Imagine that you work in pain everyday. Your body aches; your muscles throb; you just plain hurt. Something’s not right, and you pray everyday that it doesn’t get worse because you can’t afford to go to the doctor.
Unfortunately, this is a reality for too many workers in this country and a story we heard on the Painful Truth Tour’s Orlando stop. I’ve been blogging about UNITE HERE’s tour of injured workers from the Cintas Corporation’s industrial laundries and how it points to the need for the Employee Free Choice Act to pass next year.
Coalition of Injured Cintas Workers member Jacobo Santiago spoke at the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement’s convention earlier this week about his need for better benefits:
I have pain in my back... but I haven’t gone to get it examined because I don’t have health insurance. For me, it’s too expensive.
Jacobo, a father of two and 10 year Cintas employee, certainly deserves better. Everywhere he and the other workers on the tour went during the Orlando stop, they left people outraged and inspired to get involve in their struggle for better, safer jobs.
Gloria Jackson, a union laundry worker who met with Jacobo and other Coalition members said:
Not getting insurance, that’s sad, really sad. If you go to the doctor it’s gonna cost you at least $100, and you don’t make that in one day. I’m glad that we got a union in our plant. I really, really am because I see the change... We can negotiate contracts about our insurance.
I thank God for the union.
Can I get an "amen"? UNITE HERE’s man on the road Matt Painter wrote me:
"Maybe it was because I was in a battleground state where commercials for candidates are as ubiquitous as the air is humid, but hearing Gloria and Jacobo’s conversation about their benefits impressed on me how important the election in November is. How we vote in November could be the difference between safe jobs and "secret rules." It could be the difference between the American Dream or an economic nightmare. It could be the difference between healthy families and premature deaths."
