California has 25 million US dollars for the safety employment of workers by fires

In California civil servants, 25 million US dollars announced on Tuesday to help community organizations to inform employees about their rights and security at the workplace.

Organizations of the Los Angeles region were prioritized for some of the funds – 6 million US dollars – to support employees who were involved in cleaning up and recovery after the devastating palisades and Eaton fires.

The California Department of Industrial Education will provide 89 community organizations throughout the state with 21 funds in Los Angeles. The financing is part of a program called California Workplace Outreach Project, which was first introduced in 2021 to fix the risks at the workplace in Covid-19.

“California implements a unique model that uses trustworthy local messengers to communicate directly with the workers,” said California Labor Minister Steward Knox in a statement on Tuesday.

According to the department for industrial education, organizations can extend funding for a second year.

Fire -damaged properties can represent dangers for workers who are widespread with dangerous waste and harmful chemicals. Since many workers with a migration background have lost as nannies, gardeners, housekeepers, installers and pool cleaners due to the fires, the supporters say that some are forced to take on dangerous fire clearance, sometimes without proper training or equipment.

At the same time, these low-wage workers can also deal with problems of wage theft, discrimination, retaliation, the immigration mood or other topics, said Nancy Zuniga, health program manager in a group that supports the day worker who refers to the Instituto de Educación del Sur de California, also as an IDEPSCA.

Public relations work is a first step to inform employees about their rights, Zuniga said at a press conference on Tuesday morning in the IDEPSCA office in Pico-Union.

“These workers are often excluded from all safety networks,” said Zuniga. “We are happy to be part of these efforts, but we know that more is needed.”

After the Woolsey Fire 2018, IDEPSCA examined its effects on domestic workers in Malibu. More than half of the almost 200 employees surveyed stated that they had lost their work permanently. In many cases in which they were expected to clean up ashes, soot and debris without proper training and equipment, and at least two years later dealt with persistent financial and emotional consequences of the fire.

A report by the UC Berkeley researchers who examined the California security efforts based in Covid's security efforts in California found that they were often suspicious of state companies. The partnership with community organizations was “a crucial strategy to address high amounts of job problems that cannot use traditional regulatory approaches,” the report says.

The California work officer Lilia Garcia-Brower said that many cases of wage theft are more dependent on active witnesses than on paper documented on paper, community groups are important in order to keep employees in the process that can take months or years.

“If we were only waiting in our office to edit claims, we would not do our work,” said Garcia-Brower. “Public relations work is not fluff, it is fundamental to enforcement.”