EMPLOYEE RIGHTS CENTER Application to Serve on Oversight Committee
For 10 years the Employee Rights Center in City Heights has been providing education
and advocacy to all workers regarding their workplace rights and benefits. Its offices are
centrally located by the corner of Fairmount Avenue and El Cajon Boulevard and are
open Monday through Friday 9 AM to 5 PM, allowing City Heights residents and all
others to walk in at their convenience or call the Center’s 24-hour message service.
As the only non-profit program in San Diego that is focused on workplace rights, the
Center has helped thousands of low-income employees recover their unpaid wages,
unemployment insurance, workers compensation, and other workplace benefits. These
benefits are crucial in improving employees’ ability to pay their rent, get access to health
care when injured, to maintain their family’s welfare, and to be self-sufficient. The
Center uses over 20 local law student volunteers supervised by an attorney to deliver
these services and further educate all employees about their workplace rights/benefits.
The Center recruits a diverse cadre of law students of Latino, African, Asian, and Middle
Eastern descent in order to have culturally competent services to immigrant communities.
Since 2004 the Center has also been helping immigrant workers get legal status, improve
their immigrant status and become U.S. citizens, all fundamental needs in City Heights.
It currently has a full-time immigration attorney, Ms. Sarah Plato, who is bilingual in
Spanish and English. There are no other non-profit immigration services in City Heights
serving its large, diverse immigrant populations who need convenient, low-cost service
and education. By being here the Center is accountable to the community it serves.
The Center not only provides all these services at its Fairmount Avenue offices, it also
provides education on workplace rights and immigration status at various community
workshops currently being organized