of work-related deaths among foreign-born Hispanics in part to inadequate knowledge of safety hazards and inadequate training and supervision of workers, which are often exacerbated by language and literacy problems. Our findings bolster such calls for more safety training in languages other than English (National Research Council 2003).”
Source:
Do Immigrants Work in Riskier Jobs? Orrenius P et al. Demography. 2009 August; 46(3): 535–551. Found at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2831347/

Teri Hale, work works at UL Workplace Health and Safety, posted a valuable commentary on the work injury risks of language barriers. Her posting, Training in native language improves likelihood of retention – and helps create safer workplaces, capture the problems well.
Here is her posting in full:
People learn, understand and retain information best if it is taught to them in their native language.
If you have ever visited a foreign country where you speak little or none of the language, you know how confusing it can be.
In terms of safety training, comprehension increase when learners can give their complete attention to the content without first needing to mentally convert the information into their first language. From the beginning of the course, the learner is focused on the subject matter, not on trying to translate and interpret the material.
Misinterpretation can lead to lower productivity, lost revenue and more seriously, injury and loss of life. This is especially true in high-risk sectors such as manufacturing, oil and gas exploration, and construction. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) estimates that language barriers are a contributing factor in 25 percent of job-related accidents. Moreover, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that fatal injury rates were 69 percent higher for foreign-born Hispanic workers than for native-born Hispanic workers (who tend to have a better grasp of English).
In 2010, OSHA announced an initiative in which it directed compliance officers to observe whether employers provide employees safety training in a language they understand. Employers who fail to properly train their employees are subject to citations and penalties.
While OSHA cannot mandate that safety training be given in any language other than English, the agency seeks to protect workers who speak English as a second language. This is especially true for employers with a largely Hispanic workforce. OSHA has a compliance assistance website for Spanish-speakers and other resources for Hispanic workers and employers.
Earlier this year, OSHA extended similar training protections to temporary workers. Field inspectors are expected to assess whether employers who use temporary workers are complying with their responsibilities under the OSH Act. The initiative follows on the heels of a spike in reports of temporary workers suffering fatal injuries on the job. In many cases, OSHA reports, the employer either provided inadequate safety training or failed to provide it at all.
To ensure the safety of your workforce, and to avoid potential liability under OSHA’s initiative, it’s imperative to offer training in employees’ native language and take steps to ensure that all safety practices are explained in an easily understood manner. Translating existing training materials from English to Spanish (and other languages, as needed) is a cost-effective solution.
–
Maximize the impact of your training program with eLearning created for YOUR workplace, including native language training and custom branded courses.
.

The good news is that the occupational risks of international migration are becoming more visible. The bad news is that the risks are extremely high. A labor organization is forecasting thousands of work fatalities from Qatar’s building projects for the 2022 World Cup.
An article in the Guardian estimates Qatar’s migrant workforce at 1.2 million. The state has only 250,000 citizens. In the U.S. roughly 3 – 4 million foreign born workers mighte be considered migrant workers, in farming and construction.
The article:
Qatar’s construction frenzy ahead of the 2022 World Cup is on course to cost the lives of at least 4,000 migrant workers before a ball is kicked, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has claimed.
The group has been scrutinising builders’ deaths in the Gulf emirate for the past two years and said that at least half a million extra workers from countries including Nepal, India and Sri Lanka are expected to flood in to complete stadiums, hotels and infrastructure in time for the World Cup kickoff.
The annual death toll among those working on building sites could rise to 600 a year – almost a dozen a week – unless the Doha government makes urgent reforms, it says.
The ITUC has based the estimate on current mortality figures for Nepalese and Indian workers who form the bulk of Qatar’s 1.2 million-strong migrant workforce, the large majority of whom are builders.
While it admits that the cause of death is not clear for many of the deceased – with autopsies often not being conducted and routine attribution to heart failure – it believes harsh and dangerous conditions at work and cramped and squalid living quarters are to blame.
The stark warning came after a Guardian investigation revealed that 44 Nepalese workers died from 4 June-8 August this year, about half from heart failure or workplace accidents.
Workers described forced labour in 50C heat, employers who retain salaries for several months and passports making it impossible for them to leave and being denied free drinking water. The investigation found sickness is endemic among workers living in overcrowded and insanitary conditions and hunger has been reported. Thirty Nepalese construction workers took refuge in the their country’s embassy and subsequently left the country, after they claimed they received no pay.
The Indian ambassador in Qatar said 82 Indian workers died in the first five months of this year and 1,460 complained to the embassy about labour conditions and consular problems. More than 700 Indian workers died in Qatar between 2010 and 2012.

Continue reading Many work deaths expected from a project in Qatar

OSHA has accumulated over the years many contacts with the diplomatic corps of countries from which immigrants come to the U.S. to work. Examples include numerous collaborations with the Mexican foreign service.
During Labor Rights Week, the last week of August, OSHA undertook these events in the New York area alone, for presentations on worker rights and distributed OSHA information and literature:
In New York City, at the Mexican, Columbian, Brazilian, Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Honduran, Chilean, Philippine and Dominican Republic Consulates
At the Consulate of El Salvador in Long Island, N.Y.
At the Consulate of El Salvador in Elizabeth, N.J.
At the Centro Del Immigante in Staten Island, N.Y.
In Marion, N.Y. (co-sponsored with Consulate on Wheels/ Mexican Consulate /Alianza Nacional de Campesinos)
In New Brunswick, N.J. (co-sponsored with Consulate on Wheels/Mexican Consulate/Lazos Unidos de America)

The farm guest worker program expansion as planned by the Senate immigration reform bill will leave many of these workers without workers comp coverage.
The International Association of industrial Boards and Commissions (IAIABC) reports the following (from Title 2 subtitle B, chptr 2 section 218A e4c of the Senate bill):
“U.S. Senate Bill 744 includes the development of a nonimmigrant agricultural program to allow non-U.S. workers to perform services or labor in agricultural employment for a temporary period. The establishment of this program requires employers to either provide State workers’ compensation benefits or other insurance that provides “benefits at least equal to those provided under and pursuant to the State workers’ compensation law for comparable employment.”
The nonimmigrant agricultural worker program is defined in Chapter 2 of Senate Bill 744, otherwise known as the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act introduced by Senator Charles Schumer.”
Many states have exclusions from workers comp. They date back from the past, and they are largely indefensible in this age. The language of the bill says that these exclusions will be honored by the new law.

This article from a business media publication cogently analyzes how immigration reform will pass both the Senate and the House.