L
EGACY
‘
Visit legacynewspaper.com for information.
Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow.
WEDNESDAYS • Nov. 25, 2015
For free tickets to Richmond Ballet’s
Richmond & Hampton Roads
LEGACYNEWSPAPER.COM • FREE
When temp workers die on the job, who’s responsible? SPENCER WOODMAN
On Sept. 24, just after 3 p.m., a 36-year-old Haitian immigrant named Marianie Sanon was sitting on a particleboard bench in the back of a van overcrowded with 22 other Haitian temp workers on their way to the night shift at a factory in Evansville, Indiana. She noticed that the van driver seemed to be driving dangerously fast down Interstate 69. Sanon had recently moved from Miami to Washington, Indiana, on the hope of landing a good job at the local branch of a temp agency called ServiceXpress. This would have been her fourth day temping at a plant operated by AmeriQual, an Evansville, Indianabased manufacturer of prepackaged military food for the Department of Defense. The last thing Sanon remembers of the van ride was watching the driver—a 30-year-old man named James Allen who helped his father run a van service that he called “Haitian Transportation”—attempt a high-speed, slalom-like maneuver to get around a truck. Three days later, Sanon emerged from a coma in a hospital in Evansville. She had suffered severe head trauma, had several fractured vertebrae, a bone in her left arm had been shattered and she still had shards of glass still imbedded in her body.
Over the past decade, states across the country have been unwinding a century-old compact with America’s workers: A guarantee that if you are injured on the job, your employer will pay your medical bills and enough of your wages to help you get by. In all, 33 states have passed laws that reduce benefits, create hurdles to getting medical care or make it more difficult to qualify for workers’ comp. Virginia has not passed any major reforms. The accident had left two of her fellow passengers dead. As it tumbled across the interstate, the van disintegrated, ejecting Sanon onto the pavement and sending more than a dozen other survivors to the hospital. As she lay in her hospital bed and gathered information about her co-workers, Sanon says she began to wonder why she had heard nothing from the temp agency— ServiceXpress, a subsidiary of Delaware-based Service General— that deployed her, or from AmerQual itself. Not only had there been no
Marianie Sanon after the accident. offer of help, but not a single person from either firm had checked in, called, visited or sent a letter, Sanon says. Sanon called ServiceXpress and spoke with a manager. “She said she was sorry for what happened to me,” Sanon told me, “but that she cannot do anything for me.” Sanon soon received a letter from ServiceXpress. Dear Employee, We thank you for your time that you have been with ServiceXpress; we want to help in some way from the traumatic experience that you have
been through. We hope this gift card and food basket can help you get back on your feet. We want to wish you the best regards in everything you do. Thank you, ServiceXpress Staff Aside from the $50 Walmart credit, Sanon says that she soon received a paycheck from ServiceXpress that came to $71.00. She says she never received the food basket referenced in the letter and has heard nothing from AmeriQual.
(continued on page 2)