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.
