 Daniel Werner, Litigation Director of the Workers Rights Law Center in Kingston. |
Such remarks are typical of various Hudson Valley employers, often in the restaurant, landscaping, and construction industries, whom the WRLC is suing because they did not properly pay its clients. 'Daniel Werner, who serves as WRLC's litigation director, is, like Kakalec, no stranger to such harassment. Recently a county official, an agricultural development specialist with the Sullivan County Division of Planning, denounced Werner as a parasite because he represented workers in a lawsuit against two Sullivan County employers. Prior to Werner's arrival, the employers were regarded as paragons of Hudson Valley development.
WRLC opened in June, winning a highly prestigious fellowship from Echoing Green, a philanthropic foundation for "entrepreneurs" of social change. The Center's formation reflects the recent growth trend in the Hudson Valley, largely courtesy of the Center's clients: Immigrant and other low-wage workers who form an army of invisible (read: exploitable) labor. "Not to sound like our grant applications," Kakalec says, "but the 2000 census reflected a big move in immigration away from the cities and into the suburbs. Because the cities are so expensive, immigrants go to the suburbs and the country. It's happening all over."
 Patricia Kakalec, Executive Director of the Workers Rights Law Center |
Kakalec and Werner have worked together as farmworker attorneys since 1998, comprising the New Paltz office of Farmworker Legal Services of New York [FLSNY]. The need for the Center revealed itself in the increasing volume of calls they received from workers, including some of FLSNY's former clients, whose problems were similar to workers in other low-wage industries. Like farm workers, they spoke of unpaid labor, unpaid overtime, and even forced labor. "We would have to tell them that we couldn't help them because we were a farm worker organization," Werner says. "That just didn't make sense."
WRLC's clients are mainly immigrants, but not exclusively, a fact that Kakalec and Werner emphasize. Immigration status, Werner hastens to add, is "irrelevant to the legal claims of our clients, and we do whatever we need to do to prevent it from becoming an issue." (The US Supreme Court has confirmed Werner's view: Immigrants whose presence in the US is illegal can sue for labor claims.) Unlike the predominately Mexican farmworker client pool, however, WRLC has also received calls from, among others, Ecuadorians, Peruvians, Guatemalans, and Haitians. Kakalec and Werner hope to recruit volunteers to build relationships with workers of other ethnicities.
WRLC serves nine counties: Green, Columbia, Ulster, Dutchess, Putnam, Orange, Westchester, Rockland, and Sullivan. Werner and Kakalec are both fluent in Spanish, and they travel around the region doing outreach work. The law, they believe, cannot create social change without simultaneous organizing in the community. Hence, workshops on workers' rights, given in churches and community organizations, are as important as litigation to WRLC's endeavors. Attendance at these workshops, they say, has been at convention levels, and have sprouted several lawsuits. In fact, WRLC just filed a class action on behalf of workers in a Sullivan County cheese factory, whose employer was not paying overtime and was illegally deducting a uniform cleaning charge from the workers' wages. Werner was introduced to the lead plaintiff in the case by a local pastor.
 Workers rights literature |
"We're not fighting people just for kicks," Kakalec says. "Our ideal situation is, we bring something to their attention, and they correct it. That case was resolved with minimal lawyers' fees for the defendant, minimal time, and minimal frustration."
Kakalec has an activist background, having been raised Catholic "with a religious emphasis on social justice." Her uncle is a priest and community organizer, while her grandfather was a coal miner and a member of United Mine Workers. Advocacy for farm workers sparked her interest while she was working for farm worker-organizations in Texas and Florida law schools. Kakalec thought it would be a "good marriage of her skills and concerns," though the education was so expensive that she had to sacrifice a few years at a corporate law firm.
Werner lived in Colombia for three years as a teenager, learning Spanish and gaining a deep understanding of the despair created by economic inequality. Before settling in Accord with his wife, Nan, a committed farm worker attorney herself, he spent several years working with farm workers in Florida. In college, he found the predicament of farm workers compelling, and was once lucky enough to spend the day with Cesar Chavez during a labor conference. The experience profoundly inspired him, he says, and he has drawn energy from it ever since. An adventurous outdoorsman, Werner peruses the caves of upstate New York (he shuns the word spelunk) and plies the Gunks whenever he can.
WRLC's office, at the corner of Lucas Avenue and Green Street in Kingston, is located within walking distance of the Ulster County Courthouse, where the stalwart abolitionist Sojourner Truth successfully argued for her son's liberation from slavery. The space was donated by UNITE-HERE Local 189, AFL-CIO, with the help of Jen Fuentes and Tim Riley of the Hudson Valley Labor Federation. Werner's office is next to that of UNITE HERE's Kingston bus-iness representative, Laurie Baldwin.
 Plaque on the Ulster County Courthouse |
Several posters and bumperstickers bearing declarations of the struggle for labor and immigrant rights are conspicuously displayed on WRLC's file cabinets and walls, like "Fight Ignorance, Not Immigrants;" "Rebellious Lawyering;" and "Unseen America," an advertisement for a photography exhibit held at the US Department of Labor. Its caption reads: "A project that gives camera, lessons, and visibility to scores of people who are unseen in our society, placing particular emphasis on immigrants who are part of our workforce." Indeed, WRLC exists for this reason: to give visibility and to empower powerless people.
WRLC relies on the local community for its survival. A substantial chunk of the Center's budget, for example, was contributed by Millbrook's Dyson Foundation. Kakalec and Werner invite volunteers for the Center's Small Claims Court Project, which begins this month, and aims for volunteers to educate workers regarding small claims court and to provide workers with non-legal assistance in the preparation and process of bringing a case there. The attorneys also need help in augmenting their educational and outreach work. Over the next couple of years, they will be seeking to expand the WRLC's paid staff to seven members, adding two more attorneys, two paralegals, and an administrative assistant. This will enable WRLC to intensify its work and have a greater regional impact. In the long run, Kakalec and Werner would like WRLC to become a lasting and sustainable organization in the Hudson Valley that will transcend their own work. That is their lodestone.
For more information, or to make contributions, visit www.workersrightsny.org, or call (845) 331-6615.