Jornaleros Unidos con el Pueblo

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About UNIDOS

Jornaleros Unidos con el Pueblo (Day Laborers United with the Community), or UNIDOS, was a four year partnership between the San Francisco Department of Public Health’s Program on Health, Equity, and Sustainability and La Raza Centro Legal’s Day Labor Program and Women’s Collective. Funded by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, UNIDOS sought to address occupational health disparities among day laborers and domestic workers in San Francisco.

The UNIDOS Collaboration is one of the first attempts by a local health department to engage with day laborers, domestic workers and their supporting community organizations in community-based participatory research.

The overall aim of the project was to “improve working conditions for day laborers through strategies that reflect the knowledge, needs, and participation of day laborers.” An overarching strategy of UNIDOS was to create a communicative and reflective process through a “community council” that actively engaged the proposed stakeholders in collaborative efforts to improve hazardous working conditions, day laborers’ health, and their social and structural context. A related expected outcome was improved and sustained capacity of institutions and communities to address day laborers’ health and working conditions.

Although the proposed process did not occur as originally described in the UNIDOS grant proposal, the activities and projects resulted in numerous positive outcomes and lessons learned from the four year collaboration.

Some of the notable interventions include development and implementation of:

A day laborer-led legal clinic that has recovered over $330,000 in unpaid wages

A participatory research study that documented conditions faced by 280 Bay Area domestic workers and led to the introduction of statewide legislation requiring overtime pay for personal attendants

A ten-week United Workers’ Course designed to build workers’ knowledge of rights and leadership skills

Over 80 peer-led vocational training on construction skills and safe, healthy, and dignified domestic work

Twelve Digital Stories profiling day laborer and domestic workers’ lives, work hazards, and societal contributions

A pilot Occupational Safety and Health Consultant position to conduct outreach and awareness raising in local clinics and service agencies related to immigrant workers’ health & safety

Incorporation of a Safe and Dignified Cleaning Training into the Women’s Collective ongoing programming to train domestic workers throughout the Bay Area and distribute the curriculum nationally

Ongoing collaboration between the partnering organizations to address gaps in workers compensation

Detailed descriptions of the UNIDOS activities, positive outcomes, challenges, and lessons learned are available in the UNIDOS Final Report. Reports, outreach and training materials, and other UNIDOS products are available in the Appendices.