Thread: CA: Immigrants add energy to union membership

Immigrants add energy to union membership

BY JULIA M. SCOTT, Staff Writer
LA Daily News
Article Last Updated:09/02/2007 09:23:52 PM PDT

Ingela Dahlgren enjoyed the benefits of a strong nursing union in her native Sweden before becoming a U.S. immigrant nearly 30 years ago.

For more than two decades after her arrival, Dahlgren worked nonunion hospital jobs, but she was intent on one day using her experience with unions in Sweden to organize American nurses.

She eventually got her chance, and in 2002 a nurses union she helped start at the Northridge Hospital Medical Center negotiated its first contract.

"I was always taught that having a union increases your voice," said Dahlgren, 56, of Thousand Oaks. "One has no power. Fifteen has much more power."

As Dahlgren did, immigrants are joining unions in large numbers. Once the declared enemy of organized labor, immigrants are now its lifeblood.

In the past decade, the number of immigrants who joined unions increased 30 percent while membership among their U.S.-born counterparts dropped 9 percent, according to a recent study by the Migration Policy Institute. Overall, union membership declined.

The findings speak to a fundamental shift in union attitudes and show just how close the issues of organized labor and immigration have become. Previously, major unions shunned foreign-born workers because of a perception that they were taking jobs from those born on U.S. soil.

That stance began to change as unions wised up to the law of supply and demand. Nonunion workers willing to work for lower wages and scanty benefits would put pressure on higher-paid union members. If other people would work for less, why couldn't they?

And as union ranks shrunk, organized labor saw it was losing strength and, in turn, the ability to fight for the workers who remained.

Immigrants were an untapped labor pool. With families to support, many prized job security. Those without proper documents saw that airing grievances with the backing of a union could be safer than fighting an employer alone.

Major unions saw the chance and took it. In 2000, the AFL-CIO, which represents about 10 million union workers across the nation, formally announced it supported unauthorized immigrants in the work force. It reversed its long-standing policy and began to actively recruit and target immigrants for membership.

"If you want to be able to survive, that's who we have to recruit to join the unions," said Rick Icaza, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 770, based in Los Angeles and Lancaster.

The reason immigrants have joined unions in such large numbers goes deeper than the law of supply and demand, said Steven Pitts, an economist and labor policy specialist at the University of California at Berkeley.

Immigrants may be prone to join unions because of their specific line of work, their cultural background or their migrant experience, Pitts said.

Foreign-born workers are often funneled into security details, care-giving and construction work - jobs that are currently hard to outsource. Unions looking for long-term members target industries that aren't going anywhere.

Other immigrants may come from countries with a history of activism, such as Mexico or El Salvador, or may have belonged to a union in their native land.

Immigration fosters solidarity, a sentiment dear to unions.

"You're by yourself," Pitts said. "You're forced to stay together because of isolation from general society."

Unions have responded to the rise in immigrant memberships by hiring bilingual staff, printing fliers in multiple languages, and holding open sessions in which workers can learn about one another's background.

"You have to be patient," said Mike Warner, president of United Steelworkers Local 8433 in Chatsworth. "They are trying to learn English, so you have to take your hat off to them."

Of his 110 members, he estimates 15 percent are immigrants. A decade ago, he put that number at 10 percent.

The proportionate increase in immigrant membership has not been as drastic among local unions partly because Los Angeles has long been a diverse area, several leaders said.

At Service Employees International Union Local 121 RN in North Hollywood, Executive Director Sue Weinsten said half of her members hail from abroad. It's been that way for years.

"The hospitals have been actively recruiting from India and the Philippines, England," Weinsten said. The union has 7,000 members across Southern California and about 3,000 from the San Fernando Valley.

Cultural clashes have not been a problem for the local because of the nature of nursing.

"We take care of the public and people from everywhere, so we're used to totally different cultures and places," Weinsten said. "It just seems natural."

Since embracing immigrants, the AFL-CIO has not been shy about its stance. The AFL-CIO sued the federal government Wednesday over its plans to crack down on employees who hire illegal immigrants. Now, companies receive notices if Social Security numbers do not match the names of workers and may pay a fine.

Starting Sept. 14, those rules will change. After receiving a "no-match" letter, employers will have 90 days to resolve the issue or risk fines and criminal prosecution.

The new plan has support from Californians for Population Stabilization, based in Santa Barbara. The group wants to end illegal immigration and reduce legal immigration.

"Drying up the job magnet is certainly at the top of the list," spokesman Ric Oberlink said. "With `no-match' letters, people will self-deport."

The Migration Policy Institute study examined Census data collected each month from 50,000 households dating back to 1996 and also found:

The number of employed foreign-born wage and salary workers increased 66 percent since 1996.

Although the percentage of immigrant workers joining unions increased more than that of native workers, migrants are less likely overall to belong to labor unions.

Immigrant wage and salary workers were underrepresented in manufacturing, construction and mining unions when compared with their union representation in leisure and hospitality, professional and business services, wholesale and retail, and agriculture-related industries.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

julia.scott@dailynews.com

(81 713-3735

http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_6788733

Union presidents and high level staff also appreciate the large salaries that having extra dues paying members provide for them. Our economy is being artificially expanded.!! This will be terrible in a crash, with three or four workers competing for each available job. I am shocked and astounded that union members put up with this, but so many of them are short-sighted enough to welcome lower-dues and just hope that they are not the ones that get cut out in a downturn. Finally Teamsters are starting to holler (re: Mexican trucks) but I think they have already sold their soul to the OBL.

Unions are hell holes of unfairness.

More immigrants joining unions
By PATRICK McGEE
Star-Telegram staff writer
http://www.star-telegram.com/state_news ... 22196.html
S-T/R. JEENA JACOB

Amado Gonzalez Jr., a project manager with Morley Moss, checks wiring at an Irving hotel. He is an immigrant and a union member.
Group monitoring hiring of day laborers in North Texas
With union membership declining nationally, the number of immigrant workers in unions increased about 30 percent from 1996 to 2006, according to a Washington, D.C.-based research group.

A Migration Policy Institute report found that in 2006, 12 percent of union members -- nearly 1.9 million workers -- were immigrants, up from 1.45 million, or about 9 percent, in 1996.

That contrasts with a 9 percent drop in union membership among native-born Americans, to 13.5 million in 2006 from 14.8 million in 1996, the report said. Overall, membership dropped to 12 percent of the work force in 2006 from 20 percent in 1983, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Will immigrants reverse the downward slide of union membership?

"I think that's a little bit of a stretch to say, because I think the overall pattern has been a decline in union membership," said Laureen Laglagaron, an MPI policy analyst.

Ambivalence

Martin Lara of Arlington, an electrician, said joining the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 20 helped provide him job security, benefits and raises he couldn't otherwise get. The Mexican-born legal immigrant said he couldn't have afforded the physical therapy and medical care that his handicapped daughter receives through his union health benefits.

Unions, however, have been ambivalent about immigrants, said Gary Chaison, professor of labor relations at Clark University in Massachusetts.

"Historically, the labor movement has been anti-immigration except for when it's found that it can organize immigrants," he said. "They say, 'Well, if it's low-paid workers that I have to worry about in Taiwan, then I have to worry double about low-paid workers in Los Angeles.'"

Ruth Milkman, director of the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at the University of California, Los Angeles, said union leaders have put many of their concerns about immigrants behind them. She noted that the AFL-CIO changed to a pro-immigration stance in 2000. She said labor leaders saw organizing skills they could work with when groups nationwide staged huge pro-immigration marches in 2006.

"Now there's much more consensus that immigrants are a big part of any future that organized labor is going to have," she said.

Changing perceptions

Sergio Sanchez, 29, a Mexican immigrant and a Local 20 electrician, said he has witnessed the union's gradual acceptance of immigrant workers.

"The majority of the members realize we need these guys [in order] to keep growing," he said.

Sanchez speaks English so well that many of his co-workers and fellow members mistake him for a native-born American. He said immigrants' hard work has gained them more respect over the years, although he still sometimes hears gripes.

"They say: 'What are these guys doing here? They're here to take our jobs,'" he said.

Union member Amado Gonzalez, a U.S.-born citizen who speaks Spanish, said he helps recruit immigrant workers by extolling the benefits of union membership. But he said he sometimes needs to change false perceptions that American unions go on strike on a whim.

Lara, 42, who has been in the U.S. for 17 years, said he initially had a negative view of unions.

In Mexico, "it's very political, and here it's more about improving the work conditions for the worker," he said.

pmcgee@star-telegram.com
Patrick McGee, 817-685-3806

Take note of the beginning of this article in the Detroit Free Press:

LOW-LEVEL LABORERS GAIN STRENGTH
Service union raises workers' pay, hopes

September 2, 2007

BY MARGARITA BAUZA

FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER

For four years, Maria Mercado scratched by on help from family as she cared for her mother, who had an aneurysm while visiting Detroit from Mexico.

Today, Mercado still cares for her mother full time, but her conditions have improved. She's being paid by the state for her work, is taking classes to get her general equivalency diploma and hopes to regain the health insurance she lost after she quit her job at a steel plant when her mother fell ill in 2003.

This Labor Day weekend, Mercado, 40, credits those life improvements to joining the Service Employees International Union, the fastest-growing labor union in North America, with nearly 1.9 million workers in health care and janitorial and public services.

The union helped her get more pay, sponsors the GED classes and works on insurance for home-care workers.

As manufacturing jobs and membership in unions like the UAW decline, service jobs have exploded and so has membership in service such unions as the SEIU.

It is this segment of the workforce that needs the traditional protection of labor unions, said Michigan State University labor relations professor Ellen Kossek. Its members work the worst hours for the least pay in the poorest conditions.

"This is the changing workforce," Kossek said. "Service workers are the people who work split shifts and are barely getting enough hours to get benefits." Many are among the 43 million Americans who don't have health insurance. They tend to be women with critical family demands, who often work two jobs, Kossek said.

"Labor had, until now, overlooked these jobs," she said.

The statistics illustrate the story of the change in American jobs.

Manufacturing jobs fell from 17.6 million in 1997 to 14.1 million in 2006, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. During the same period, the number of service jobs in the country rose from 100 million to 114 million.

Since 1996, the service union has nearly doubled its membership from 1 million to its current 1.9 million.

Mercado, a self-proclaimed rebel who generally shuns help, said that joining SEIU has paid off.

"I was feeling alone, cornered, sad," she said. Learning that others were in the same boat has made her hardship more tolerable.

"I found out that there were other people like me ... that I wasn't alone."

Nationwide, growing membership and its diverse needs have caused the union to split into specialty groups.

Mercado is now a member of the health-care branch, which has its headquarters on Fourth Street in Detroit. The group has more than 55,000 members and formed this month when it merged 40,000 home-care workers and 15,000 nurses, nursing-home workers and hospital support staff.

Such changes are part of an ongoing reorganization of labor in Michigan and across the country that began when SEIU split from the AFL-CIO in 2004, a move made so it could be more aggressive about organizing, said Gerry Hudson, its executive vice president.

"Numbers were slipping continuously," Hudson said. Even before the split, the service union was particularly successful at organizing new members in its industries.

These workers were often women, minorities and immigrants who had low wages, said University of Illinois labor and industrial relations professor Robert Bruno.

"SEIU has properly understood that the new immigrant workforce is critical, not only to the success of the labor movement, but to rebuilding a broadly distributive and just economy," Bruno said.

"Like few other unions, they have aggressively made an effort to speak on behalf of new immigrant workers."

Unionizing service workers isn't just about improving the lives of workers, Bruno argues. It is about creating a new middle class.

Hudson is unapologetic about the zest with which organizers will continue pursuing members. Of Michigan's 391,740 health-care workers, only 55,000 are a part of the union's health-care branch.

"We are aggressive, energetic. We push hard, and we're creative," Hudson said. "When no one really thought it was possible to organize home-care workers on a mass scale, we succeeded."

Challenges in organizing home-care workers included high turnover rates and the lack of a set workplace. The union sidestepped those hurdles by visiting people at home, collecting signatures and passing out leaflets.

The union's janitorial branch, SEIU Local 3, also is trying to build membership. The unit, which formed in 2005, represents 1,600 janitors in the Detroit area and has 9,000 members in Pittsburgh; Cleveland; Toledo; Columbus, Ohio, and Detroit.

"We have a lot of room to grow, especially in the suburbs," organizer Dana Sevakis said.

Local 3 city director Erica Kimble said fighting for better wages is challenging, especially in Detroit.

"They can only offer so much," she said. "We're trying to tap into suburban markets."

Still, the union takes pride in the fact that its ranks are growing. Last week, it organized 200 members at a metro Detroit pharmaceutical company.

"I think that's significant, given how small we still are," Kimble said.

Contact MARGARITA BAUZA at 313-222-6823 or mbauza@freepress.com.

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