COVID-19’s arrival in the United States has brought with it public expressions of gratitude for the country’s many “essential workers.” Yet, far less attention is paid to the hazardous conditions under which many of these essential workers—composed in large part of low-wage, immigrant workers—labor each day, even in pre-pandemic times. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought with it a host of new challenges for low-wage, immigrant workers and has also laid bare existing limits to the accessibility of health and safety enforcement mechanisms. Justice at Work has continued to work throughout the pandemic to advocate for low-wage, immigrant workers across the state of Pennsylvania and has witnessed the advent of new health and safety issues in the workplace as well as the exacerbation of existing ones.

Health and safety, Then and Now

Justice at Work draws on a long history of experience with workplace health and safety issues faced by low-wage workers to inform its current work. Starting in the late 1970s, a previous iteration of the organization called the Farmworker Civil Liberties Project was involved in investigations into the working and living conditions of Pennsylvania’s mushroom workers. In the 1980s, then called Friends of Farmworkers, the organization began to focus its advocacy efforts on areas including unsafe or unhealthy work conditions for farmworkers and mushroom workers, and retaliation against workers for exercising their legal rights.

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