Thread: Illegal-worker court ruling yields odd paradox

Illegal-worker court ruling yields odd paradox
Employers must deal with unions that represent the undocumented
By Michael Doyle
McClatchy Newspapers
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 01.09.2008

WASHINGTON — Federal law prohibits hiring illegal immigrants, but it also requires companies to bargain with unions that represent them.
That's the result of a recent court ruling that showcases the unresolved paradoxes posed by U.S. immigration law.

While Congress remains stalemated, judges keep interpreting how current immigration law works. The latest ruling, by what lawyers consider the nation's second-highest federal court, reveals how the results can appear to be confounding.

"It seems somewhat peculiar indeed . . . to order an employer to bargain with a union representing employees that the employer would be required to discharge under the Immigration Reform and Control Act," acknowledged Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Henderson nonetheless concluded that an agricultural- processing company had to bargain with a union even though most of the union's local members were in the United States illegally.

Henderson joined Judge David Tatel in the 2-1 appellate panel decision. Implications from the ruling, issued without fanfare on Friday, could spread to any state with large numbers of illegal-immigrant workers.

The case developed from events at Agri Processor Co., a kosher meat manufacturer in Brooklyn, N.Y. In September 2005, the company's workers voted 15-5 to join the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. Company officials refused to bargain and subsequently told the National Labor Relations Board that they'd discovered that illegal immigrants dominated their workforce.

The company "put the Social Security numbers given by all the voting employees into the Social Security Administration's online database and discovered that most of the numbers were either non-existent or belonged to other people," Tatel noted.

Agri Processor argued that illegal entrants couldn't count as the kind of employees who were protected under the National Labor Relations Act. The National Labor Relations Board rejected the argument and ruled that illegal workers could have a collective-bargaining vote.

The company appealed, noting that the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act made it illegal for a company to knowingly hire illegal immigrants.

"I understand the idea that, at first blush, it seems contrary to immigration policy to extend legal protections to undocumented workers," Jeff Hirsch, a University of Tennessee law professor, said in an e-mail interview Tuesday. "But that argument ignores the equally important policy of protecting workers."

The D.C. appellate court is important because it spans all federal regulatory agencies. Other appellate courts, such as the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco or the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, cover specific multistate regions.
http://www.azstarnet.com/business/219657

What kind of judges do we have in the federal courts??? I sure wouldn't want my case coming before Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson. What has happened to common sense and reason?

I am not sure I see a problem - but then maybe I didn't understand the article and I don't understand a lot about unions.

Even though an illegal can be a member of a union, doesn't mean they can work under the law. I would assume if a union member turned out to be a drug addict, they could be dismissed or not hired, or there surely might be other barriers to their employment - perhaps health reasons, etc.

This would seem to be much the same thing.

I'm sure the unions would sqawk,

I don't see the problem either.
He needs to move back to where he came from, and mail in his union dues.

Problem solved.