Campaign News

El Diario - April 16, 2014, by Mariela Lombard - Más de una veintena de organizaciones comunitarias y sindicatos se han unido en una coalición para presionar para que no se reforme una legislación que protege la seguridad de los 1.5 millones trabajadores de construcción del estado de Nueva York.

Este mismo lunes un obrero cuya identidad aún no ha sido divulgada murió después de caerse de un andamio situado en una zona de construcción cercana a Penn Station, en Manhattan. Es la segunda muerte de este tipo que sucede este mes en la ciudad, después de que otro trabajador falleciera el pasado 2 de abril por la misma causa mientras laboraba en unas obras en el New York Dream Hotel de la calle 55.

 

“Estos trágicos accidentes demuestran por qué se deben mantener los más altos estándares de seguridad para los trabajadores de construcción”, dijo Valeria Treves, directora de la organización pro inmigrante NICE, que funciona también como centro de jornaleros. “La seguridad es especialmente importante para los trabajadores inmigrantes, porque muchos de ellos nos reportan que les encargan las tareas que más riesgo conllevan”.

 

De acuerdo a la Oficina de Estadísticas Laborales, el 60% de los obreros del estado que murieron por caídas en el trabajo entre 2003 y 2011 eran hispanos y/o inmigrantes. En la ciudad de Nueva York la cifra fue aún mayor, llegando al 74%.

 

Peter Ward, presidente de HTC, sindicato que agrupa a los trabajadores de hoteles, criticó a contratistas y compañías de seguros “sin escrúpulos” por estar cabildeando en Albany para reformar la conocida como “Ley de Seguridad del Andamio” (Scaffold Safety Law), alegando que eleva demasiado los costes de construcción y va en perjuicio de la creación de puestos de trabajo.“

 

Quieren que sea la responsabilidad de los trabajadores el mantener un lugar de trabajo seguro. La actual ley pone la responsabilidad donde corresponde: en los contratistas, que deben asegurarse que todo trabajador tenga el equipo correspondiente”, enfatizó Ward.

 

La ley obliga a empleadores y compañías de construcción a proveer equipamiento y entrenamiento de seguridad a todos sus empleados. Eso pretende evitar casos como el del obrero Cresencio Pantoja, quién hace siete años salvó la vida de milagro cuando se precipitó al vacío desde una altura de 23 pies mientras renovaba la fachada de una escuela de El Bronx, por no contar con un arnés de seguridad.

 

“Mi jefe estaba más preocupado de que se hiciera rápido el trabajo que de la seguridad de sus empleados. Muchos otros trabajadores tampoco tenían arneses de seguridad”, dijo Pantoja, que estuvo cuatro días en coma después del accidente y aún no ha podido volver a trabajar por las heridas. Se mantiene desde entonces con la indemnización que recibió de la constructora, uno de los derechos que garantiza la actual ley.

 

Otro participante en la coalición es el sindicato SEIU 32BJ, que representa a 120,000 trabajadores de servicios.

 

“Decenas de miles de hombres y mujeres, muchos de ellos inmigrantes, arriesgan su vida construyendo y reparando nuestra ciudad. Limpiar ventanas o trabajar en un andamio es muy peligroso”, señaló el presidente de la unión, Héctor Figueroa. “No entendería que nuestros funcionarios convirtieran este trabajo en algo aún más peligroso quitando las protecciones de la Ley de Seguridad del Andamio”.

 

Gary LaBarbera, presidente del Concejo de Construcción de Nueva York, apoya otra legislación introducida en la Asamblea y el Senado Estatal, denominada Ley de Transparencia de Seguros para Construcciones de 2014, que también dice ayudaría a mejorar la seguridad de los obreros.

 

“Esta ley deja abiertos los datos de los asegurados que nos permitirá analizar de forma transparente esta situación y encontrar soluciones para reducir los costos sin dejar de mejorar la seguridad”, señaló.La coalición ha lanzado una página web para llamar la atención sobre su causa: www.scaffoldsafetylaw.com.

Qué es la Ley de Seguridad del Andamio y qué protecciones ofrece a los trabajadores de construcción

La ley tiene su origen en 1885, cuando se empezaron a construir los grandes rascacielos en la Ciudad de Nueva York. Especifica que los contratistas y los dueños de las propiedades deben asegurarse de que los andamios, montacargas y otros dispositivos utilizados en laconstrucción y reparación de edificios, sean montados y operados de manera que se proteja la integridad de las personas empleadas para la tarea.

Cuando se producen heridas y muertes por la violación de estos términos, la ley dice que los contratistas y dueños son los únicos responsables y deben indemnizar a los perjudicados.Aquellos que quieren reformarla reclaman que se incluya una enmienda para que un jurado o árbitro judicial decida en cada caso si el pago por daños tiene que ser menor si se determina que también ha habido negligencia por parte del trabajador a la hora de seguir los procedimientos de seguridad. Estos opositores denuncian que la formulación actual de la legislación dispara los costos de los seguros.

Denuncie la falta de seguridad

Si un trabajador de la construcción observa fallos en las medidas de seguridad, el primer paso que recomiendan las organizaciones laborales es hablar con otros compañeros y reportarlo en grupo al supervisor. Si el supervisor no hace nada por solucionarlo, el siguiente paso es presentar una queja a la Administración de Seguridad y Salud Ocupacional (OSHA) para que lleve a cabo una investigación.

La queja se puede presentar en español rellenando un formulario online (www.osha.gov) o llamando al 1-800-321-OSHA para localizar la oficina más cercana.

Todos los empleados de construcción, independientemente de su estatus migratorio, tienen derecho a la seguridad en el lugar de trabajo.

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Wall Street Journal - March 3, 2015, by Pedro Nicolaci da Costa - A network of liberal activists is planning a series of small demonstrations outside of several Federal Reserve district banks Thursday, intending to highlight elevated unemployment among minority communities and urging officials not to raise interest rates any time soon.

Fed officials have indicated they plan to lift their benchmark short-term interest rate from near zero, where it has been since late 2008, sometime this year if the economy continues to strengthen as expected.

The activists say the nation’s 5.7% jobless rate understates the underlying weakness of the labor market, pointing to high long-term and black unemployment as symptoms of an economy that is still ailing. The unemployment rate for blacks was 10.3% in January.

“The Federal Reserve has the power–and responsibility–to foster stronger economic conditions that create opportunity for all communities,” the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal Washington think tank backing the demonstrations, said in a statement.

The activists are planning actions outside the regional Fed banks of New York, San Francisco, Kansas City, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Charlotte, N.C. (home to a branch of the Richmond Fed) and Dallas.

The Labor Department releases its February employment report on Friday.

Becky Moeller, president of the Texas AFL-CIO, said she and other community leaders have been frustrated by what they see as an opaque process for selecting the next Dallas Fed president. The current chief, Richard Fisher, is set to step down March 19.

Ms. Moeller said instead of getting a meeting with members of the Dallas Fed’s board of directors, which is in charge of the search, she and her delegation met with the bank’s general counsel in a session she described as not very helpful.

“This has been a comedy of pass the buck,” she said. “We don’t have a candidate—we’re just trying to talk processes.”

The Dallas Fed said it had recently met with the following groups regarding the search for a new bank president: Texas AFL-CIO, Texas Organizing Project, Jobs With Justice, Fort Worth Building Trades and Ironworkers, Workers Defense Project, Communication Workers of America, Dallas Central Labor Council, Harris County Central Labor Council and American Federation of Teachers.

“We had a productive conversation with representatives from these groups,” said James Hoard, a spokesman for the Dallas Fed. “We were interested in hearing their views on the selection of a new Dallas Fed president, and hope we were able to provide useful information to them, as well.”

The Center for Popular Democracy and the Fed Up Coalition, the umbrella groups coordinating the protests, expressed dismay at the lack of transparency in the selection of Patrick Harker as the new Philadelphia Fed President.

“Despite repeated requests from community, consumer, labor and academic organizations and public officials within the region, the Philadelphia Fed refused to create any mechanisms for engagement with the public,” said Kendra Brooks of Action United in Philadelphia.

“Instead, the process was entirely opaque: nobody outside of the Federal Reserve knew who the candidates were or what the criteria were for selection. This process did a disservice to the Federal Reserve System and the people of the Philadelphia region.”

The Philadelphia Fed said in response: “Several of our staff members did meet with members from Action United to hear their concerns. The Philadelphia Fed also provided them the opportunity to provide names of potential candidates to our executive search firm.”

The same group of activists showed up at the Kansas City Fed’s annual Jackson Hole symposium last summer and held a meeting with Janet Yellen at the Fed in November.

Last week, Ms. Yellen met with a group of conservative activists who argued the Fed’s low-rate policies were hurting rather than boosting employment.

The Great Recession has brought increased political scrutiny on the Fed, with prominent Republican and Democratic politicians calling for various changes in the central bank’s governance.

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New York Times - July 18, 2014, By Steven Greenhouse - A worker at an apparel store at Woodbury Common, an outlet mall north of New York City, said that even though some part-time employees clamored for more hours, the store had hired more part-timers and cut many workers’ hours to 10 a week from 20.

As soon as a nurse in Illinois arrived for her scheduled 3-to-11 p.m. shift one Christmas Day, hospital officials told her to go home because the patient “census” was low. They also ordered her to remain on call for the next four hours — all unpaid.

An employee at a specialty store in California said his 25-hour-a-week job with wildly fluctuating hours wasn’t enough to live on. But when he asked the store to schedule him between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. so he could find a second job, the store cut him to 12 hours a week.

These are among the experiences related by New York Times readers in more than 440 responses to an article published in Wednesday’s paper about a fledgling movement in which some states and cities are seeking to limit the harshest effects of increasingly unpredictable and on-call work schedules. Many readers voiced dismay with the volatility of Americans’ work schedules and the inability of many part-timers to cobble together enough hours to support their families.

In a comment that was the most highly recommended by others — 307 of them — a reader going by “pedigrees” wrote that workers were often reviled for not working hard enough or not being educated enough. “How can they work more jobs or commit to a degree program if they don’t know what their work schedule will be next week, much less next month?” the reader wrote. “It’s long past time for some certainty for workers. They drive the economy.”

Some readers were shocked by the story of Mary Coleman, who, after an hourlong bus commute, arrived for her scheduled shift at a Popeyes in Milwaukee only to be told to go home without clocking in because the store already had enough employees working. She wasn’t paid for the day.

“What happened to Ms. Coleman should be criminal,” wrote “JenD” of New Jersey in the second-most-recommended comment. “These types of stories sound like they were written by Charles Dickens in the mid-19th century.”

A reader from South Dakota, “JDT,” wrote that he was baffled as to why so many employers created turmoil for their workers by assigning them a different schedule every week, making it hard to juggle their jobs with child care or college.

“As a small-business owner for over 30 years, I have always been able to provide my part-time employees with a firm, steady and predictable schedule,” JDT wrote. “My employees are a vital and important asset. I treat them right, and they do their best for me. It’s so easy ... Why can’t big business run by M.B.A.s and highly compensated executives figure that out?”

JDT, whose name is Jim D. Taylor, runs a combined law and real estate firm in Mitchell, S.D. In a follow-up interview, he said: “In a small business, if you’ve scheduled someone to work, there should always be enough to do — you don’t send them home. I don’t know why big business is any different.”

“Why is it so hard to schedule someone for regular shifts?” Mr. Taylor asked.

A reader calling himself “Polish Ladies Cleaning Service” wrote that in the housecleaning business, it was “a particularly devilish problem” to maintain predictable schedules for employees. “If a client cancels and there’s no work, there’s no work,” he wrote. “We try to let everyone know ASAP, of course, but there are times when clients do cancel literally at the very last minute!”

In a follow-up interview, David Chou, the spokesman for Polish Ladies Cleaning Service, a company based in Brooklyn, told of a woman with a $19,000-a-month apartment who failed to confirm a housecleaning appointment scheduled for that day. So the company had to tell the scheduled housekeeper she was not needed that morning.

“We try to reschedule the ladies with other clients if that’s possible, but probably about half the times that’s not possible,” Mr. Chou said.

“Mary,” a reader from Atlanta, said it was understandable why so many employers relied on part-time workers. “We do still have issues with supply and demand that make it difficult for some businesses to hire full time (e.g., retail brick-and-mortar stores struggling with seasonal slowdowns and competition from Internet stores),” she wrote.

“How is it so many, and Obama, believe that workers have the right to tell their employer what hours they will work?” she added. “I’m thinking many here need to go to Europe or some other country. See how that works for you. Our government has no right to dictate, only to protect workers from abuse, and part-time is not abuse.”

One reader, a sales employee at an Apple store, complained in a letter that her work schedule varied every week, although she praised Apple’s medical, dental and vision benefits, even for part-timers. In a follow-up interview she said she was essentially required to be available anytime from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. six days a week — she has designated Wednesday as her day off.

“Having to give them that much availability, it means you’re at their mercy,” she said, noting that her husband works Monday through Friday. “You don’t know until the schedule comes out what your life will look like.”

Courtney Moore, a cashier at a Walmart in Cincinnati, said in an interview that she had been assigned about 40 hours a week until she told store management in June that she would begin taking college classes most mornings and some afternoons. She said she asked her manager to put her on the late shift, but to her dismay, the store reduced her to 15 hours a week.

“They said they need someone they could call whenever they need help — and they said I’m not that person,” Ms. Moore said. She said she would prefer being a dedicated full-time employee at Walmart but had to take a second job at McDonald’s instead.

A middle-aged New Yorker who lost his teaching job of two decades because of a budget squeeze in his school district said he had applied for retail jobs and was shocked by what he found.

“You had to be available every minute of every day, knowing you would be scheduled for no more than 29 hours per week and knowing there would be no normalcy to your schedule,” he wrote. “I told the person I would like to be scheduled for the same days every week so I could try to get another job to try to make ends meet. She immediately said, ‘Well, that will end our conversation right here. You have to be available every day for us.’

“I asked, ‘Even though I’m trying to get another job?’ ‘Yes.’ Then she just stared at me and asked me to leave. What kind of company does this? What kind of company will not even let you get another job?”

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The largest mortgage settlement in U.S. history was pitched by its creators as a deal that would offer quick aid to 1 million people in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure. But according to a report released Thursday by the court-appointed monitor of the settlement, in the first nine months after the $25 billion deal was struck, fewer than 50,000 people received the most coveted form of relief: reduction of principal owed on a first mortgage.

Meanwhile, more than three times as many borrowers -- 169,000 -- agreed to a short sale, which requires they leave the property, according to the report.

Banks still have time to meet their obligations under the settlement, which requires that 30 percent of total relief come in the form of first mortgage principal reduction. But housing advocates say the limited progress so far -- just 14 percent of aid has gone to write down loan balances -- suggests that banks are avoiding, or at least delaying, their obligation to provide meaningful relief as they promised under the deal.

"The numbers are hugely out of whack," said Dan Petegorsky, a spokesman for a group called Campaign for a Fair Settlement. "In some cases banks are five or six times as likely to kick someone out of their house than they are to forgive their debt."

The fear, said Petegorsky and other advocates, is that with each passing month, more homeowners who could have been helped will fall into foreclosure. More than 4 million families have lost their homes since 2007, when the subprime housing market collapsed.

Under the mortgage settlement, reached last March with state and federal authorities, the five settling banks -- JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial -- agreed to resolve widespread mortgage fraud and mismanagement allegations. The deal also sought to close the book on the "robo-signing" scandal, in which bank representatives allegedly forged documents and signatures in order to speed foreclosures through the pipeline. (The deal is separate from an $8.5 billion legal agreement reached in January between 11 mortgage companies and two federal bank regulators over similar "servicing" abuse claims.)

The court appointed Joseph Smith, a former North Carolina banking commissioner, to oversee the $25 billion settlement. His report is based on data reported from the banks. Smith has not yet confirmed the data, he said.

Even so, his report offers a detailed state-by-state look at where the banks are directing the relief, and what options they are choosing to do so. All told, 550,000 people have received some sort of assistance valued at $45 billion, according to the report. (Because banks can claim different dollar credits for different activities, that figure does not mean they have exceeded what they promised under the settlement.)

In an interview, Smith said that while the banks are clearly favoring short sales over other forms of relief, he thinks they will ultimately forgive enough first mortgage principal debt to meet their obligations. As an example, he cited Ally Financial, the smallest of the settling institutions, which he certified had met its targets.

Smith said he believed that the "vast majority" of relief offered so far, which includes aid like interest reductions and forbearance agreements as well as principal reductions and short sales, has helped homeowners.

He said the banks still have work to do to meet the other major goal of the agreement: reforming how they manage the accounts of troubled borrowers. As of Oct 2., banks were supposed to have met 304 different standards or face financial penalties for failing to do so. Although he declined to discuss how widespread persistent problems might be, Smith noted in his report that his office had received 5,700 complaints from consumers in all states, along with 600 submissions from professionals. Complaints are on the rise, he said, though it isn't clear whether the jump is the result of the increased visibility of his office.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Office of the New York Attorney General, which had key roles in shaping the mortgage settlement, did not return requests for comment. In a statement, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan said the report "marks a major milestone in our efforts to assist struggling homeowners."

“We have already surpassed our initial expectations and the settlement is testament to the fact that large-scale principal reduction can be used an important tool in our efforts to prevent foreclosures without incurring negative results," he said.

Under the deal, banks typically get more credit for meeting their obligations for offering principal reduction than they do for other types of aid, such as interest rate reductions or short sales. But in banking circles, principal reduction has remained the most controversial option. Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, under orders from Federal Housing Finance Administration acting director Edward DeMarco, have refused to permit principal reduction in most instances on their loans. Banks then can only offer these kinds of write-downs on the relatively small pool of loans they own themselves, or convince investors who bought shares of loan pools in the years before or after the housing collapse to go along. This difficulty could explain why banks appear to be lagging on principal-reduction offers.

Another possible explanation: not every borrower wants, nor would qualify for, a reduction in principal. For some, short sales are the best option. Under these agreements, the bank sells the house but doesn't hold the borrower financially accountable for the difference between the sale price and what is owed.

Even so, principal forgiveness on a first mortgage is clearly the most desirable option for most borrowers, said Elizabeth Lynch, an attorney at MFY Legal Services, which offers free legal aid in New York City. "It's the modification of the first loan that saves the home," she said.

According to Lynch, that isn't happening often enough. Instead, when banks do offer principal reduction, it most often comes on a second mortgage, also sometimes called a home equity loan, according to Smith's report. Bank of America, for example, reported it had extinguished -- forgiven the entire principal amount -- of 141,000 second mortgages, compared to just 21,000 first mortgages.

Lynch recently argued in a New York Times op-ed that eliminating a small second mortgage, though sometimes helpful, doesn't help the vast majority of borrowers struggling to avoid foreclosure and stay in their homes.

Bank of America, which has a financial obligation under the settlement roughly equal to that of the four other banks combined, said in a statement that by forgiving a second mortgage, "a reasonable payment through modification may be more attainable." Even so, the bank acknowledged, "foreclosure activities likely would have continued" in instances where a foreclosure proceeding on the first mortgage was already underway. In other words, the bank acknowledged that it can claim credit for meeting obligations under the mortgage settlement for forgiving a loan that likely never would have been paid off anyway, and in instances that do not help homeowners avoid foreclosure.

Homeowner advocates said the report also indicates that the five settling banks are targeting the most valuable loans for principal reduction, rather than those in low-income communities. The average amount of first mortgage principal reduction granted was nearly $130,000 -- just $40,000 or so less than the median home sale price for January in the U.S.

At Bank of America, first-lien forgiveness averaged $160,000 of first mortgage principal reduction per loan. Does that large figure mean that the bank has favored borrowers in high-cost areas like Southern California or New York? Does it suggest that the bank is more likely to forgive the debt on an expensive home than on one in a downtrodden area like Detroit or Cleveland, where home prices often don't climb above $50,000?

Smith said he hasn't vetted the data yet, but for homeowner advocates, not knowing the answer to those questions is the biggest frustration.

"We want greater transparency on these numbers," Lynch said. "We don't know what they are doing."

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