‘Hidden labor, hidden risk’

In early spring of 2023, Francisco M. moved from Georgia to Spokane to work not knowing much about the company he would work for, or even the full name of his supervisor, “Blacky” — a man whose name he said he does not fully know to this day.

He said he had heard about an opportunity to work in construction here from an extended family member in Georgia that had previously worked for the company. (RANGE is identifying Francisco by his first name and last initial because of his immigration status.)

“I was just looking for work,” Francisco told RANGE. “You don’t really have time to think about how people who are undocumented can be exploited for work.”

During his time in Spokane, Francisco told RANGE that Blacky was the only company representative he ever met, and he wasn’t sure who else might work for or own the company.

When Francisco arrived in Spokane, he said he and other workers were packed into tight living conditions provided by the company, and they were almost entirely reliant on Blacky to navigate basic tasks like grocery shopping and laundry as well as transportation. That was in part due to most of the men not speaking fluent English and being out-of-state, according to Francisco.

Informal work arrangements are not uncommon among US-based companies.

For Francisco, Spokane was temporary anyway. Georgia had been temporary, too.

“There’s no work in my town,” he told RANGE, describing why he left his rural home near Guanajuato, a central-Mexico city about the same size as Spokane. “I was just trying to earn some money so my family could be more comfortable.”

On June 19, 2023, just months after arriving, Francisco fell 10 feet from a ladder while re-roofing a residence in Spokane County, breaking three toes on his right foot. Still reliant on Blacky for most things, Francisco said he initially refused to take him to the hospital — until a week later when the swelling on his right foot did not go away and the pain became excruciating.

During a follow up visit that a neighbor drove him to, a nurse connected Francisco with nonprofit Latinos en Spokane (LES), which helped him navigate further health care access, find safer housing and eventually file a workers’ compensation claim with the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries (L&I).

But that was just the beginning of a more than year-long saga to get Francisco the compensation he was eligible for.

According to a survey released by Oxfam — an international organization that studies poverty and inequality — Washington has the third-best worker protections in the United States, behind only Oregon and California. L&I is the agency tasked with ensuring those protections actually apply to the workers who should benefit from them.

Francisco’s experience illustrates the holes that exist in that safety net, specifically for exploited workers who often operate in a gray market for jobs, and are employed by companies who might not even be registered — much less compliant — with agencies like L&I, and the persistence it can require from not just the injured worker, but support organizations like LES.

During the course of the L&I investigation, officials learned that the company, New Era Construction 19 LLC, was never registered with them, the agency told RANGE.

According to LES Executive Director Jennyfer Mesa, they connected with several representatives at L&I who initially discouraged Francisco from filing a claim, before the nonprofit was able to successfully submit a claim on July 25, 2023. “Most workers are scared to start this process and those who do, don’t have the resources alone to keep pushing through a broken system like this,” Mesa said.

Once LES and Francisco filed the claim on July 25, it would spend nearly a year in the system. Francisco was initially paid a small amount for medical expenses in October 2023, but he received nothing for lost wages, and the case was closed.

In April 2024, the closed case was “reviewed” (L&I says it wasn’t, technically, reopened) after Mesa reached out to RANGE and RANGE inquired with L&I. As a result, the agency compensated Francisco for lost wages.

Mesa described their dealings with L&I as “a constant rejection.”

L&I disputes Mesa’s characterization of the hardships Francisco and the LES team faced. In an email to RANGE, L&I claimed they moved as quickly as they could, and certainly didn’t try to discourage Francisco M.’s claim because he is undocumented or because of the key missing details about his employer.

But Mesa stressed that without persistent help from the advocates at LES — which included getting additional support from Familias Unidas por la Justicia , another Washington-based immigrant rights organization — the initial roadblocks might have led Francisco to not file at all, and it took a newsroom making inquiries months later for the agency to take a second look and offer him more compensation.

“Situations like Francisco’s happen everywhere and there’s a price to that,” Mesa said. “Organizations like ours are often the only safety net for undocumented workers because L&I is reluctant to take their cases, or it’s a maze.”

‘Nobody wore safety gear’

Once Francisco arrived in Spokane, he noticed the conditions were considerably worse than those he had experienced in Georgia or Texas, he told RANGE.

Francisco said he and the 10 other men on his work crew were initially crammed in two Spokane Valley hotel rooms supplied by the company. They were eventually moved to a four-bedroom house, which gave them more space, but still required most of the men to sleep three per room.

Francisco said the workdays were long — usually 12 to 14 hours without breaks.

Karen Zamora, a social worker at LES who did much of the legwork on Francisco’s case, said the company he worked for specialized in roofing, which is precarious and can be deadly.

Despite that, Francisco recalled: “Nobody wore safety gear.”

“Your main concern is getting through work for the day, you don’t think about safety measures or anything like that,” Francsico said.

The men were paid under the table and they did not receive pay stubs. Not only was Francisco not sure if he was making overtime for the grueling days of work, he didn’t even know what his base hourly rate was. He stayed quiet through all of it out of fear of speaking up.

“You get into the mindset of, ‘I’m just here to work,’” he told RANGE, “I don’t want them to not pay me or deport me because I spoke up.”

Outside of work, the men completely relied on Blacky to take them on grocery trips or laundromats on what was supposed to be a weekly basis. “I think we were all [from] out-of-state,” Francisco said, noting that none of his coworkers had family or other ties in Washington. And while the men relied on Blacky, Francisco said that he sometimes didn’t show up.

Mesa said she believes the isolation of out-of-state workers not only created a power imbalance between the employer and employees, but so did the dependence on the employer for basic necessities like food, laundry and housing.

“It was like the H-2A program , [but] run on the streets,” she said, referring to a government visa program that allows immigrants to fulfill temporary agricultural work. “Where there’s hidden labor, there’s hidden risk.”

A vital doctor’s visit

Francisco’s injury happened about three or four months after arriving in Spokane, when he was sent to work replacing a roof on a home in east Spokane County. A couple of days into that job, on June 19, Francisco slipped from a ladder, falling about ten feet to the ground and breaking three toes on his right foot. But at that time, he didn’t know if it was sprained or broken, but he knew he was hurt badly enough to want to see a doctor.

“You could see the swelling grow and it was more painful than it looked,” he said.

Francisco said Blacky steered him away from seeking medical care, though, by telling him that seeing a doctor would get the company into trouble and get Francisco deported. So he muddled through, waiting for the inflammation to go down, but it never did.

When Francisco’s injury continued to get worse through the week, it became clear to both him and his supervisor that his foot wouldn’t heal without a doctor, Francisco says Blacky took him to MultiCare Deaconess Hospital in Spokane, and Blacky did all the talking.

For a check-up visit soon after, Francisco made the trip alone. During that visit, a nurse who spoke Spanish pressed him for more information about the injury and then gave him contact information for LES. Neither Zamora nor Francisco recall the nurse’s full name, just that his first name was Troy.

Feeling that Blacky had already been an impediment to Francisco’s recovery, and might try to prevent him from seeking compensation for his injury, the team at LES found Francisco temporary housing while Zamora took on the brunt of the effort to help him file an injury claim with L&I. Once Francisco was out of his authority, Zamora told RANGE, Blacky showed up to the LES offices at least three times. Francisco provided a number for Blacky, but RANGE’s calls were never returned.

The claim

Zamora told RANGE that when she first met Francisco, he was hesitant to even discuss what had happened, much less file a claim with L&I. “The hardest thing was to get him to understand that he had rights, even being undocumented,” she said.

Zamora also believes intimidation was a factor. “[Francisco] became more scared when his supervisor began showing up outside the LES building telling him to stop speaking with us,” she said.

Eventually, though, Francisco agreed to file a claim.

LES has some experience with filing claims on behalf of workers, but the work was more difficult in Francisco’s case, because he lacked many details about his job: the pay rate, the name of the company that employed him, Blacky’s legal identity and Francisco’s own undocumented status.

“We were told it’d be better for him to reach an agreement with his employer so he’d be paid,” Mesa said.

Because of the missing information, Mesa said several calls to L&I representatives led nowhere. “The way that L&I operates is: ‘prove yourself.’ They see a case number, but we see the person,” she said. “L&I will take a case [to investigate] if it checks all their boxes.”

Additionally, some clinics in the area had declined to offer further treatment for Francisco due to his undocumented status, and suggested — like L&I initially had — that he reach an agreement with his employer instead of filing a claim, according to Zamora.

Given those hurdles, the LES team felt they had to begin the investigation themselves. They found that Francisco’s employer was likely a subcontractor of Infinity Roofing, Mesa said. Infinity Roofing declined to provide a comment or an interview with RANGE, but RANGE did confirm with the homeowners that Infinity Roofing was the company hired to re-roof the house where Francisco was injured.

“We basically had to investigate the situation for L&I,” Mesa said, crediting Zamora with undertaking most of that work.

Once they had the lead on Infinity as the probable general contractor, Mesa said LES was able to connect with Edgar Franks, political director of Familias Unidas por la Justicia, who connected the organization to Susana Rodriguez, an L&I employee willing to listen and help them file the claim.

The initial claim was filed on July 25, a little over a month after his accident. According to a timeline provided to RANGE by L&I, the agency approved about $2,000 in compensation for medical expenses — but nothing for lost wages — then closed the claim in October 2023.

In April of this year, after receiving requests for comment and additional information from RANGE, the agency took another look at the claim, ultimately paying Francisco an additional $9,000 in lost wages. By that point, Francisco had left Washington for fear of retaliation.

In an email to RANGE, Herbert Atienza, a spokesperson for L&I, admitted the agency had closed the claim too quickly.

“We closed the claim, even though we had not addressed the worker’s request for time-loss benefits. That was a mistake, but claim closures can be reconsidered when the circumstances call for it,” Atienza wrote in the email. He explained that L&I looks into filed complaints it receives, but noted that not every compensation claim will be investigated.

Atienza denied that the agency refused to investigate or that the process stalled because details of the case were murky or due to Francisco’s legal status. “We review and process claims regardless of the worker’s immigration status or how complicated the claim might be,” Atienza wrote. “This claim went through the process just like any other claim we receive.”

The email further stated: “[Francisco’s] claim was processed and acted upon as quickly as we could both when it was first received and again after we discovered our error.”

Whether the agency did all it could as fast as it could, or could have moved faster and been more helpful and engaged at the outset, Francisco felt like he had fallen through the cracks.

“It’s an ugly feeling you’re left with when you go through something like I did, and no one is there to help,” Francisco told RANGE in July. “Eventually I got help from Latinos en Spokane, but the experience — it’s just ugly.”

Finding New Era

The process for figuring out who Francisco actually worked for wasn’t straightforward.

Atienza said that two days after LES submitted the complaint listing Infinity Roofing as the employer, L&I sent a letter to Francisco asking for more information. On August 8, 2023 he replied, providing a number for Infinity Roofing. Atienza said L&I was able to contact Infinity Roofing 10 days later, and learned Francisco was actually working for a subcontractor: New Era Construction 19 LLC.

Details on New Era are scarce. The company was filed with the Washington Secretary of State in June 2022, less than nine months before Francisco went to work for them, and the company showed up on a list of new companies kept by Spokane Valley that same month. The company’s business license expired on June 30, 2024 and the Secretary of State database currently lists the business as “delinquent.” The site does not list any email or phone number connected to the listed owners or company itself.

New Era’s registered business address is an extended-stay motel in Spokane Valley .

While New Era was registered with the Secretary of State, Atienza told RANGE that it was not registered with L&I, a requirement of any employer. As a result, Atienza said New Era had received a $956 fine as of June 2024 for being unregistered, and was being audited to ensure the business was in compliance with state labor laws and regulations. That compliance audit remained ongoing as of early August.

RANGE was unable to reach the man who appears in both L&I and the Washington Secretary of State databases as the owner of New Era Construction 19 LLC, Alexter Granados. RANGE was also unable to contact a second man connected to the company, Osvaldo Tellez Alvarez, whose name also appears on the Secretary of State site.

‘Must not happen again’

The $11,000 Francisco ultimately received was better than the initial $2,000 offered last July, and far better than if LES hadn’t filed the claim at all. But Mesa said LES had initially wanted to go even further.

Because of the totality of circumstances — a workplace without basic safety equipment; Francisco’s reliance on his employer for housing, food, transportation and other necessities; and the reluctance of that employer to help him get medical attention — the team at LES thought he Francisco had grounds to file an even stronger form of complaint.

“We believe this was a human rights violation because of the power dynamic between the supervisor and the employer,” Mesa said.

But LES was unable to file workers’ rights complaints for L&I to investigate those dynamics, Zamora said, because Francisco and his other coworkers were too scared to file that kind of complaint.

Zamora said Francisco was worried about what might happen to his other coworkers and the retaliation they’d face if such a complaint kickstarted a more robust investigation centered on the workplace violations.

Despite L&I’s assertion that its process worked as intended in this case — including its process of reviewing the claim after mistakenly closing it too early — Mesa believes the L&I system is broken for people working contingent jobs, those working under the table and especially workers who are undocumented.

Zamora said she believes L&I wants to help workers, but agreed with Mesa that the agency doesn’t fully understand the cultural stigma, power imbalances or outright fear of deportation that have convinced undocumented workers they have no rights as a consequence of their legal status.

While L&I encourages people in multiple places on its website to file claims regardless of their immigration status, both Mesa and Zamora believe the actual experience that LES had with Francisco’s case highlights the fact that the current bureaucracy cannot ensure justice and safety for people who are already among the most exploited workers in the country.

“We know that most cases go unreported,” Zamora said.

For Mesa, that means the agency — perhaps without even realizing it — is putting a disproportionate burden on community organizations like Latinos en Spokane.

“We’re more than happy to help,” Mesa said. “But they shouldn’t be relying on small nonprofits or grassroots efforts to do their jobs for them.”

There is also the potential danger faced by LES staff members, she said, as evidenced by Blacky showing up to their offices looking for Francisco

“They don’t consider the risks we take as a new organization,” Mesa said, “Or the time and resources we invested in this to make sure workers are safe in Spokane.”

Mesa believes those holes in the safety net — compounded by bigotry — enables companies to recruit workers they can exploit.

“We have a lot of fear-mongering about immigrants in this community,” Mesa said. “They want the labor, but they don’t want the people.”

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