Vernon lost her housing, car and life\u2019s savings after 22 years of working for airline services contractors at the Oakland airport, she said, including five years as a Prospect employee.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s unfair. I needed a lot of help throughout the process, and I felt like they failed me. I didn\u2019t know where to begin as far as medical coverage, how to seek any type of support,\u201d Vernon said. \u201cI hit rock bottom. I became homeless because of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Most California employers are responsible for arranging prompt medical attention for a work-related injury. State law also required the company to give Vernon a workers\u2019 compensation claim form within a day and report the incident to its insurance company within five days, both critical steps to beginning the benefits process. None of that happened, according to Vernon and a former supervisor.\u00a0Instead, Vernon said her manager, Salesh Prasad, told her to go home shortly after her fall. He directed a coworker to drive her to the airport employee parking lot, where she was left alone in her car, with no clear guidance about medical care. She tried contacting Prasad in the days that followed, but he became unresponsive, she said, finally asking her to turn in her security badge.\u00a0Attempts to reach Prospect Airport Services were unsuccessful. Unifi Aviation, which owns Prospect, declined several requests for comment. Unifi, North America\u2019s largest provider of aviation services, operates at more than 240 airports. The Atlanta-based\u00a0company<\/a>, which generates about $2 billion in revenue, is a subsidiary of the privately held Argenbright Holdings, its majority owner, and Delta Air Lines.<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear whether the company\u2019s alleged failure to respond to Vernon\u2019s injury as required by law was an isolated incident or part of a broader pattern.\u00a0Failures to follow workers\u2019 compensation laws are often the result of employers not properly training or overseeing their managers, said Jason Marcus, former president of the California Applicants\u2019 Attorneys Association, whose members represent injured workers in the workers\u2019 compensation system.\u00a0\u201cI\u2019ve certainly seen my fair share of what we kind of refer to as horror stories,\u201d said Marcus, who has nearly two decades of experience. \u201cSomebody gets hurt, suffers a serious injury, and is kind of left to their own devices without any real help or guidance from their employer. And that\u2019s just not how it\u2019s supposed to work.\u201d<\/p>\n For the first time in months,\u00a0Norman Wong<\/a> breathed a sigh of relief.\u00a0The Bay Area resident and great-grandson of\u00a0Wong Kim Ark<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 a San Francisco-born Chinese American cook whose case helped establish birthright citizenship 128 years ago \u2014 spent the last year crisscrossing the country, defending a right he couldn\u2019t believe was in jeopardy.<\/p>\n