My name is LaShean Dean and I've worked for the past ten years at the Sodexo Wilshire Laundry plant in Los Angeles. I've worked in just about every area of the plant.
Laundries can be dangerous. There is a potential for accidents because of the kind of machines we work on - the machines are hot, you can get burned, your hands or other body parts can get caught. If there's a jam in the machine, workers will sometimes try to take out what's jammed without turning off the machine. Or they will climb on a cart to get on top and they might fall.

The plant has been union for the past couple of years. Over the years, our plant has struggled with a lot of problems. There's always been a health and safety committee but I didn't get involved at first because I didn't think anything would change. But I wanted things to be better so I decided to join. I've seen some positive changes, safety has become much more of a focus.

We work closely with management now to make the plant safer. Managers conduct themselves better, you can feel the difference in how we're treated. They're open to our suggestions - they hear us. With the previous management, things never got resolved so fast.

It also used to be that new workers wouldn't get any training. People would just come on and they wouldn't know what not to do. Another difference is there's less pressure to speed up. It used to be much worse. Managers would give workers warnings if they didn't hit their numbers.

I am the only person of color in the plant, most of the workers are Latino and many are immigrants. Some of the immigrants - their work status really matters, they're afraid that if they lose their job, they'd also lose their visa and so they might take some risks. Managers still say, your numbers are low but there's not as much pressure because all of my co-workers know now they can go at a safe pace.

There are also every days risks of injury in the plant. We're standing all day, there is repetitive motion, there is wear and tear. We started doing exercises last year. The exercises in the morning help open us up - I wish we had started doing these exercises years ago.

And we finally have proper mats to stand on, it's more of a cushion and they make it easier to stand all day. We haven't always had proper mats. We would complain but nothing changed, the managers wouldn't take it very seriously. But the safety committee is stronger now and we were able to persuade management this was the right thing to do.