Immigrant Workers: Why Some Employees Can't Protest Slave
Wages

Despite considerable talk of an "immigration crisis," studies show that
undocumented immigrants are net contributors to the economy, especially in
California. In fact, employers have used immigration laws intended to
protect most workers as a way to stop the undocumented from organizing or
even receiving their legally mandated minimum benefits. Pacific News
Service associate editor, David Bacon, writes widely on immigrant and labor
issues.

BY DAVID BACON, PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE

SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- The dirty secret about undocumented workers
is that they contribute a lot more to the economy than they get out of it.
A recent UCLA study finds that these workers are responsible for
approximately 7 percent of the goods and services produced in California
each year. This comes to about $45,000 per person --including children and
those too old or ill to work. As almost all these workers receive wages
near the legal minimum -- $5.75 per hour, less than $12,000 a year -- it is
clear that it is possible to make large profits on immigrant labor..

This is the real immigration crisis. The problem is not too many
immigrants. It is a sweatshop crisis, a return to workplace conditions
common a century ago. Immigration law is not directed at eradicating
these conditions. Instead a policy of raids and employer sanctions
actively undermines immigrant workers' ability to fight for better pay and
treatment.
Any worker who seeks to organize a union risks retaliation, of course, but
immigrant workers face a special threat as employers can and do use
immigration law, often with the cooperation of the Immigration and
Naturalization Service, to stop them.

A report issued last month by the National Network for Immigrant
and Refugee Rights details case after case in which immigration laws have
been enforced to deny workplace rights:
--In Washington state, the Stemilt Fruit Company threatened workers with
raids from the Immigration and Naturalization (INS) if they voted to be
represented by the Teamsters Union -- and the Teamsters lost.

--In San Leandro, California, the Mediacopy factory cooperated with the INS
before a union election. In all, 99 people were picked up for deportation.
In the same city this spring, an INS document check led to the deportation
of eight workers involved in a wildcat work stoppage over safety at Waste
Management, Inc.

--Last year, a federal judge in New York ruled that an employer
acted legally when it called the INS on its own employees during an
organizing drive. Ten workers were arrested, including an active
member of the union committee.

Employer sanctions set up a process in which employers are
required to request documents from workers to verify their legal right to
reside in the United States. In practice, employers increasingly
demand verifying documents as a tactic to stop organizing. This
effectively undermines federal prohibitions against terminating workers for
union activity, and subverts the National Labor Relations Act, which says
all employees, regardless of status, have union rights.

Federal law also says all workers are entitled to minimum wage
and overtime, regardless of immigration status. But employer sanctions
prevent enforcement of that law as well. Under a memorandum of
understanding signed in 1992, the U.S. Department of Labor (DoL) must turn
over to the INS the names of undocumented workers who call them over wage
and hour violations. A Department of Labor survey shows that less than 40
percent of licensed garment factories in Southern California pay
federally-mandated minimum wages and overtime. In Los Angeles the INS
initiated a series of raids against sweatshop workers, "Operation
Buttonhole," based on information from DoL inspectors. Across the country,
at the Launderall plant on Staten Island, the INS conducted a raid after
employees earning $300 for a 72-80 hour week called in DoL inspectors this
fall.

In September, the Yale Law School Workers Rights Project and the
American Civil Liberties Union filed charges under NAFTA's labor side
agreement against the DoL/INS memorandum of understanding. "The Clinton
policy amounts to a gag order on immigrant workers," explained Shayne
Stevenson, student director of the Yale group." If no one can complain
about slave wages, sweatshop owners have a green light to ignore minimum
wage and overtime laws."

At the same time, the INS has great latitude. This spring in Georgia, the
local district director suspended raids entirely at the request of onion
growers until their crop had been harvested. Meanwhile, a new INS program
is proposing massive immigration raids in midwest meatpacking plants. In an
industry in which wages have fallen drastically as unions have been
weakened, this program will make it even harder for workers and unions to
organize.

When workers are afraid to assert their rights, wages drop. According to
UCLA professor Goetz Wolff, the average hourly wage of California garment
workers fell from $6.37 in 1988, when employer sanctions became part of
federal law, to $5.62 in 1993. In California, the state labor federation,
the Service Employees International Union, UNITE (the garment workers'
union), and the United Electrical Workers, have called for the repeal of
employer sanctions. As AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Richard Trumka says, "we
are all illegals. No matter how many years we've been here, in the eyes of
Wall St. we're still all immigrants from Europe or Mexico, on our knees,
digging in the dirt."

Provided by: Pacific News Service - YO! (Youth Outlook)
660 Market Street, #210
San Francisco, CA 94104
415-438-4755
E-mail: pacificnews@pacificnews.org
URL: www.pacificnews.org

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