By Liz Carey
Chicago, IL (WorkersCompensation.com) - For more than nine years, Victoria, a warehouse employee in Chicago, worked making pizza boxes. On call seven days a week, she worked to earn a living the best she could.
After years on the job, she developed pains in her wrists and found that not only could she not work without being in severe pain, but that she couldn’t hold her young child without pain.
But for her, complaining or reporting her condition and filing for workers’ compensation wasn’t an answer. It was clear in her workplace, that complaining or filing for benefits meant retaliation, or worse yet, termination.
Now, after seven surgeries to repair the injuries to her wrist, caused by the repetitive motions of working in the pizza box factory, Victoria still struggles with how to pay for medical bills and support her family without workers’ compensation coverage.
Victoria’s story is one of nearly 300 low-wage employees in the Chicago area who were surveyed over the past two years by Raise the Floor Alliance, a workers’ rights organization in the Chicago area. Those surveys resulted in an analysis of low-wage workers’ conditions in the Chicago area and a call for more protections for them under the law.
In a report released today, Raise the Floor, in collaboration with the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative (NESRI), found that nearly 75 percent of those surveyed reported had not only been denied legal benefits — like minimum wage or workers’ compensation — but also had been retaliated against. Brittany Scott, with NESRI, said the survey found that not only are low-wage workers working in unsafe conditions, but that they are denied benefits if they are injured on the job.
“Less than 10 percent of low-wage workers ever gain access to workers’ compensation and most of those who do get benefits are retaliated against,” Scott said. “This has a huge effect on whether or not to bring attention to their condition. Employers get away with these abuses because employees don’t want to complain and face the consequences.”
The report, called “Challenging the Business of Fear,” shows how employers create an atmosphere of fear in Chicago. And getting protection through government channels can lead to threats of deportation, harassment or even physical violence, the surveys found. In fact, more than 80 percent of the stories collected during the surveys showed that when workers complained to government officials, they were more likely to be retaliated against by their employers.
“Illinois’ system of enforcement depends on workers claiming their rights, which makes the state’s failures to protect against retaliation both incomprehensible and deeply troubling,” the report said. “A scattered patchwork of retaliation prohibitions under state and federal law provide uneven and unreliable protection, which fails some workers completely and, for others, is both confusing and too uncertain.”
The report calls for a new worker-centered approach to the issue that would provide for adequate and fair legal coverage for workers, accessible and timely complaint resolution and built-in systems for the prevention and deterrence of retaliation. Part of that response is a bill requiring employers to provide notification as to why an employee was fired, if they are terminated. The Wrongful Discharge Bill, introduced earlier this year in the Illinois Senate, would provide employees with a place to start when it comes to proving retaliation in the at-will state.
“Retaliation is often extremely difficult to prove,” Sophia Zaman with Raise the Floor said. “Current legislation allows workers to be fired for any reason, and go through complex legal processes like discovery in order to prove they were retaliated against. This provides complimentary protection that protects employees and shifts the burden of proof to the employer.”
The bill, SB 1760, passed its second reading in the Senate on April 26 and is scheduled for a third reading prior to May 31.
