Louis Marlon Jr. works at the Sodexo laundry plant in Buffalo, operating the conventional washers and dryers. Louis enjoys his job, but finds it hard to do it well with management standing over the workers and pushing them to work faster.

"It makes them [the workers] feel pretty much inadequate," he says, "as if they're not doing their jobs. You wouldn't want to work with someone just standing over your back all day."

The building Louis works in was at one time an airplane factory. When Sodexo took over the building it was not yet ready to be used as a laundry facility. In the video on the right, Louis tells the story of a forklift operator who ended up in a serious accident due to a hole in the floor.

Louis is fortunate to be part of a union that is calling for better safety standards from Sodexo management. "Sodexo put safety on the back burner," he explains. "And safety should be first and foremost at the top of the list when it comes to any type of plant job like that, or industrial work."

However, like some other Sodexo laundry plants, it took citations from OSHA for Sodexo to step up on safety procedures. "OSHA came in and made a very big difference. They held Sodexo accountable for unsafe acts. They made Sodexo do their job. You go to work in one piece, and you [are supposed to] come home in one piece - that's OSHA's rule."

In the video above, watch Louis talk about the injuries his fellow workers have suffered as a result of poor safety standards, as well as the importance of belonging to a union.