"I can’t even open a can of soda because my hand is so injured." says former Chicago-area Cintas worker Maria Rodriguez who’s injuries caused her to leave her job."
Today in Chicago, a coalition of injured laundry workers from around the country is taking on unsafe conditions at the Cintas Corporation.
Maybe you haven’t heard of Cintas, but you come into contact with its products everyday. The multi-billion dollar industrial launderer delivers more than uniforms, floor mats and hand soap to our communities; it has also brought narrower hazardous waste regulation, and complaints ranging from "deceptive sales practices," and suppression of workers’ right to organize, to discrimination against women and people of color, and wage and hour violations.
(Thanks TomP for your great coverage of Cintas).
(I should mention that the company’s founder and chairman Richard Farmer is a top GOP fundraiser—he’s helped to raise hundreds of millions for Bush and has started to fundraise for McCain.)
Cintas also has a disturbing health and safety record. Despite the tragic death of a worker, more than $3 million in proposed OSHA fines, and two Congressional hearings highlighting hazards in its laundries and a Wall Street Journal expose, safety regulators in California and Indiana recently cited Cintas for safety violations in laundries in those states.
Workers say they still face punishing production quotas that can lead to serious injuries. And according to a Cintas supervisor interviewed for a recent Congressional report[pdf], the company has a policy to punish workers for injuries, before any investigation.
That’s why Cintas workers are kicking off the nationwide "Painful Truth Tour" in Chicago. The tour will span the nation this summer to expose the hidden human costs of keeping America’s laundry clean. Cintas workers will be talking with the men and women who wear Cintas uniforms and community leaders about the toll of their years working at Cintas.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll have regular updates from workers on the tour. You can read (and we’ll have some video for you to see and hear) their reflections about the tour’s impact on their lives and communities. I promise the posts will be powerful, provocative, and make you think about where your local grocery store’s floor mats comes from.
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Note: Who is that new blogger? Well actually I'm not so new. At my previous job for the
Drum Major Institute for Public Policy I posted on Kos as
DMIer. Now that I work for the labor union
UNITE HERE I'll be posting from this account to reflect my new job.
I'd also like to give a shout-out to UNITE HERE's Matt Painter for being our man on the road traveling with the "Painful Truth Tour". Obviously without his work this diary series wouldn't be possible.
