Street Roots • Feb. 5-11,2016
TIMBER, from page 5
the injury is lasting longer or causing them to miss
more work than expected.
She said lying about the cause of an injury
upfront can be detrimental to the outcome of the
claim.
“It’s pretty severe when you’ve had an
amputation at work and you’re not reporting it as
an on-the-job injury,” she said. “Many of these
workers, even after talking to our office, and we’ve
explained what their rights are, regardless of
documentation, they have a very strong fear of '
filing a claim through the system. They’re afraid it
will impact their job, their other family members’
jobs. They’re concerned about being able to stay
here.”
Between 2010 and 2014, there were 556
accepted disabled workers compensation claims
filed by forestry workers, but with many fearful of
filing, that number is likely a drop in the bucket.
ith inadequate government oversight, forestry
workers’ family members are fighting for
improvements.
In the Medford area, a small group of women go
door to door looking for workers. They go to the
general store where they buy hard hats and boots,
and to the laundrymats and markets on weekends.
They call themselves the “Promotoras,” or
promotion girls, and they are the wives, aunts,
sisters and mothers of past and present forestry
workers. The Promotoras outreach is a program of
the Northwest Forest Workers Center. They
distribute fliers with information about workers’
rights and resources, and they offer training on
accident prevention, chainsaw safety and how to
W
survive outdoors. T hey give w o rk ers booklets to
record the hours they work.
Since 2011, they’ve trained more than 300 forest
workers on how to stay safe on the job.
All four women Street Roots spoke with relayed
various tales of worker abuse they have heard from
their husbands and the men they train. From
shoddy camping conditions and rotten food to
dangerous working conditions and wage theft,
these women are well-versed on the abuses within
Oregon’s forests.
“If you go and ask the workers, just one out of
every 40 or 50 is going to say they’re not being
mistreated. No one is going to tell you that they’re
being treated fairly,” said Promotora Erika.
“The way you see your husband when they come
back from planting trees - they’re hurt,” she said.
“They don’t have a voice,” said Virginia
Camberas, the Promotora program coordinator.
“More than anything, they’re afraid. They’re afraid
to say anything.”
Through a translator, Promotora Matha said her
husband once broke his big toe when a tree
crushed it. The crew wasn’t scheduled to leave the
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worksite for 15 more days, and his supervisors
made him work on his broken toe until the job was
done. During that time it became infected.
Both Erika and Martha asked that Street Roots
omit their last names because their advocacy could
affect their family members’ ability to find work,
they said.
Even for the Promotoras it’s difficult to get
workers to talk. Promotora Gladiola Garcia said, •
álso with the help of a translator, that one time a
foreman had the Promotoras chased away from a
motel where workers were staying. Other times
workers told her they wanted to speak to her but
couldn’t because their boss was nearby.
Supervisors have thrown out their pamphlets after
they leave, and workers have told them they could
fired just for listening to them.
The Promotoras often visit motels where H-2B
workers are housed. These workers are typically
from Mexico or Guatemala. They are granted
temporary, seasonal visas to visit the U.S. for work.
They don’t speak English, and sometimes they
don’t speak Spanish either, but Indigenous
languages, making them particularly susceptible to
exploitation.
In 2013, there were more than 800 forestry and
conservation positions open to these guest
workers across the state. At of the start of 2016,
U.S. Forest Service in Oregon and Washington had
104 active contracted operations staffed by guest
workers, totaling $9.5 million.
Lately, said the Promotoras, guest workers seem
to be getting younger.
“What we’ve seen recently is many, many, young,
18-year-olds are coming out, and they know
nothing, they have no sort of training,” said
Camberas.
Some workers have told the women their
su p e rv iso rs h o ld th e ir visas h o sta g e th e e n tire
time they are in the U.S., and that they treat them
like animals, said Erika and Camberas.
The Promotoras said for years, many forestry
workers have been reluctant to speak up for their
rights, but now, as they see their sons and
nephews take jobs in the forest, they have become
motivated to change the industry.
boa credits his father’s hard work and
encouragement for his own ability to break free
from what he calls the “perpetual cycle” many of
his cousins are caught in. “I escaped it because I
went to school,” he said.
He began to see a bigger picture while studying
sociology at the University of Oregon. Organizing
with the campus MEChA chapter and learning
about environmental justice, he said he began to
think about his family. He began to think about
how they all went to work under dangerous
conditions, exposed to toxic chemicals with little
protections. But then when they came home, the
exposure didn’t stop - he, his uncles and cousins
all lived in the most polluted areas of West Eugene.
“I saw the experiences of my family growing up
as basically these ghosts - these smaller
representations of these larger powers at work,” he
said. “A policy, like trying to cut corners by not
putting a protective cover on something, might be
a way for them to save some money - but that’s
someone’s arm.”
About a year ago he saw a Craigslist ad for an
opening at an environmental advocacy group in
Eugene called Beyond Toxics. One thing on its
agenda was protecting farm and forestry workers
from harmful pesticides and herbicides.
“I knew this was my job,” he said. Now, at age
24, he’s been the Environmental Justice and
Community Outreach Manager at Beyond Toxics in
Eugene for one year.
As he’s learned more about the effects of
herbicides and the toxic chemicals used in
sawmills, he said he can’t help but wonder if his
mother was washing his father’s clothes with his
baby clothes years ago - or if the exposure could
have had an effect on her pregnancy with him.
On Feb. 5 he will travel north from Eugene to
Salem to listen as state regulators discuss worker
issues he’s helped bring out of Oregon’s forest and
fields and before members of the governor’s
Environmental Justice Task Force.
The task force first heard testimony from
immigrant forestry and agricultural workers, the
Promotoras, Iboa and Wilmsen this past fall.
Workers testified they were exposed to toxic
pesticides and herbicides and believe they have
health problems such as liver, kidney and nervous
system damage as a result. They testified about not
getting breaks, retaliation for complaining and
having only d irty w a te r to drink.
At th e foUowing ta s k force m e e tin g in D ecem b er,
Iboa urged members to take action rather then
waiting to see if proposed EPA pesticide
application rules get approved.
“Why can’t Oregon have something more robust
and enforcement of existing laws?” he asked.
Iboa and his colleague, Beyond Toxics Executive
Director Lisa Akin, see the presence of BOLI’s
commissioner and OSHA’s administrator at
Friday’s meeting as a monumental step in their
effort to protect forestry and farmworkers from
dangerous exposure toxics and to combat workers’
fear of retaliation in reporting their injuries.
Beyond Toxics signed off on a letter, along with
Oregon Action, Northwest Forest Workers Center
and farmworker activist groups PCUN and
UNETE, asking tiie1 task forcé to bring their
requests to Governor Kate Brown, as changes to
the system that perpetuates worker abuses will
need to come from the top down.
Next: In Part I I in this series, Street Roots will
explore the role o f government regulators and land
m anagement agencies, as well as contractors.