| September-October 2003 | Issue 196 |
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San Lucas Worker's Center wins $13K lawsuit |
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| The San Lucas Workers Center won a $13,000 lawsuit this month on behalf of two day laborers and a former employee of Trojan Labor, an abusive day-labor company. The settlement claimed that jobs were being parceled out according to race, gender, and nationality. The suit charged that the parent company of Trojan Labor, Productivity Partners International, sought to discriminate against U.S.-born workers in order to extort and exploit immigrant workers. The Center held a press conference in mid-October to announce the victory. One of the litigants in the lawsuit, Anthony Donaldson, spoke at the conference. During the six months Donaldson worked at Trojan, he estimated that he witnessed hundreds of abuses of laborers on any given day. “It wasn’t until after I started working for Trojan that I learned about their discriminatory practices,” Donaldson said. “My message to workers out there is this: you are not imagining this. It’s real. I saw it from the inside. Lots of companies and agencies do this.” Donaldson answered phones at Trojan. He said he was instructed to ask companies seeking temporary workers whether they preferred male or female, Spanish speakers, or black or white workers. Donaldson said that he saw one of the female staff take pay checks from immigrant workers. He also said he saw the same woman send African-American and Caucasian workers to work at K-Mart, but would ask them to steal merchandise, so that she could sell it. Donaldson said that when he tried to complain to a manager he was told to keep his mouth shut. He was eventually dismissed in March 2001 and shortly after told staff at the San Lucas Workers Center about his situation. Donaldson was joined in his complaint by William Tyler, who is black, and Ernest Simmons, who is white. They were day laborers who were using Trojan and alleged they were passed up consistently for jobs that went to immigrant workers. At the press conference, Donaldson said that he credits the San Lucas Workers Center with “getting the ball rolling” on his lawsuit. The lawsuit was filed with the U.S. Equal Opportunities Commission on May 2, 2001. In addition to the $13,000, Trojan must execute a comprehensive training program for its President, Daniel B. McAnnar, and Human Resources Manager Becky McGhee, about all the provisions of Title VII and the 1964 Civil Rights act. The company also must post notices to all its employees and managers in all of its day labor offices through the U.S. saying that the company violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act in this case, and it has instituted a no-discrimination policy. “San Lucas Worker Center will help you fight for your rights,” Donaldson said. Alderman Ray Colon attended the press conference to congratulate the workers. “The issue of day laborers in Chicago is a big issue,” Colon said. “People who work and pay taxes are being discriminated against.” The Center, based in Humboldt Park, is made up of a bilingual, multi-racial committee of day laborers, whose goals are enforcement of labor rights and improved access to regular work. Since its inception in 2000, the Center’s principal focus has been organizing workers to protect workplace rights in Chicago’s abusive day–labor industry. It has returned more then $200,000 to 5,000 workers for overcharges for rides to the worksite and helped to draft a citywide day labor ordinance, which set a national precedent for mandating worker copies of dispatch records, and regulating fees and transportation. “We are human beings just like anyone else, and we deserve decent treatment on the job,” said Juan Cute, a day laborer who attended the press conference. Cute who also spoke at the conference said that he appreciated the Center’s work in fighting against these companies and found the abuses of human rights astounding. He said he thought the day labor system was riddled with abuse. He said that at the day labor office where he frequently works on the South Side, the workers would pay for a round trip to the site and then would be left waiting for hours. He added that he also saw people who worked in the center telling immigrant workers to sign over their pay checks to them to line their own pockets. |
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Disclosure
is published by the National Training
and Information Center. 312-243-3035 |
