(WASHINGTON, D.C.)  - Suppose you’re sick, but you’re also deaf, so you can’t talk with your doctor, without help? That’s where a Translator steps in, using video relay services, a specialized form of communication which lets you talk to your doctor, and your doctor talk with you. How about if you need access to your bank account, but the bank doesn’t have facilities on-line for the deaf? Once again, the Translator steps in to help. Or you’re a wife and mother with a deaf husband and a deaf 10-year-old daughter?

Again, the trained Translator, who works for one of two private call center contractors whom the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) hired, steps in to help - especially in emergencies.

Yet, the Translators - who are trying to Unionize with the Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU), are underpaid, overworked and burned out because their call centers are short-staffed.

There is insufficient privacy for the Workers in the call centers, even as they deal with sensitive and personal information - such as bank balances and medical history - from their deaf and hard-of-hearing clients.

There’s also poor-quality hardware, long wait times for service, insufficient training and “repetitive physical and mental injury” to the Workers, a fact sheet says.

All that led the translators to turn to D.C. for public support and from the agency, the FCC, that indirectly, through relaying user tax revenues, supports their mission.

The translators’ corporate bosses at ZP Better Together and at Sorenson cater to rapacious “private equity” investment firms that are only interested in call volume and company profits.

ZP employs 1,800 Translators and 2,500 more toil for Sorenson.

Some 80%-90% of the Translators work part-time, depending on seasonal trends.

So the group - including Translators who also communicate in American Sign Language, staged a press conference outside the FCC declaring they want to make their - and their clients’ - case to the agency’s commissioners, pushing the FCC to accede to the Unionization drive, and to get ZP and Sorenson to meet with the Workers and OPEIU.

To Continue Reading This Labor News Report, Go To: Translators for deaf seek support for unionization drive – People's World

OPEIU Photo Via People’s World.