Elizabeth Machado

The Project

Elizabeth combats employment discrimination among undocumented and low-wage workers in Los Angeles through direct legal services, community outreach and education, and policy advocacy.

Los Angeles’ low wage industries—including the car wash, garment, restaurant, day labor, and domestic worker industries—are notorious for wage theft, discrimination, and retaliation. Employers are increasingly retaliating against undocumented workers for asserting their employment rights and advocating for better working conditions. In some instances, they may even threaten to report workers to ICE. Fearful of legal repercussions, undocumented workers may be reluctant to report employment violations and to cooperate with workplace investigations. This enables unscrupulous employers to gain unfair competitive advantages over law-abiding employers.

Elizabeth’s prior work with Bet Tzedek Legal Services addressing wage theft and discrimination among low wage workers left a lasting impression on her. Having grown up in an immigrant household and in a largely low income minority neighborhood, advocating on behalf of low wage and immigrant workers felt meaningful.

Fellowship Plans

During her Fellowship, Elizabeth will build on Bet Tzedek Legal Services’ existing partnerships with community-based organizations and worker centers. She will hold regular discrimination clinics and provide advice, counsel, and direct representation to workers in the areas of discrimination, harassment, and retaliation. She will also hold Know-Your-Rights trainings to educate workers about what to do when an employer discriminates against them. Additionally, in collaboration with Bet Tzedek Legal Services and community partners, Elizabeth will develop policy proposals to expand protections and enforcement against discrimination.

The Project

Alexis’s (she/her) project with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Racial Justice Program will challenge and reform occupational licensing regimes that exclude women of color from gainful employment based on criminal arrest or conviction history.

Nearly one in three working-age adults have criminal records in the United States, and one in four jobs require a license from the government. Many people are summarily denied licenses because of past convictions or arrests, even when that history has no relationship to their ability to work in that industry competently and safely. Eliminating these restrictions will allow women of color who are disproportionately targeted by the criminal justice system to have expanded access to employment.

Throughout her career working to end the criminalization of poverty, Alexis has spoken with many people stuck in cycles of poverty and incarceration due to an unjust system of laws and regulations that makes it extremely difficult to find gainful employment. Eliminating these discriminatory occupational licensing restrictions will break these cycles by ensuring people have every opportunity to support themselves and their families.

Fellowship Plans

Alexis will challenge current occupational licensing restrictions through litigation and storytelling advocacy. She will partner with re-entry organizations to share stories of people who have struggled to find employment due to these harmful licensing restrictions. Amplifying these important stories will demonstrate the devastating impact these restrictions have on people of color. Alexis will also bring litigation to strike down restrictions that disproportionately exclude women of color.

The Project

Joseph’s (he/him/his) project will provide legal representation, community education, and outreach to domestic home healthcare workers in Chicago to enforce their rights under the new Illinois Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights.

Illinois is home to roughly 85,000 domestic workers, roughly 47,000 of whom are home healthcare workers. Most are women, people of color, and immigrants. They play an important role in caring for older adults and people with disabilities in their homes, but they are also three times more likely than other workers to live in poverty. Joseph’s project will educate domestic workers about their employment-related rights and provide direct legal representation to address discrimination, wage theft, retaliation, and harassment.

Joseph has made workers’ rights and economic justice the central motivator of his law school career. He understands the unfair and enormous burden placed on individuals with limited proficiency in English to access justice. He believes that creating a more equitable, worker-centered approach in the workplace will lead to greater economic security for individuals in low-income, immigrant communities.

Fellowship Plans

Joseph will work with community partners in Chicago to strengthen enforcement of the new Illinois Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights by identifying violations. His project will develop multi-lingual and literacy-appropriate know-your-rights materials and host community events to disseminate information about the Illinois Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights. He will also pursue enforcement of the Illinois Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights with city and state agencies to address discrimination, wage theft, retaliation, and harassment.

The Project

Steve assisted low-wage immigrant workers with wage claims by expanding KIWAs Worker Empowerment Clinic.

Fellowship Highlights

Steve assisted workers at Koreatown supermarkets and raised concerns of unlawful and inequitable workplace conditions to the larger Los Angles community. His work resulted in a seven-figure settlement and changes in workplace conditions across various supermarkets in Koreatown.

Next Steps

Following his Fellowship, Steve worked at a prominent private public interest law firm where he continued representing low-wage immigrant workers in wage and hour class actions. Steve also served as a supervising attorney in the housing unit of the Los Angeles Center for Law and Justice, where Steve supervised a housing rights clinic and engaged in unlawful eviction defense and slum litigation. Since 2012, Steve has served California workers at the California Labor Commissioner’s Office where he continues to represent low-wage immigrant workers with wage and hour claims.

The Project

Dave (he/him) advocates at Greater Boston Legal Services (GBLS) for low wage workers in the Boston area to increase health and safety at work through direct legal services, community education, and policy advocacy.

No one should have to choose between losing income and protecting their health. But low-wage workers are often fired or get their hours cut for asserting their rights to paid sick leave or safe and healthy working conditions. As a result, poor health outcomes and high unemployment are concentrated in the working-class neighborhoods that make our state run.

Fellowship Highlights to Date

In the first year of the Fellowship, Dave has:

• Trained over 425 workers and advocates about sick time and paid medical leave rights
• Won settlements totaling $119,000 for unpaid sick time and wrongful termination of 27 workers
• Won $50,000 in unemployment benefits for seven wrongly terminated workers
• Obtained $260,000 in Paid Family Medical Leave benefits for 34 workers with serious health conditions
• Expanded eligibility for Paid Family Medical Leave benefits to thousands of undocumented workers through individual appeals, legal research, and advocacy with the state agency
• Submitted proposed regulatory changes to the Department of Family and Medical Leave to improve appeal rights for late applicants and wrongfully denied applicants

Next Steps

In the next year, Dave plans to:

• Start a new community partnership for GBLS Employment Law Unit to reach more immigrant workers
• Develop model demand letters for community partners to use for paid sick leave and hold workshops
• Continue systemic advocacy on worker health in new state legislative cycle, to expand paid sick leave, paid medical leave, and improve accessibility of these benefits

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The Project

Meghan (she/her) represents workers in wage theft cases and advocates for improved labor standards enforcement in North Carolina, targeting industries that exploit immigrant workers and workers of color.

Low-wage workers in Charlotte—the largest city in North Carolina—have inadequate access to employment legal services. The Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy is the largest provider of civil legal services in the Charlotte area, and Meghan’s project is aimed at addressing the underlying reasons for many clients’ financial instability. She is working closely with community organizations to identity common forms of wage theft and help low-wage workers recover stolen wages.

Meghan is eager to help workers in her home state push for better working conditions and greater employer accountability for labor abuses.

Fellowship Highlights to Date

In the first year of the Fellowship, Meghan has:

• Recovered wages owed to workers in the healthcare and childcare industries
• Participated in statewide efforts to improve language access for individuals seeking unemployment insurance benefits
• Represented workers in workplace retaliation complaints filed with state agencies
• Provided advice and/or brief service to approximately 45 individuals on employment-related issues
• Collaborated with community partners to better understand industry-specific forms of wage theft
• Delivered presentations on wage theft to community partners to develop a client referral system
• Engaged with a local economic security coalition, as well as regional and statewide coalitions, to expand project reach and impact

Next Steps

In the next year, Meghan plans to:

• Work with community partners to address worker misclassification in the construction industry
• Advise low-wage workers about state retaliation protections and help file complaints with the state Department of Labor
• Continue raising awareness about common forms of wage theft in local policy discussions

The Project

Fernanda (she/her/hers) will combat immigration-related retaliation against workers in climate disaster clean up and reconstruction zones in the Southern United States through education, legal representation, and policy change.

The global climate crisis is wreaking havoc across the United States. Whether it be hurricanes, dam breaks, tornados, or wildfires, companies are looking to rebuild quickly at expedient costs and to do so, secure workers from around the country. Most of these workers are immigrants and many are undocumented. Unfortunately, many in the growing disaster recovery industry take advantage of the workers’ undocumented status by not paying them all they are owed, not paying them at all, and not following safety and health guidelines for what is often very dangerous work. When workers assert their rights, employers threaten to report them to immigration enforcement authorities.

Fernanda and her family left Mexico and moved to Alabama when she was two years old, where she grew up as an undocumented immigrant. She watched her parents receive less pay and unfair treatment than they deserved for their long hours of labor and take whatever job was available to them out of necessity to provide for their family. Due to a lack of information, her family was left vulnerable to those who believed undocumented immigrants had no legal recourses in labor disputes. Fernanda hopes to empower others and spread through the immigrant community the knowledge that everyone deserves a fair wage and humane working conditions, despite their immigration status.

Fellowship Plans 

Fernanda will equip natural disaster workers with legal information about their rights to be free from immigration-related retaliation by creating Know Your Rights workshops and videos to distribute via social media platforms, and training workers to be peer educators. She will also represent workers in wage and hour, safety and health, and worker organizing retaliation claims; companion applications for U Visas; and in appropriate cases, T Visas. Fernanda will hold large companies accountable for immigration-related retaliation, even when it is committed by subcontractors. She will also help change local policy, in disaster-affected communities to reduce the effects of immigration-related retaliation and promote long-lasting changes at the national level.

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The Project

Through the Worker Protection Program at the Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York, Symone (she/her/hers) provides free legal services to low-income workers for employment-related matters including discrimination claims, wage theft claims, and worker safety issues.

The Capital Region of New York, the BIPOC population earns half the median household income of white families and disproportionately works low wage jobs. Many low-income workers cannot afford to lose their earnings, and so they endure workplace abuse, employment discrimination, and unsafe working conditions. The Worker Protection Program is the first legal services program in the area that focuses exclusively on employment-related matters for low-income and low-wage earners.

Fellowship Highlights to Date

In the first year of the Fellowship, Symone has:

• Served over 90 low-income workers in the Capital Region, providing full representation to more than 15 clients and legal advice to over 70 individuals
• Filed nine complaints to state agencies, including employment discrimination complaints with the New York State Division of Human Rights and the Office for Federal Contract Compliance Programs, as well as wage complaints with the New York State Department of Labor
• Negotiated settlements with employers and secured back wages owed to clients
• Held “Know Your Rights in the Workplace” presentations for community partner participants
• Conducted community outreach to increase awareness about the Worker Protection Program and the resources available to community-based organizations

Next Steps

In the next year, Symone plans to:

• Develop client success stories and compile program data and outcomes to use for promotional purposes, and to apply for funding opportunities to sustain the program
• Increase community outreach efforts and give more “Know Your Rights in the Workplace” presentations to targeted community groups
• Develop a strategy to sustain the Worker Protection Program beyond her Fellowship

The Project

Dan helps workers in the Twin Cities’ construction industry defend their workplace rights and build power through the Building Dignity and Respect Program.

Non-union construction workers in the Twin Cities’ experience widespread wage theft and other workers’ rights abuses. Through Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en la Lucha (CTUL) these workers are joining together to defend their rights, support each other, and develop lasting worker empowerment. As part of this effort, workers are calling on Twin Cities developers to join the newly launched Building Dignity and Respect (BDR) Program, a human rights program built on the Worker-Driven Social Responsibility model.

In the BDR Program, “participating developers sign a legally binding agreement to uphold certain human rights standards on their projects. This includes worker protections from wage theft, physical and sexual abuse, and human trafficking, as well as access to safe working conditions and fair pay. Workers are made aware of these protections through comprehensive, worker-designed education sessions, empowering them to become frontline defenders of their own human rights. The Building Dignity and Respect Standards Council then monitors participating developers’ job sites to ensure all contractors are operating in compliance with the Code. If contractors are found to be in violation of the Code, and refuse to take appropriate steps to come into compliance, they will no longer be able to work for participating developers.”

Fellowship Highlights to Date

In the first year of the Fellowship, Dan has:

• Advised workers and organizers in their efforts to build power, strengthen workplace safety, and respond to discrimination
• Led a campaign supporting the introduction of workplace safety legislation at the state level
• Presented to policymakers at the White House, Department of Justice, Department of Labor, Federal Trade Commission, and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

Next Steps

In the next year, Dan plans to:

• Help develop CTUL’s efforts to support workers with claims of wage theft or other labor violations
• Provide legal support for the development and implementation of the BDR Program
• Assist with worker-to-worker educational efforts about labor standards

The Project

Callen (they/them/theirs) will represent low-income immigrants in New York City who are entangled in the immigration and criminal legal systems on workers’ rights and related immigration issues through direct representation, systemic litigation, and policy reform.

Immigrant workers in low-wage and informal jobs in New York City face exploitative working conditions with little recourse. For immigrant workers who are also entangled in the immigration and/or criminal legal systems (“crimmigration systems”), the consequences are dire: deadly workplace conditions, discrimination, wage theft, financial instability due to job loss, and the ever-looming threat of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

While NYC law affords workers many protections, low-wage immigrant workers are unable to enforce these rights without legal representation, and fear of repercussions often prevents immigrant workers from asserting their rights. When these workers are arrested, even when charges are dismissed, immigration and workplace consequences may remain. Located within a public defense office, the project will provide representation for low-wage immigrant workers entangled in the immigration systems who are otherwise isolated and hard to reach.

Fellowship Plans

Callen will represent immigrant workers at Brooklyn Defender Services (BDS) involved in the immigration and criminal legal systems on issues of worker safety, paid leave, wage theft, and discrimination via administrative agency enforcement, litigation, arbitration, and mediation. For undocumented workers, Callen will work with BDS’s immigration practice to file U and T Visa applications for clients whose work conditions make them eligible for this form of immigration relief. Additionally, Callen will create materials to educate attorneys working within the immigration and criminal legal systems about common workers’ rights claim their clients may have.

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