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Description:
Did you think the threat of taking away freelance status ended in California? It didn’t. Now we have to fix a Federal Bill that portends similar danger to linguists and the people we serve. Language access is at stake.
This is about language access at the end of the day. What happens to interpreters affects whole communities with communication barriers.
Law that impacts interpreters, impacts those in need of language access services.
About the Presenters:
Hans Johnson
Hans Johnson is a nationally renowned advocate and guide of winning coalitions. His practice in Progressive Victory builds diverse and stable organizations, shapes informed opinion, engages voters, and achieves sustainable breakthroughs in public policy.
In 2021, Hans steered the winning effort by linguists in Pennsylvania to earn improvements in pay and working conditions in the state court system. In 2020, he directed advocacy to win protection in California law for the livelihoods of professional interpreters and translators. From 2012 to 2016, he applied strategies from his work on LGBT and immigrant rights to lead the successful environmental-justice campaign to pass California’s landmark statewide ban on throwaway plastic bags and preserve it in 2 ballot measure victories over the plastics industry.
Hans is a former board vice chair of the National LGBTQ Task Force, where he served for 10 years.
He appears regularly on Spectrum News. His commentary runs in USA Today and major news outlets throughout California and the country, including the Washington Post, Orlando Sentinel, Seattle Times, and Sacramento Bee. He lives in Los Angeles.
Lorena Ortiz Schneider
Lorena Ortiz Schneider earned her MA from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey in Translation and Conference Interpreting, is an ATA-certified Spanish>English translator, an ATA credentialed interpreter, and a California state-certified administrative hearing interpreter.
She has worked for the U.S. Department of State as a liaison and seminar interpreter, as a conference interpreter for private industry, and as a community interpreter in legal, medical, mental health, and workers’ compensation settings.
Lorena is a director on the ATA board and advocated with the California Workers’ Compensation Interpreters Association (CWCIA) to improve working conditions and pay for interpreters in working in the field with the largest source of assignments for medical interpreters in the state.
She interfaced with government agencies and state lawmakers, in particular with the heads of the Division of Workers’ Compensation/Department of Industrial Relations (DWC/DIR) around adding language to the labor code allowing for interpreting in medical treatment settings to be finally be remunerated, in 2013, on the interpreter fee schedule, 2013-2018, and on regulation compliance violations 2015 - 2019.
Lorena acts as a consultant helping colleagues understand the complex worker’s compensation system of reimbursements, set up their businesses to successfully navigate the lien, SBR/IBR, and petition for costs systems for reimbursement.
She is the co-founder of Mission Collections, a niche business dedicated to helping interpreters in the work comp system get paid.
Lorena is the founder and chair of the CoPTICAmerica, an expansion of the Coalition of Practicing Translators and Interpreters of California. CoPTIC was formed to fix the misclassification of interpreters imposed by AB 5, the "gig-economy law" that went into effect in 2020. Leading colleagues from around the country under the guidance of an experienced advocate, Lorena helped earn an exemption for freelance interpreters who were forced into employee status by AB 5. This win not only preserved the livelihoods and traditions of linguists in California but also the language access of those communities we serve.
Lorena is based in Santa Barbara, California.
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