Pass the Emergency Worker Dignity and Safety Ordinance!

The disaster at the Hard Rock was preventable. Workers had documented the shoddy construction and corners cut days before the collapse, but the bosses ignored their warnings. In order to prevent another deadly incident of this sort, workers urgently need to be able to walk off the job if they deem the worksite a threat to their lives. If this right cannot be enforced by a union contract, it should be protected by city law. Every worker in New Orleans deserves this basic protection.

Workers should be free to exercise their rights without fear of retaliation or loss of work and wages; otherwise, a right is a right in name only. The case of Delmer Joel Ramirez Palma, the Hard Rock worker who was captured by ICE and deported for taking the courageous step of blowing the whistle on criminal developers, should be an outrage to all workers. To tolerate this type of terrorism is to give the bosses a free pass to walk over any right or protection that stands in the way of their profits.

The New Orleans Workers Group has proposed and is petitioning signatures for the following Emergency Worker Dignity and Safety Ordinance to be passed by the city as soon as possible. Sign the petition here. The ordinance is as follows:

The City’s immediate response and top priority is to properly and safely remove people’s bodies from an accident site so that their families can begin to have closure.
Any group of workers who decide that their job site conditions are unsafe have the right to walk off the job free of penalty and with the day’s pay.
Such action, and/or any potential accident, will immediately trigger an independent investigation.
Workers who walk off their job for safety concerns will be protected from termination.
Workers classified as 1099 contractors are protected under the ordinance.
Workers’ rights to walk off the job due to safety concerns are protected under the ordinance regardless of documentation status and are protected from ICE involvement and deportation.
All workers who utilize their right to walk off an unsafe job are protected from retaliation and termination should they go to the press about their experience. This is to protect “whistleblowers.”
Workers will receive full pay and benefits for the time they are unable to work until employers address the workplace safety conditions.

To get involved in the campaign to pass the Emergency Worker Dignity and Safety Ordinance, contact the New Orleans Workers Group:

nolaworkersgroup@gmail.com or 504-671-7853.

Workers Voice Socialist Movement

We are workers, employed and unemployed, youth, students, and seniors. We are multi-racial and multi-national and organize for the unity of the working class. We are funded by and for workers, for the liberation of all workers and oppressed people.

We organize for jobs and higher wages, against racism, women’s, and LGBTQ oppression, and for solidarity with immigrants. We organize for community schools, lower rents, and food on our tables. We organize for workers’ power so that everything will one day be removed from the capitalists’ private ownership.

We oppose the Pentagon, which is looting our tax dollars and handing them over to war-profiteering private companies, while social programs are gutted. We oppose war for empire which is pursued only to lower our wages and plunder the world’s resources while destroying the environment. We reject the monopoly media who feed us lie after lie.

The labor of workers produces enormous wealth here in Louisiana, the U.S. and the world– so much wealth that everyone could have housing, meaningful jobs, education, healthcare, and genuine equality. But this wealth is stolen and privately owned by the capitalist class for their greed and profit. We believe that we, the workers of the world, can unite in revolution to overcome capitalism and build a better world.

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