New report finds local restaurant workers face dangerous conditions and widespread wage theft | | | Restaurant workers in Santa Clara County regularly have to work in high heat without air conditioning, are exposed to sewage and dangerous chemicals at work, and face widespread wage theft, harassment, and high rates of workplace injury. This is according to the new report LOHP authored in collaboration with the County of Santa Clara’s Office of Labor Standards Enforcement. We surveyed local restaurant workers in partnership with trusted community organizations and also found that workers are not being given training or adequate resources to keep themselves safe at work and lack information about workers’ rights. Some are experiencing retaliation from employers for speaking up about these conditions and others do not speak up because they are afraid. | | | |
Recommendations call for stronger enforcement protections, employer education, effective worker training programs, and strengthening workers’ voice in the workplace to ensure they are involved in identifying hazards, problems, and needed solutions.
Notably the report also calls for strengthening relationships with community-based and worker advocacy organizations who have built trust with food service worker communities and who can support them in practical, linguistically, and culturally responsive ways.
Read the full report.
| | A mission to protect every worker | | | Respirator training for workers at Cypress Mandela Training Center. Photo/ Joyce Xi. | | When Charles Simmons, Jr. was an apprentice in the construction trades, he once fell three stories off a building. Luckily, he was not seriously injured. But that fall taught him a few valuable lessons about the importance of, as he puts it “slowing down, paying attention and doing what’s necessary so I don’t get killed.” | | |
Today, Simmons has been in the construction field for 37 years. As the executive director of Cypress Mandela Training Center, a community-based organization that provides pre-apprentice construction training and employment assistance to workers entering the trades, Simmons knows the importance of giving workers critical health and safety information.
LOHP has had a long-term partnership with Cypress Mandela to provide HAZWOPER certification courses and safety training to workers entering fields like construction or the public utility sector. Together this work includes training on protective equipment, chemical exposures, confined space operations, electrical safety, silica and much more. This training helps workers understand what the law says about their rights on the job, and how to make sure those laws are enforced.
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“It’s been absolutely critical,” Simmons says of the partnership. Simmons said LOHP’s training programs are unique because they “create a learning environment where people feel comfortable and safe.”
“I always say some of you guys might not even think about this until about 10 years out, but you’ll remember some of these classes.”
Cypress Mandela runs free pre-apprenticeship green construction training as well as additional certifications in environmental health and safety, energy efficiency, BART pathway training program and PG&E PowerPathway. More information is available on their website.
| | Protecting workers in extreme heat | | | LOHP Program Coordinator Alejandra Domenzain testified at a federal heat hearing this summer and urged OSHA to act now to protect workers from rising temperatures. OSHA has extended the comment period for its proposed heat illness prevention rule until Oct. 30. The proposed federal rule covers employer requirements for safety plans, hydration, acclimatization, and employee training for workers in both outdoor and indoor settings. Since CA is one of only a few states with existing heat standards, a federal standard would cover millions of workers nationwide. | | LOHP trained worker leaders from Workers United Laundry Division on heat, chemicals, and ergonomics. | | |
Domenzain’s recommendations include immediate controls to protect workers such as reducing indoor temperatures, shifting work hours, postponing dangerous work, and giving workers paid time off when they are unable to work because it is too hot. Read Domenzain’s full testimony.
LOHP offers training on heat illness prevention. Check out our multilingual materials to educate workers at lohp.berkeley.edu/heat.
| | Back-to-school workshops equip educators for safe start | | | This back-to-school season we are out training school employees to reduce the high rate of work-related injuries and illnesses among school staff. Schools usually have comprehensive site safety plans in place for how staff can prepare for and respond to emergencies, but too often, plans pay little attention to the health and safety conditions for school employees. LOHP’s work this fall includes workshops for school staff on how to develop effective health and safety programs that comply with the Cal/OSHA Injury and Illness Prevention Standard as well as technical assistance and consultation for school administrators and employee unions. For more information, go to lohp.berkeley.edu/training/sash/. | | Health and safety training for educators at The Academy of Alameda. | | Building tomorrow’s public health leaders | | | |
LOHP has been host to a group of incredible students this summer from UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health and the Occupational Health Internship Program. Ashley Kochans, a Master of Public Health (MPH) candidate in environmental health sciences, joined us for her MPH practicum where she carried out a literature review in support of the California Heat Study and a needs assessment for general industry in workplace violence.
Angela Mora worked with us in the second year of her MPH program in Epidemiology/Biostatistics. Angela worked on the evaluation of a workplace violence resiliency center.
Each summer, LOHP is a site sponsor for the Occupational Health Internship Program (OHIP) - which places students with worker organizations. Congratulations to our 2025 occupational health interns. The three teams partnered with the Laborers’ International Union (LiUNA) Local 67, the California Fast Food Workers Union, and the California Department of Public Health to investigate worker safety in the fields of construction abatement, fast food and countertop workers exposed to silica.
| | A new California law (AB 1350) extends health and safety protections for the first time to many domestic workers in CA. In partnership with Mujeres Unidas y Activas, an organization of Latina and Indigenous immigrant women, in August we helped prepare domestic worker leaders to teach others about safe cleaning, heat, and ergonomics, and to ask employers for changes needed to protect their health. | |
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