By Dan Frazier
Tea Party Editor

With a name like “Mission Linen Supply,” you might think a company would make sure to pay attention to its mission statement, which calls for providing “an experience so delightful our customers, co-workers, vendors and communities would not imagine partnering with anyone else."

But Mission Linen’s workers are not delighted. In fact, workers at Mission Linen in Flagstaff will likely go on strike during April according to Fabian Gonzales, a union organizer with UNITE, the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees. Gonzales, who lives in Los Angeles, has been in Flagstaff since late February helping to organize the workers. The workers are organizing in the hopes of gaining better wages and safer working conditions. 

Mission Linen is one of the largest linen laundering services in northern Arizona, with hundreds of commercial clients, including dozens of Flagstaff restaurants and hotels. The company, which has its headquarters in Santa Barbara, Calif., operates commercial linen facilities in 40 cities in five western states. In late 2001, Mission Linen of Flagstaff added 5,000 square-feet to its 20,000 square-foot plant located at 2450 E. Huntington Drive. The company also spent millions to build a wastewater treatment plant for its Flagstaff plant, allowing it to save money by recycling much of the water it uses. Currently, the Flagstaff plant employs about 90 people.

The remodeling of the Flagstaff plant has been hard on local workers, according to Gonzales, who said that for months workers at the plant had no restrooms with running water, and were forced to use portable toilets that were only cleaned once a week. Meanwhile, plant managers were using restrooms at a neighboring business. Only in late March, weeks after unionizing efforts had begun, did construction crews finish work on new restrooms for Mission workers.

According to union organizers and workers interviewed by Flagstaff Tea Party, many workers at the plant make between $6.50 and $7 an hour. A press release from union organizers explains that many workers must work two full-time jobs in an effort to make ends meet, while some others can only afford to live in cheap motels or squalid apartments, often in crowded conditions. One worker reportedly shares a motel room with five other family members.

Mission Linen reportedly claims that workers receive free medical and dental insurance, though this insurance only covers 80 percent of many medical procedures, according to the press release.

“What’s worse, many of their medical costs are job related,” says the release. “Workers … handle linen from Flagstaff Medical Center. ... The linen often arrives soaked in blood and other bodily fluids, and may contain … hypodermic needles and broken glass vials. Uniforms are short-sleeved, and gloves are sometimes in short supply. Workers are not provided with goggles and masks. … There have been several occasions where a worker has had to be taken to the hospital to have glass removed from an eye. Skin rashes and eye infections from contaminated linen are common. The skin infection that a former employee contracted on the job in February got so severe (that) she is currently hospitalized and was operated on for skin grafts. Another current employee has a disfiguring skin fungus that has spread to her four-month old baby. No one has had the Hepatitis vaccines recommended for this line of work.”

Gonzales said that it is almost impossible to prove that the rashes workers have experienced are job related. Nonetheless, according to Gonzales, many workers believe that the rashes are caused by handling linens contaminated with blood or bodily fluids. He said that the hospitalized worker mentioned in the press release may have to have a leg amputated.

In late March, Paulette Myers, the president of the local chapter of the AFL/CIO, was volunteering her time to assist with organizing workers, union officials, politicians and others to picket outside the plant on April 2. At press time, the strike date was tentatively set for April 9, according to Myers. The strike will likely be part of a larger strike involving workers in other states, where many Mission Linen facilities are already unionized. In other states, existing contracts with some workers expire the first week of April.

Myers said that organizing efforts had been “touch and go.” Many workers are undocumented immigrants who may be especially vulnerable to firing or other retribution from management if they are perceived as troublemakers.

Nonetheless, Gonzales said that in Flagstaff 90 to 95 percent of Mission Linen’s 60 production employees have participated in organizing efforts. Production employees work in the plant. UNITE is not working to unionize Mission Linen drivers or others who do not work on the plant floor.

A proposed resolution yet to be adopted by Mission Linen workers in Arizona and New Mexico calls for a strike, and accuses Mission Linen of unlawful activities including threatening to fire workers for union activities and threatening to take health benefits from workers who support unionizing.