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Immigration is an issue for unions
Throughout the history of this country, immigrants have played an important role in building our nation, our
communities and our unions. We are, to a large degree, a country of immigrants with a rich and diverse culture that continues to expand and grow.
And as new arrivals join the workplace, our unions must
build understanding among all workers to create the change necessary for unity and solidarity.
Whether immigrants or nonimmigrants, all workers face many of the
same workplace problems and concerns: employer interference with our rights to improve wages and working conditions through unionization, discrimination and abuse at the hands of unscrupulous
employers and the enduring struggle for dignity and respect both as workers and human beings. Unions play an important role in the workplace by providing a voice for all workers regardless of where
they were born or to where they trace their roots. When one worker’s rights are abused, all workers are impacted. It is only through unions that workers can stand together against employers
who often attempt to pit workers against each other.
Immigrant workers, especially those who don’t have legal standing
to be in this country, are especially vulnerable to abuse in their workplaces. Protections and remedies available to their fellow workers who may be citizens are denied them. This is fundamentally
unjust. It creates and maintains a class of workers who can be easily exploited, and whose status deters them from standing up for their rights on the job, including their right to organize a union.
In such a “two-tier” workforce, standards of pay and working
conditions generally move toward the lower tier, the one with the least ability to defend its interests through individual or collective activity. The result is that every worker is held back.
A recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, Hoffman Plastic
Compounds vs. the National Labor Relations Board, drew a clear line between the rights of the “undocumented” and the documented
or citizen worker. The Court ruled that undocumented immigrant workers illegally fired by an employer for organizing a union are not eligible for back pay wages. The Hoffman decision has encouraged
certain employers to go farther, and seek to deprive undocumented workers of minimum wage, overtime, and other protections against exploitation and discrimination.
We need an immigration policy that gives all workers the same
rights and protections on the job. Current policy sustains and invites discrimination by trapping some workers permanently outside the
very laws that were intended to give all workers the right to organize a union, to be protected from discriminatory and dangerous conditions, and to seek redress of grievances without fear of
retaliation.
Immigrant workers are building the union movement
In countless instances, immigrant workers and activists are leading the way for unions and community groups in the struggle for justice by challenging employers, organizing and building broad-based
alliances. For example, immigrant workers are organizing to enact real improvements for workers in various industries--among them,
roofers in Arizona, janitors in Los Angeles, poultry workers in the mid-Atlantic area, hotel workers in Minnesota, laundry workers in Massachusetts and more.
It’s about fighting for rights and protections for all workers. During the Immigration Forums sponsored by the AFL-CIO in 2000,
Maria Petrosova, who immigrated from Slovakia in 1995, said it best: “The union changed my life.” She was able to learn English,
improve her skills and gain a higher-paying job in asbestos removal. The union movement is stronger and more energized because of the hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers like Petrosova.
Julio Garcia also symbolizes the passion and energy immigrant
workers bring to the union movement. The 23-year-old Las Vegas construction worker and his two brothers were among the 130
workers who walked out on their own in July 1998 to protest nonunion Kukurin Concrete’s unfair labor practices. When some of
his coworkers returned to work, Gracie refused. “I wanted to go union. I told them I would make this company go union by myself.” He volunteered to work 18 hours a day to organize. Now a
member of Plasterers and Cement Masons Local 79, Gracie says he would do it again. Whatever I lost during the strike, I won back when I got the chance to join a union.”
Unions can benefit immigrant workers
America’s 16.3 million union members represent a cross-section of
people -- women and men of all ages, races and ethnic groups. They work in hospitals and nursing homes, auto assembly plants and
on construction sites, trains, buses and airplanes. They are health care workers, security guards, musicians, electricians, communications workers, postal workers, janitors and more. Union
membership is important to all workers, helping them to gain decent wages and working conditions and have a say in their jobs.
Unions can be particularly important for immigrant workers because they often are vulnerable to abuse and exploitation on the job. And when workers join together in unions, change can happen that
benefits everyone -- workers gain better wages and benefits, rights are protected, working conditions improve, communities are strengthened and respect and dignity become the norm, not the exception.
How the union movement reaches out to immigrant workers cuts to the heart of what unions are all about -- social and economic justice
for all people. By organizing new groups of workers, the union movement will be able to increase the overall influence of working families in politics, the economy and in the workplace. When
immigrants join unions, as millions have done, they join the fight for better wages and working conditions, thereby improving the
working conditions and increasing the bargaining power of all unionized workers at their job, in their industry and throughout the economy.
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