By David Bacon
The Progressive
December 2009/January 2010
http://www.progressive.org/full/archive
LOS ANGELES,
Ana Contreras would have been a competitor for the
national tai kwon do championship team this year.
She's 14. For six years she's gone to practice instead
of birthday parties, giving up the friendships most
teenagers live for. Then two months ago disaster
struck. Her mother Dolores lost her job. The money
for classes was gone, and not just that.
"I only bought clothes for her once a year, when my tax
refund check came," Dolores Contreras explains. "Now
she needs shoes, and I had to tell her we didn't have
any money. I stopped the cable and the internet she
needs for school. When my cell phone contract is up
next month, I'll stop that too. I've never had enough
money for a car, and now we've gone three months
without paying the light bill."
Contreras shares her misery with eighteen hundred
other families. All lost their jobs when their
employer, American Apparel, fired them for lacking
immigration status. {Her name was changed for this
article.] She still has her letter from the Department
of Homeland Security (DHS), handed her two months ago
by the company lawyer. It says the documents she
provided when she was hired are no good, and without
work authorization, her work life is over.
Of course, it's not really over. Contreras
still has to keep working if she and her daughter are
to eat and pay rent. So instead of a job that barely
paid her bills, she had to find another one that won't
even do that.
Contreras is a skilled sewing machine operator. She
came to the
years in the garment factories of
There companies like
stonewashed jeans that the town's water has turned
blue. In
money to send home for her sister's weekly dialysis
treatments, and to pay the living and school expenses
for four other siblings. For five years she moved from
shop to shop. Like most garment workers, she didn't
get paid for overtime, her paychecks were often short,
and sometimes her employer disappeared overnight, owing
weeks in back pay.
Finally Contreras got a job at American Apparel,
famous for its sexy clothing, made in
instead of overseas. She still had to work like a
demon. Her team of ten experienced seamstresses turned
out 30 dozen tee shirts an hour. After dividing the
piece rate evenly among them, she'd come home with $400
for a 4-day week, after taxes. She paid Social Security
too, although she'll never see a dime in benefits
because her contributions were credited to an invented number.
Now Contreras's working again in a sweatshop at
half what she earned before. Meanwhile, American
Apparel is replacing those who were fired. Contreras
says they're mostly older women with documents, who
can't work as fast. "Maybe they sew 10 dozen a day
apiece," she claims. "The only operators with papers
are the older ones. Younger, faster workers either
have no papers, or if they have them, they find better-
paying jobs doing something easier.
"President Obama is responsible for putting us in
this situation," she charges angrily. "This is worse
than an immigration raid. They want to keep us from
working at all."
Contreras may be angry, but she's not wrong. The
White House website says "President Obama will remove
incentives to enter the country illegally by preventing
employers from hiring undocumented workers and
enforcing the law." On June 24 he told Congress members
that the government was "cracking down on employers who
are using illegal workers in order to drive down wages
-- and oftentimes mistreat those workers."
The law Obama is enforcing is the 1986 Immigration
Reform and Control Act, which requires employers to
keep records of workers' immigration status, and
prohibits them from hiring those who have no legal
documents, or "work authorization." In effect, the law
made it a crime for undocumented immigrants to work.
This provision, employer sanctions, is the legal basis
for all the workplace immigration raids and enforcement
of the last 23 years. "Sanctions pretend to punish
employers," says Bill Ong Hing, law professor at the
punish workers."
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division
of DHS said early this year that it was auditing the
records of 654 companies nationwide. The audit at
American Apparel actually began in 2007, under
President Bush. In
examined the records of janitors employed by American
Building Maintenance. In May, the company and ICE told
1200 workers that if they didn't provide new documents
that showed that they could legally work, they'd be
fired. Weekly firings in groups of 300 began in
October. The janitors belong to Service Employees
Local 26, and work at union wages. The terminations
took place as the union was negotiating a new contract.
In
in May. The company, with over 800 employees, was
audited by the Internal Revenue Service earlier this
year. According to John Grant, packinghouse division
director for Local 770 of the United Food and
Commercial Workers, which represents production
employees at the food processing plant, "they found
discrepancies in the Social Security numbers of many
workers. Overhill then sent a letter on April 6 to 254
people-- all members of our union - giving them 30 days
to reconcile their numbers."
On May 2 the company stopped the production lines
and sent everyone home, saying, according to worker
Isela Hernandez, "there would be no work until they
called us to come back." For 254 people that call
never came. According to Alex Auerbach, spokesperson
for Overhill Farms, "the company was required by
federal law to terminate these employees because they
had invalid Social Security numbers. To do otherwise
would have exposed both the employees and the company
to criminal and civil prosecution."
"We asked to see the IRS letter or any other
documents related to this," Grant responds. "We've
never heard of the IRS demanding the termination of a
worker. They never showed us any letter. The company
doesn't have to terminate these people. No document we
know of says they do." Some of the terminated workers
actually had valid Social Security numbers, and were
fired anyway.
Workers accuse the company of hiring replacements,
classified as "part timers," who don't receive the
benefits in the union contract. "By getting rid of the
regular workers, to whom they have to pay benefits,
they're saving a lot of money," worker Lucia Vasquez
charges. Auerbach says the replacements are paid at
the same rate, although he acknowledges they lack
benefits.
The history of workplace immigration enforcement is
filled with examples of employers who use audits and
discrepancies as pretexts to discharge union militants
or discourage worker organization. The 16-year union
drive at the
for instance, saw two raids, and the firing of 300
workers for bad Social Security numbers.
Nevertheless, whether or not they're motivated by
economic gain or anti-union animus, the current firings
highlight larger questions of immigration enforcement
policy. "These workers have not only done nothing
wrong, they've spent years making the company rich. No
one ever called company profits illegal, or says they
should give them back to the workers. So why are the
workers called illegal?" asks Nativo Lopez, director of
the Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana. The Hermandad,
with roots in
going back to legendary activist Bert Corona, has
organized protests against the firings at Overhill
Farms and American Apparel. "Any immigration policy
that says these workers have no right to work and feed
their families is wrong and needs to be changed," he declares.
President Obama says sanctions enforcement targets
employers "who are using illegal workers in order to
drive down wages -- and oftentimes mistreat those
workers." This restates a common Bush administration
rationale for workplace raids. Former ICE Director
Julie Meyers asserted that she was targeting
"unscrupulous criminals who use illegal workers to cut
costs and gain a competitive advantage." An ICE
Worksite Enforcement Advisory claims "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
the workers who endure them doesn't help the workers or
change the conditions, however. But that's not who ICE
targets anyway. Workers at
organize a union to improve conditions. Overhill Farms
has a union. American Apparel pays better than most
garment factories. In
janitors at ABM get a higher wage than non-union
workers - and they had to strike to win it.
ICE's campaign of audits and firings, which
SEIU Local 26 president Javier Murillo calls "the Obama
enforcement policy," targets the same set of employers
the Bush raids went after - union companies or those
with organizing drives. If anything, ICE seems intent
on punishing undocumented workers who earn too much, or
who become too visible by demanding higher wages and
organizing unions.
And despite Obama's notion that sanctions enforcement
will punish those employers who exploit immigrants, at
American Apparel and ABM the employers were rewarded
for cooperation by being immunized from prosecution.
ICE threatened to fine Dov Charney, American Apparel's
owner, but then withdrew the threat, according to
attorney Peter Schey. Murillo says, "the promise made
during the audit is that if the company cooperates and
complies, they won't be fined. So this policy really
only hurts workers."
And the justification for hurting workers is also
implicit in the policy announced on the White House
site: "remove incentives to enter the country
illegally." This was the original justification for
employer sanctions in 1986 - if migrants can't work,
they won't come. Of course, people did come, because
at the same time Congress passed the Immigration Reform
and Control Act, it also began debate on the North
American Free Trade Agreement. That virtually
guaranteed future migration. Since NAFTA went into
effect in 1994, over six million Mexicans, like Dolores
Contreras, have been driven by poverty across the
border. "The real questions we need to ask are what
uproots people in
employers rely so heavily on low-wage workers."
No one in the Obama or Bush administrations, or the
migration to the
done without catastrophic consequences. The very
industries they target for enforcement are so dependent
on the labor of migrants they would collapse without
it. Instead, immigration policy and enforcement
consigns those migrants to an "illegal" status, and
undermines the price of their labor. Enforcement is a
means for managing the flow of migrants, and making
their labor available to employers at a price they want to pay.
In 1998, the
largest sanctions enforcement action to date, in which
agents sifted through the names of 24,310 workers in 40
4,762 people, saying their documents were bad, and over
3500 were forced from their jobs. Mark Reed, who
directed "Operation Vanguard," claimed it was really
intended to pressure Congress and employer groups to
support guest worker legislation. "We depend on foreign
labor," he declared. "If we don't have illegal
immigration anymore, we'll have the political support
for guest workers."
Bush's DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff said the same
thing. "There's an obvious solution to the problem of
illegal work, which is you open the front door and you
shut the back door." "Opening the front door" allows
employers to recruit workers to come to the
giving them visas that tie their ability to stay to
their employment. And to force workers to come through
this system, "closing the back door" criminalizes
migrants who work without "work authorization." As
Arizona governor, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano
supported this arrangement, signing the state's own
draconian employer sanctions bill, while supporting
guest worker programs.
In its final proposal to "shut the back door,"
the Bush administration announced a regulation
requiring employers to fire any worker whose Social
Security number didn't match SSA's database. Social
Security no-match letters don't currently require
employers to fire workers with mismatched numbers,
although employers have nevertheless used them to
terminate thousands of people. Bush would have made
such terminations mandatory.
Unions, the ACLU and the National Immigration Law
Center got an injunction to stop the rule's
implementation in the summer of 2008, arguing it would
harm citizens and legal residents who might be victims
of clerical mistakes. In October 2009, the Obama
administration decided not to contest the injunction.
But while dropping Bush's regulation, DHS announced it
would beef up the use of the E-Verify electronic
database, arguing that it's more efficient in targeting
the undocumented.
Social Security, however, continues to send no-match
letters to employers, and the E-Verify database is
compiled, in part, by sifting through Social Security
numbers, looking for mismatches. DHS Secretary Janet
Napolitano called on employers to screen new hires
using E-Verify, and said those who do so will be
entitled to put a special logo on their products
stating "I E-Verify."
John T. Morton, DHS assistant secretary for ICE, told
the New York Times in November that the 654 companies
audited in 2008 and early 2009 were just a beginning,
and that audits would be expanded to an additional 1000
companies. "All manner of companies face the very real
possibility that the government ... is going to come
knocking on the door," he warned. The original 654
audits, Morton said, had already led to action at 328
employers, which presumably will include a demand to
fire workers identified as undocumented.
This growing wave of firings is provoking sharp
debate in unions, especially those with large immigrant
memberships. Many of the food processing workers at
Overhill Farms and ABM's janitors have been dues-paying
members for years. They expect the union to defend
them when the company fires them for lack of status.
"The union should try to stop people from losing their
jobs," demanded Erlinda Silerio, an Overhill Farms
worker. "It should try to get the company to hire us
back, and pay compensation for the time we've been out."
At American Apparel, although there was no union, some
workers had actively tried to form one in past years.
Jose Covarrubias got a job as a cleaner when the
garment union was helping them organize. "I'd worked
with the International Ladies' Garment Workers and the
Garment Workers Center before," he recalls, "in
sweatshops where we sued the owners when they
disappeared without paying us. When I got to American
Apparel I joined right away. I debated with the non-
union workers, trying to convince them the union would
defend us."
The twelve million undocumented people in the
U.S., spread in factories, fields and construction
sites throughout the country, encompass lots of workers
like Covarrubias. Many are aware of their rights and
anxious to improve their lives. National union
organizing campaigns, like Justice for Janitors and
Hotel Workers Rising, depend on the determination and
activism of these immigrants, documented and
undocumented alike.
That reality finally convinced the AFL-CIO in
1999 to reject the federation's former support for
employer sanctions, and call for repeal. Unions
recognized that sanctions enforcement makes it much
more difficult for workers to defend their rights,
organize unions, and raise wages.
Opposing sanctions, however, puts labor in
opposition to the current administration, which it
helped elect. Some
decided to support the administration policy of
sanctions enforcement instead. One of them, Reform
Immigration for
verification system should determine employment
authorization accurately and efficiently."
Verification of authorization is exactly what happened
at American Apparel and ABM, and inevitably leads to
firings. The AFL-CIO and the Change to Win labor
federation this spring also agreed on a new immigration
position that supports a "secure and effective worker
authorization mechanism ...one that determines
employment authorization accurately while providing
maximum protection for workers."
Covarrubias is left defenseless by such protection,
however. Instead, he says, "we need the unity of
workers. There are 15 million people in the AFL-CIO.
They have a lot of economic and political power. Why
don't they oppose these firings and defend us?" he
asks. "We've contributed to this movement for 20
years, and we're not leaving. We're going to stay and
fight for a more just immigration reform."
Nativo Lopez says he'll organize the workers being
fired if unions won't, although recently he also
expressed a desire for greater cooperation with the
UFCW in the defense of fired workers. Last year the
Hermandad began setting up workers' councils in
southern
sanctions and help workers resist them. "If companies
start firing people as they have here, this place will
look like a war zone," he warns, "but if we fight to
defend people, we can organize them."
For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org
For a Press TV interview about racism, globalization
and illegality, see
http://www.presstv.com/programs/detail.aspx?sectionid=3510529&id=112065#112065
See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates
Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press,
2008) Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of
2007-2008 http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002
See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration
to the
University/ILR Press, 2006)
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575
See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the
U.S./Mexico Border (
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html
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