Early in the year, we talked with ProPublica reporters Melissa Sanchez and Maryam Jameel about the death of young boy on a Dane County dairy farm. We welcomed Melissa back in August to talk about the issue of driving while undocumented, and today we talk with Melissa once again about the ProPublic’s latest pieces in the America’s Dairyland: Risking Workers’ Lives for the Milk We Drink series.

This time, she tells Douglas Haynes about workers who have been injured or even killed on the job and the absence of OSHA in investigating and the lack workman’s comp in aiding with the cost of these incidents.

Melissa tells us that she asks workers, “‘Have you been injured at work?’ And almost always the first answer is ‘no, just the usual.'” She goes on, “What does that mean? Have you been kicked? Have you been squashed? Did you see blood? Have you fallen? And once you ask those questions, then you’ll learn that people have been injured and it’s so routine, it’s like normalize, it’s just like a part of the job to get hurt. Which isn’t the case for my job. It’s not the case for your job.”

 

Melissa Sanchez is a reporter at ProPublica. She is focused on immigrants and low-wage workers. She previously worked for The Chicago Reporter, Catalyst Chicago, el Nuevo Herald in Miami and the Yakima (Wash.) Herald-Republic, and has received numerous local and national awards for her reporting.

Photo by caroline gunderson on Unsplash

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