Blog: October 2021

The Justice for Jeyasre Speaking Tour Stops in Los Angeles

In Los Angeles, garment workers like Maria, Elizabeth, and Carlos are earning around $6 an hour. That’s because they’re paid through the piece rate system, where workers earn pennies per garment sewn instead of earning an hourly wage. “These industries are run by millionaires,” Maria from the Garment Workers Center shared on the Los Angeles Justice for Jeyasre Speaking Tour stop, “and they have us enslaved.”

The Justice for Jeyasre Speaking Tour Stops in Tennessee

When Armando helped build a public middle school in Tennessee he expected to get paid for his work. Two years later, he’s still fighting to get the $43,000 owed to him. 

Companies, like the one Armando worked for, often get millions of dollars in government contracts only to turn around and steal workers’ wages. They assumed that, because they’re not from the U.S. and don’t speak English, they won’t be able to fight back. “It’s so corrupt”, Armando said at the speaking tour event, “they keep hiring the same corrupt companies. This will continue if we don’t do anything about it”.

The Justice for Jeyasre Speaking Tour Stops in Chicago

Wale Ogunyemi was killed this summer in an unsafe warehouse outside of Chicago. He was a 42-year old Nigerian immigrant who supported his wife and two daughters from the United States. In that same warehouse, three workers were killed on the job and fifty-one serious injuries have been reported since 2016. 

In the first few minutes of the Justice for Jeyasre speaking tour stop in Chicago, Roberto Clack from Warehouse Workers for Justice shared Wale’s story, how they also had to bury a fellow worker, just months earlier, because of an unsafe workplace.

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