State Responds, but more help needed

By: Matthew BlakeIn October 2004, Gov. Rod Blagojevich put together the state’s panel to address the alarming rate of Latinos suffering from workplace injuries. With members from government, labor and public health, the panel laid out myriad hazards facing all workers and spelled out specific solutions to these obstacles.

And the Illinois General Assembly responded.

In 2005, using language practically identical to the panel’s recommendations, legislators voted to amend both the state’s Day and Temporary Labor Services Act and Workers’ Compensation Act.

Employment agencies that negotiate between employers and day laborers are now required to pay $1,000 to register with the state or face $500 a day in fines. These employment agencies must also provide workers with precise information about their job assignments and pay. In addition, workers’ compensation insurance is now mandatory— forcing employers to have the money necessary to pay for workplace injury claims.

But movement has been slow on panel recommendations for central data collection to keep track of injuries and outreach to let all Latino workers know their legal rights.

Some worker advocates say that the individuals most vulnerable to injuries— undocumented and non-English speaking Latino workers—need these improvements in order to benefit from the new legislation.

“It’s about half the pie right now,” said Tim Bell, executive director of the Chicago Workers’ Collaborative, a group that advocates for improved labor standards for low-wage workers in Illinois. “We have workers’ compensation insurance, but the workers don’t know how to complain.”

In addition, Rene David Luna, community and economic development team leader of the disability advocacy group Access Living, said undocumented workers are nervous about filing health and safety complaints with the state.

“There’s a fear about the state starting to cross-reference social security numbers with the federal government,” Luna said.

But state officials said those fears are unwarranted.

“Workers do not need to provide [the Illinois Department of Labor with] a social security number,” said Anjali Julka, communications manager for both the Illinois Department of Labor and the Illinois Department of Human Rights.

“Instead of discriminating against undocumented workers, we are going out of our way to protect them,” said Gerardo Cardenas, press secretary to Blagojevich.

The panel recommended a worker safety fund that would create workers’ centers to train advocates and workers alike on laws involving occupational health and safety. Outreach was also to include a public education program that would focus on Spanishspeaking media.

But the state has yet to put forth the money necessary for such advocacy.

“The panel was unclear as to who was to be responsible for creating the fund,” Julka said in an e-mail. “We have not established it and do not have funding to support this.”

Bell said that outreach could clear up confusion among workers and activists for workers’ rights as to whether undocumented immigrants enjoy the same legal protections as citizens.

The panel also pushed for the creation of a database that centralizes data on occupational illnesses and injuries. The panel concluded that a centrally located database was necessary for determining “the extent and scope of occupational issues.”

In an e-mail, Julka said that a variety of information on worker injuries is filtered into the Illinois Department of Public Health’s Occupational Disease Registry. But the state has yet to fund a one-stop database on workplace injuries and fatalities that government officials and legislators have proposed to house at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health.

The lack of a sufficient program to track occupational injuries has frustrated government officials and workers’ rights advocates.

“I wrote a federal grant proposal about having the necessary workers’ compensation data,” said panel member Dr. Linda Forst, an associate professor with the UIC School of Public Health. “I got a really great letter from the governor supporting it. But there has not been specific funding.”