[Ssc-dev] another potential partner

Mon Mar 12 16:20:34 EDT 2012

Here's the proposal Rebecca is planning on submitted today, any feedback?

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	RE: GLSP
Date: 	Mon, 12 Mar 2012 13:37:43 -0400
From: 	Miller, Rebecca <RMiller at glsp.org>
To: 	Hans-Christoph Steiner <hans at eds.org>
CC: 	Dawson Morton <dmorton at glsp.org>

Hey Hans.  What do you think about this?  Email me and dawson any
suggestions or edits you have.  We have to submit it by end of day
today.  Thanks, rebecca

*Developing the Just Pay Phone Application*

*Description of Project*

The Farmworker Rights Division of GLSP will develop a mobile phone
application called the "Just Pay Phone Application" to assist low wage
workers in recording their hours worked and remotely transmitting
information to their attorneys in order to improve the provision of
legal services and increase compliance with the Fair Labor Standards Act.

The need for this project stems from the fact that farmworkers are often
not paid for all of their hours worked because farm work is
traditionally paid by the piece. Agricultural employers often resist
paying "make up pay" to bring a worker's piece rate earnings up to the
guaranteed hourly wage for all of their hours worked as is required by
the Fair Labor Standards Act.  To avoid make up pay, many agricultural
employers and farm labor contractors record a falsified lower number of
hours worked on workers' pay stubs.  This illegal conduct is called
"hours shorting" and is one of the most common and economically damaging
violations suffered by farmworkers.

The FRD will use TIG funding to develop and test the application with 20
workers, 10  in the onion harvest season (April-May) and 10 in the onion
planting season (November-December).  The FRD will have a trial
application available for the onion harvest.  FRD staff will distribute
the application to clients, train them to use it and then analyze the
data and evaluate the application together with client feedback.  The
FRD will then modify the application and run a second trial in the onion
planting season. By the end of the year there will be a final
application that can be downloaded and used on any smart phone by other
workers and other legal services providers. There will also be a tool
kit for the application so that it can be adapted where the needs of
other legal services programs vary.

Although some timekeeping applications exist, none exist that meet the
specific needs of farmworkers. Because the majority of farmworker
clients are Spanish speaking and have very low levels of education, the
application will be bilingual and have a very simple interface.  The
application will provide for various levels of use depending on the
ability of the user with the lowest level requiring no literacy skills
and minimal actions from the user to record and transmit the data. In
addition, although the FRD has begun to see farmworkers with smart
phones, most farmworkers have either no phone or a very basic phone. 
Thus legal services offices will sometimes have to provide a phone to a
client for use during the season.  During this trial year, the FRD will
also develop a list of protocols for this lending process, including how
to retrieve phones, how to ensure the phone's security and thus the
data's integrity, and how to limit their use to the application and
communication with the legal services office.

*Major Benefits*

The FRD anticipates the following benefits from the Just Pay Phone
Application:

(1) Improving outcomes for clients:  Collecting data showing workers'
actual hours worked will assist the FRD in collecting unpaid wages for
farmworkers because it will provide more and stronger evidence of
underpayment.

The additional aspects of the application will further support the use
of the hours data to ensure workers are paid correctly.  First, the GPS
coordinates will be used to verify that start and stop times were
recorded at the worksite.  They will also assist a worker's advocate in
identifying where work was performed, who the agricultural employer is
in cases where workers only know the name of their farm labor contractor
and not the identity of the agricultural company for which they are
performing work. Identification of the agricultural company is essential
because farm labor contractors are almost always undercapitalized and
unable to pay any unpaid wages or satisfy any judgments received in
litigation.  Second, the camera will allow workers to photograph and
transmit to their attorneys their pay stubs and any other relevant
images that will help the attorney analyze the hours data and determine
any unpaid wages dues to the worker.  The real time submission via the
mobile phone of the actual hours worked and the wage statements will
allow attorneys to improve their fact gathering by reviewing pay records
and communicating with their clients about the wage problems in an
ongoing fashion throughout the season, instead of at the end of the
season when evidentiary gathering cannot be adjusted and memories are
less clear. Third, the notes feature of the application will allow a
worker to text any other pertinent information to their attorney about
the start and stop times that is important for the later analysis of the
data.

(2) Increasing Communication and Legal Advice for Remotely Located
Clients: Because farmworkers are located in remote rural areas and have
little or no transportation, it is difficult to provide ongoing
communication between a farmworker client and the legal services
office.  The real time submission of information from the Just Pay Phone
application will allow clients and attorneys to share information about
their hours worked in real time.  This will improve the collection of
more accurate data for later litigation and allow attorneys to provide
ongoing legal advice based on their monitoring of the data transmitted
from their clients' phones.

*Estimated Costs*

The FRD seeks $52,000 in funding.  The following is an estimated
breakdown of costs.  The FRD will also seek a partner to provide the
phones at no or a much reduced cost.

10 android phones

$100 each

$1000

Prepaid provider phone service

$50 per month per phone

$2000

Software development

$25,000 Guardian Project

$5000 GLSP staff time

$30,000

Installation and set up

$2500

Client Training

travel

GLSP staff time

$5000

Data analysis/ evaluation

GLSP staff time

$7500

grant monitoring/reporting

$4000

*TOTAL*

*$52,000*

*Major Partners*

To develop this software the FRD will partner with The Guardian
Project.  The Guardian Project is a research and development effort that
creates free, open source applications for mobile phones that help
ordinary citizens and nonprofits use mobile phones to collect and
transmit information securely.  Some of The Guardian Project's other
partners include Witness, the International Bar Association, and
organizations and research projects that receive funding from the U.S.
Government. The Guardian Project's work with the International Bar
Association has given them a developing expertise in how to collect and
transmit information that can satisfy necessary evidentiary standards to
be usable in court.

The FRD will also seek to partner with the Georgia Chapter of the
National Employment Lawyers Association and other non-profit
organizations representing workers covered by the Fair Labor Standards
Act to seek feedback on the application's development.

*Innovation/Replication/Sustainability*

The Just Pay Phone proposal will use a common technology, the cell
phone, to reach an uncommon end, building electronic data to help
workers enforce their minimum wage rights. The proposal will also
improve the delivery of legal services by using mobile technology and
the internet to communicate more frequently and more substantively with
farmworkers about their wage concerns despite the fact that they may
live and work hours from the closest legal services office. The
application will allow legal services attorneys to provide real time
advice to clients about their employment rights and improve the
gathering of evidence for litigation that may not occur until months in
the future.

Once the application has been developed, it can be used at little or no
cost by other legal services organizations.  It can also be made
available on the internet for other individuals in the legal services
client community to download and use on their own to assess the accuracy
of their pay, and can be used as a tool for providing legal rights
information on the web and supporting self-help websites.

Once the application has been developed there will be few ongoing costs
aside from the hardware costs where a worker does not own a smart
phone.  However, the use of smart phones among legal services client
community will only increase in the coming years, and the FRD is looking
for a source for free or inexpensive recycled phones. Because The
Guardian Project's applications are open source, the application will
benefit from ongoing updates and feedback from other users at no cost.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

*From:*Hans-Christoph Steiner [mailto:hans at eds.org]
*Sent:* Sunday, March 11, 2012 11:27 PM
*To:* Miller, Rebecca
*Subject:* Re: GLSP

I haven't managed to get the materials out of anyone, I'll try again
tomorrow.

.hc

On Mar 9, 2012, at 12:29 PM, Miller, Rebecca wrote:

Great thanks.  Send me any written materials you can about your other
projects so I can use them as a model for my language in the letter. 
Thanks!  This is fun.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

*From:*Hans-Christoph Steiner [mailto:hans at eds.org]
*Sent:* Friday, March 09, 2012 12:29 PM
*To:* Miller, Rebecca
*Subject:* Re: GLSP

Hey Rebecca,

Looks good, I forwarded it around.  I just thought of one other budget
item: training.  There should be time allotted for someone to train the
farmworkers how to use the phones, the app, and how to make sure that
the data is being collected and sent (i.e. some kind of status marker in
the app, etc.)

.hc

On Mar 9, 2012, at 12:14 PM, Miller, Rebecca wrote:

Hi Hans.  Thanks for taking the time to talk to me today.  Here's a
brief description of our project idea after our conversation for you to
share with your colleagues.

The Farmworker Rights Division of GLSP is interested in developing a
very simple phone application that would allow farm workers to record
work start and stop times and corresponding gps coordinates. The need
for this project stems from the fact that Farmworkers are often not paid
for all of their hours worked because traditionally farm work is paid by
the piece. Agricultural employers prefer the predictable labor costs of
piece pay and thus resist paying what we call "make up pay" or
additional compensation that would bring a worker's piece rate earnings
up to a guaranteed hourly wage for all of their hours worked as is
required by federal minimum wage law and federal regulations governing
agricultural guestworkers.  Because the majority of our clients are
Spanish speaking and have very low levels of education, it would need to
be very simple for the user. We would hope to use the data collected by
the application as evidence in litigation to prove our clients' actual
hours worked in comparison with what their employer reported on their
pay stub.  I was thinking that the GPS coordinates aspect of the data
would help show the worker was actually in the field when they began
recording their time.  As well, we have some cases where a worker knows
only the name of their supervisor and not the name of the company they
are working for.  The gps data would thus help us prove where a worker
was working and who is therefore responsible for paying them.  After our
conversation today, it sounds like a good way to approach this project
is to start with 10 basic android phone, prepaid service for the phones
and work with your organization to develop the software and help us with
installation and set up of the phones.  We discussed having the data
reported back to our office automatically over the internet, if service
in rural Georgia permits, and by us collecting the device from the
worker at the end of the season and downloading the data on to our
computers.  We'd like the data to be available for analysis in excel
format or another easy format you all recommend.  The work you are doing
with the IBA to make the evidence admissible in court will also benefit
our project.

As I mentioned, I have to submit a letter of intent by midnight on
Monday describing the basic outlines of the project and providing a very
basic budget.  Here's what we brainstormed today:

10 android phones: $100 each

Prepay provider service for the phones: $50/month per phone

Software development: $25K

Installation and set up: $2000 (divided between our organizations
depending on how we set this part up)

We will also seek funding to cover our costs for working with you on the
software development, delivering device to our clients and training our
clients to use the device, analyzing the data, and grant reporting.

Lastly we discussed doing the first trial year of the project for the
onion harvest and planting seasons, which are about 2 months long.  We
would then evaluate different aspects of the project and if we receive
repeat funding from our grantor, further develop the project for broader
use, maybe with some more bells and whistles, for future years.  We also
discussed the idea of creating a tool kit so this software can be used
by other organizations who represent low wage workers.

I'm going to work on our letter this weekend and hopefully will send a
draft by Sunday night or Monday morning for feedback from you. I have to
run this all by my supervisors as well.

We need a snappy name!  Mobile Fair Day's Pay Project?  Hmmmm...

Thanks, Rebecca

______________________________________________

Rebecca Carr Miller

Senior Staff Attorney

Georgia Legal Services Program, Farmworker Rights Division

104 Marietta Street, Suite 250

Atlanta, GA 30303

phone: 404-463-1633

fax: 404-4631623

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