THE EVOLVING STRATEGY FOR DEFENDING IMMIGRANT WORKERS By David Bacon Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, 1/21/25 https://rosalux.nyc/the-evolving-strategy-for-defending-immigrant-workers/ |
Showing posts with label immigrant workers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label immigrant workers. Show all posts
Saturday, January 25, 2025
Defending Immigrant Workers. David Bacon
Thursday, August 28, 2014
10 Ways President Obama Can Take Executive Action on Immigration to Protect Workers Rights
Emilio Garcia began working for U.S. Fibers in South Carolina in April 2010 as a maintenance worker. He worked 12-hour shifts with only a 30-minute lunch break because his wife and children depend on him. Garcia said that from the very beginning he and other workers were humiliated by management. Conditions were so bad that he and other workers decided to organize themselves with the assistance of the United Steelworkers (USW). But management wasn't happy with Garcia's organizing efforts, and they slowly began cutting his hours before firing him in July of last year. Garcia told his story to an audience today at a panel discussion hosted by the AFL-CIO.
The discussion's main thrust was the need for President Barack Obama to advance the rights of workers by taking executive action on immigration. Emilio said: "I'm here because it is important that while the president considers taking administrative action to protect many of our families from being deported, he also has to consider that we are all workers and will remain as easy prey of exploitative companies if we do not count with any relief."
Here are 10 ways Obama can take executive action right now to provide relief to workers:
1. Extend work authorization to as broad a portion of the undocumented population as possible by providing deferred action to all who would qualify for a pathway to citizenship.
1. Extend work authorization to as broad a portion of the undocumented population as possible by providing deferred action to all who would qualify for a pathway to citizenship.
2. Design a deferred action program that is broad, clear, not burdensome or costly and doesn't exclude those who work in part-time or temporary jobs or those who work in the underground economy.
3. Discourage employers from firing employees who do the right thing and attempt to rectify their documents and tax records.
3. Discourage employers from firing employees who do the right thing and attempt to rectify their documents and tax records.
4. Create a process to protect workers against retaliation because they form or join a union or file a health and safety violation.
5. Provide workers timely information about immigration audits to protect employees' rights on the job.
6. Terminate programs that subject workers to inconsistent local enforcement standards rather than uniform federal policies.
7. Make sure that immigration-related violations don't lead to the criminalization of immigrant communities and ensure that no individuals are removed without due process.
8. Instruct immigration enforcement agents to make sure that carrying out their duties doesn't interfere with workers who are involved in labor disputes.
9. Clarify the standards for what constitutes a workplace crime against immigrant employees so they have more protection against unscrupulous employers.
10. Engage in more public education promoting naturalization and reduce processing fees and expand fee waivers to ensure that more low-wage workers can access citizenship.
Lorella Praeli of United We Dream (UWD) highlighted the legal significance of executive action:
In line with many legal scholars, UWD fully believes that the President has the constitutional and legal authority to defer action on individual cases and confer employment authorization to millions on the grounds of prosecutorial discretion. The President has a historic opportunity to show courage where Republicans showed cowardice by starting the process that only Congress can finish.
Nadia Marin-Molina, the National Workers' Rights coordinator for National Day Laborer Organizing Network, added:
For administrative relief to be effective, it must take the weapon of intimidation away from unscrupulous employers who have used the threat of unchecked deportations to silence workers and lower standards. Workers who build our cities should not fear being deported from them.
Sign the AFL-CIO's petition calling on President Obama to take executive action now.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Workers and Union Condemn E-Verify
MEXICAN SUPERMARKET WORKERS AND UNION CONDEMN E-VERIFY
Photographs by David Bacon
SAN JOSE, CA (9/26/12) -- Mexican supermarket (or mercado) workers, supporters and union organizers marched through the Latino immigrant community on San Jose's East Side, from Guadalupe Church to the Mi Pueblo supermarket. They protested the use of the E-Verify immigration screening system by the Mexican market chain, and accused the chain's owners of using immigration enforcement to terrorize workers during their effort to organize a union in the stores.
Mi Pueblo Foods management announced earlier this month that they had decided to voluntarily implement the controversial Federal immigration program, in which employers contact a database maintained by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to verify the immigration status of job applicants. Some workers also say the chain is demanding that current employees reverify their immigration status.
Mi Pueblo management says it is obligated to use the E-Verify system. But a reporter from the Los Angeles Times quoted a spokesperson from the Department of Homeland Security, who asserted that this government agency does not force employers to use the E-Verify program. Father Jon Pedigo, the parish priest at Guadalupe Church, compared the situation of the workers to that of the Israelites in Egypt, saying they are exploited as workers in the U.S. much as the Israelites were by the Pharaoh. He condemned the use of E-Verify, saying it made workers more vulnerable to pressure by employers.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Monday, August 22, 2011
Telling the story of migration
This is a sophisticated use of media. Be certain to look at the videos along with the story.
Immigration Patterns From Mexico
One of the great things about working in digital publishing is
the ever-expanding way that technology can be used - and
manipulated - to help us tell stories. A recent story by Damien
Cave on some of the economic, demographic and social changes
that are changing immigration patterns from Mexico carried with
it a wide array of images, video and graphics that in a normal
article presentation would have existed largely as links next to
the article they accompanied. But to present this story,
multimedia producer Josh Williams offered a way for all of those
elements to be consumed in a more seamless fashion. A reader
scrolling down the article would notice that different images
and video would appear - making them visible at the relevant
points of the piece. It's a bit easier to experience than to
describe in words, so clicking the above link might help explain
it. We received a number of positive comments from readers,
including this one: "Please pass on to the editors that this is
a fine, great, super rendering of what journalism really IS all
about. Again congrats for a job well done by all!"
Immigration Patterns From Mexico
One of the great things about working in digital publishing is
the ever-expanding way that technology can be used - and
manipulated - to help us tell stories. A recent story by Damien
Cave on some of the economic, demographic and social changes
that are changing immigration patterns from Mexico carried with
it a wide array of images, video and graphics that in a normal
article presentation would have existed largely as links next to
the article they accompanied. But to present this story,
multimedia producer Josh Williams offered a way for all of those
elements to be consumed in a more seamless fashion. A reader
scrolling down the article would notice that different images
and video would appear - making them visible at the relevant
points of the piece. It's a bit easier to experience than to
describe in words, so clicking the above link might help explain
it. We received a number of positive comments from readers,
including this one: "Please pass on to the editors that this is
a fine, great, super rendering of what journalism really IS all
about. Again congrats for a job well done by all!"
Read their stories:http://email.newyorktimes.com/1161f1193layfousuaf6phtqaaaaaavica6panxyrrqyaaaaa
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Protecting Undocumented Workers
Legislation would expand the protection of 'U visas' to those who come forward to report workplace violations.
By Harold Meyerson
June 24, 2011
Nearly every day for three years, Josue Melquisedec Diaz reported to work by going to a New Orleans street corner where contractors, subcontractors and people fixing up their places went to hire day laborers. It was there, one day in 2008, that a contractor picked him up and took him to Beaumont, Texas, just across the Louisiana line, to work on the cleanup, demolition and reconstruction projects that Beaumont was undertaking in the wake of Hurricane Gustav.
Diaz was put to work in a residential neighborhood that had been flooded. The American workers who were involved in the cleanup, he noted, had been given masks, gloves, boots and sometimes special suits to avoid infection. No such precautions were afforded Diaz and his crew of undocumented immigrant workers. "We were made to work with bare hands, picking up dead animals," he says. "We were working in contaminated water," tearing down and repairing washed-out homes.
Diaz told his story last week to a gathering of legislators and others in a meeting room at the U.S. Capitol, just a few doors down from the Senate chamber. He said that he and his crew asked their boss for the same safety equipment given their American counterparts. Instead, Diaz said, the boss responded by cutting the undocumented workers' pay in half — at which point, Diaz and 11 others went on strike. Soon after, both the local police and immigration officers showed up to haul off the workers. The strikers were first taken to a local jail, then transferred to a federal immigration jail.
Fortunately, Diaz was a member of the New Orleans Congress of Day Laborers, which managed to get him and his co-workers released after four months behind bars. Since then, three of the 12 workers have been deported, one has died, and Diaz faces a deportation hearing scheduled for July 20. At least until then, he is trying to publicize the cause of workers who labor in dangerous conditions, who are compelled to work long hours for no extra pay, who get cheated altogether out of their paychecks and who have, in this nation of laws, no legal recourse.
Undocumented immigrants are just one among many groups of workers who effectively lack the on-the-job protections that most Americans take for granted. When the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established a national minimum wage and overtime pay, was enacted in 1938, it excluded restaurant employees and retail, domestic and farm workers. (Winning the votes of Southern senators required President Franklin D. Roosevelt to effectively exclude all occupations then largely filled by African Americans.)
In time, the act was expanded to cover some of those workers, but agricultural laborers still have no federal legal right to collect overtime, home healthcare workers have no right to the minimum wage and "tipped" workers such as waiters are entitled to a minimum of just $2.13 an hour. Nor are agricultural and domestic workers accorded the right to unionize under the National Labor Relations Act (though farm workers have won this right on the state level in California), and such low-paid independent contractorsas port truckers and taxi drivers are similarly excluded.
As construction workers, the Diaz 12 actually came under the protections of wage, hour and unionization laws. But employers know they can violate these laws with impunity when their workers have no union contract and are undocumented. The odds are overwhelming that the outcome of such conflicts is worker deportation, not management fines. This de facto exemption ofundocumented immigrants from the protection of workplace laws actually encourages employers to hire more undocumented workers. It is easy for management to ignore labor laws when employees can't complain.
Diaz was put to work in a residential neighborhood that had been flooded. The American workers who were involved in the cleanup, he noted, had been given masks, gloves, boots and sometimes special suits to avoid infection. No such precautions were afforded Diaz and his crew of undocumented immigrant workers. "We were made to work with bare hands, picking up dead animals," he says. "We were working in contaminated water," tearing down and repairing washed-out homes.
Diaz told his story last week to a gathering of legislators and others in a meeting room at the U.S. Capitol, just a few doors down from the Senate chamber. He said that he and his crew asked their boss for the same safety equipment given their American counterparts. Instead, Diaz said, the boss responded by cutting the undocumented workers' pay in half — at which point, Diaz and 11 others went on strike. Soon after, both the local police and immigration officers showed up to haul off the workers. The strikers were first taken to a local jail, then transferred to a federal immigration jail.
Fortunately, Diaz was a member of the New Orleans Congress of Day Laborers, which managed to get him and his co-workers released after four months behind bars. Since then, three of the 12 workers have been deported, one has died, and Diaz faces a deportation hearing scheduled for July 20. At least until then, he is trying to publicize the cause of workers who labor in dangerous conditions, who are compelled to work long hours for no extra pay, who get cheated altogether out of their paychecks and who have, in this nation of laws, no legal recourse.
Undocumented immigrants are just one among many groups of workers who effectively lack the on-the-job protections that most Americans take for granted. When the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established a national minimum wage and overtime pay, was enacted in 1938, it excluded restaurant employees and retail, domestic and farm workers. (Winning the votes of Southern senators required President Franklin D. Roosevelt to effectively exclude all occupations then largely filled by African Americans.)
In time, the act was expanded to cover some of those workers, but agricultural laborers still have no federal legal right to collect overtime, home healthcare workers have no right to the minimum wage and "tipped" workers such as waiters are entitled to a minimum of just $2.13 an hour. Nor are agricultural and domestic workers accorded the right to unionize under the National Labor Relations Act (though farm workers have won this right on the state level in California), and such low-paid independent contractorsas port truckers and taxi drivers are similarly excluded.
As construction workers, the Diaz 12 actually came under the protections of wage, hour and unionization laws. But employers know they can violate these laws with impunity when their workers have no union contract and are undocumented. The odds are overwhelming that the outcome of such conflicts is worker deportation, not management fines. This de facto exemption ofundocumented immigrants from the protection of workplace laws actually encourages employers to hire more undocumented workers. It is easy for management to ignore labor laws when employees can't complain.
Sunday, February 06, 2011
Sacramento Home Depot attack followed by Mexican cellmate's slaying
Richard Russell Harden chased the woman down at the Home Depot on Folsom Boulevard and bashed her three times with a hammer, sending her to the hospital with injuries to her back, neck and shoulder, according to prosecutors.
When the store's security team tackled him to the ground, according to court testimony, Harden indicated race was the motive behind his hammer-wielding assault on Feb. 16, 2009.
"You should let me go," Harden said after his attack on Geraldine Leon-Guerrero, according to testimony at his Sacramento Superior Court preliminary hearing. "They come over the border and take all of our jobs."
Following the attack, Sacramento police escorted Harden to the downtown jail, where sheriff's deputies put him in a cell with an illegal immigrant from Mexico.
While the fast-acting Home Depot security team minimized the damage in the hammer assault, nobody was around to take Harden down the next day when, according to authorities, he beat his Mexican cellmate to death and strangled him with a T-shirt.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Resistance in Arizona
By Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez
As we prepare to get arrested as a result of the passage of a new anti-ethnic studies law in Arizona, several attorneys explain to about 30-40 of us in Tucson’s state building the consequences of getting arrested. As such, the numbers are winnowed down to 15 due to legal reasons, parental authority, age, etc. Many of those making these decisions are middle and high school and college students.
All of us who remain on the 2nd floor have thoughts racing through our minds. As I think about why I will get arrested, all I can think of is the Nahuatl concept of Ipalnemoani: That for what we live for – or the Maya concept of Hunab Ku.
We can summons all the linguists and all the great philosophers of the world, but in the end, their translations will not suffice. It is meaning that I am looking for, not words. This is about who we are and about what makes us human. At this time, it boils down to one question: What in life is worth getting arrested for?
For those of us here, the right to our own narrative – the right to memory – is one of them.
The decision to get arrested is a collective one. These youngsters are courageous and determined to defend that which is theirs: a department (Ethnic/Mexican American Studies) that affirms who they are as full human beings – as peoples with a thousands-of-years culture, history and philosophy on this very continent.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
LACLAA- Join the demonstration in Phoenix
LATINO LABOR LEADERS AND ALLIES CONVENE IN PHOENIX
· Milton Rosado, President, Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA)
· James McLaughlin, President, United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) local 99
· Claudine Karasik, Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF)
· Brent Wilkes, Executive Director, League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)
· Pablo Alvarado, National Day Laborers Organizing Network (NDLON)
· Francisco Heredia, Mi Familia Vota
· Elisa de la Barra, District Director, Congressman Ed Pastor (AZ-4th)
· Local and national leaders and representatives from the Laborers’ International Union of America (LIUNA) and the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO)
WHAT:
Town Hall Meeting on the Arizona
WHEN:
Friday, May 28th at 6:00 p.m.
WHERE:
UFCW Hall
Note: National and local leaders will be available for English and Spanish language media interviews following the town hall.
The Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA) is a national organization representing the interests of approximately 2 million Latino/a trade unionist throughout the United States and Puerto Rico . LCLAA provides a voice for Latino working families nationally. In this effort LCLAA works in coalition with other leading Hispanic organizations to maximize support for economic and social policies that are essential to advancing the interests of Hispanics. Visit www.lclaa.org for more information.
Sunday, May 09, 2010
Union janitors dismissed in San Francisco
Hundreds of Union Janitors Fired Under Pressure From Feds
Friday 07 May 2010
by: David Bacon,
Op-Ed
San Francisco, California - Federal immigration authorities
have pressured one of San Francisco's major building
service companies, ABM, into firing hundreds of its own
workers. Some 475 janitors have been told that unless they
can show legal immigration status, they will lose their
jobs in the near future.
ABM has been a union company for decades, and many of the
workers have been there for years. "They've been working in
the buildings downtown for 15, 20, some as many as 27
years," said Olga Miranda, president of Service Employees
Local 87. "They've built homes. They've provided for their
families. They've sent their kids to college. They're not
new workers. They didn't just get here a year ago."
Nevertheless, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
division of the Department of Homeland Security has told
ABM that they have flagged the personnel records of those
workers. Weeks ago, ICE agents sifted through Social
Security records and the I-9 immigration forms all workers
have to fill out when they apply for jobs. They then told
ABM that the company had to fire 475 workers who were
accused of lacking legal immigration status.
ABM is one of the largest building service companies in the
country, and it appears that union janitorial companies are
the targets of the Obama administration' s immigration
enforcement program. "Homeland Security is going after
employers that are union," Miranda charged. "They're going
after employers that give benefits and are paying above the
average."
Last October, 1,200 janitors working for ABM were fired in
similar circumstances in Minneapolis. In November, over 100
janitors working for Seattle Building Maintenance lost
their jobs. Minneapolis janitors belong to SEIU Local 26,
Seattle janitors to Local 6 and San Francisco janitors to
Local 87.
President Obama said sanctions enforcement targets
employers "who are using illegal workers in order to drive
down wages - and oftentimes mistreat those workers." An ICE
Worksite Enforcement Advisory claimed, "unscrupulous
employers are likely to pay illegal workers substandard
wages or force them to endure intolerable working
conditions."
Curing intolerable conditions by firing or deporting
workers who endure them doesn't help the workers or change
the conditions, however.
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