Sharpstown, Gulfton, and Spring Branch top three locations impacted by exploitation
HOUSTON, March 15, 2019--Labor abuses span the breadth of the Houston metropolitan area, with complaints logged by the Faith and Justice Worker Center by victims in 137 zip codes across the metro area within a 12-month period ending February 2019.
“Abuses at the workplace are not problems restricted to neighborhoods of one income level or another, or in one geographic area,” said Marianela Acuña Arreaza, executive director of the FJWC. “Labor rights abuses occur in the suburbs, in the city, in wealthy areas and working-class neighborhoods and everywhere in between.”
The surveyed period covers 768 individual abuse complaints, including complaints of wage theft, discrimination, health and safety violations, threats made in the workplace and other infringements on a worker’s rights, by type of abuse and location. Wage theft was the most frequent reported infraction, with 349 incidents logged.
The information comes from the FJWC’s newly available database of labor rights complaints, which aggregates data from the organization’s worker rights hotline. A full report will be published on May 1st.
Zip codes in Sharpstown, Gulfton, and Spring Branch topped the charts for the most complaints logged, at 41, 24 and 24 individual incidents respectively. Twenty-one Houston zip codes had 10 incidents or more logged during the 12 months surveyed.
“The clear takeaway from this is that workers’ rights need much more protection in this city,” said Acuña Arreaza “We see the whole map of Houston covered in labor abuse, and we know that there is so much more that hasn’t been reported yet.”
See also: Dynamic map of zip codes where labor rights abuses were reported, Feb 2018-Sep 2018.
WORKERS’ RIGHTS HOTLINE: 713-862-8222
For more information:
NAME: Silvia Chicas
PHONE: (713) 298-8824
EMAIL: silvia@houstonworkers.org, cc: erin@houstonworkers.org
WEBSITE: https://www.houstonworkers.org