Thread: Union Leader Supporting Guest Worker Proposal

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Union Leader Supporting Guest Worker Proposal

By RACHEL L. SWARNS
MIAMI, Feb. 23 — The graying union organizer strode to the microphone on a stage here on Thursday night, and hundreds of immigrants, students and workers cheered.

As a teenager, he followed his father into the fields in California, picking grapes alongside fellow immigrants from Mexico who labored without toilets or drinking water for little pay and even less respect.

Today, the former farm worker, Eliseo Medina, is vice president of the Service Employees International Union, the nation's second-largest union. He is also an advocate of one of President Bush's most contentious proposals: the effort to legalize 11 million illegal immigrants and create what could be the largest temporary guest worker program for foreigners in more than 40 years.

"We are all united in the belief that our broken immigration system is not serving anyone well," said Mr. Medina, who spoke at a rally at Miami-Dade Community College in favor of a bipartisan immigration plan expected to be debated next week in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Medina's stance has helped solidify his role as a prominent national labor leader, but it is also roiling the nation's unions. If such a plan is passed by Congress, it could result in the largest reshaping of immigration policy and the workplace in decades. The A.F.L.-C.I.O., which fiercely opposes the guest worker proposal, says it would result in the disappearance of thousands of permanent jobs and create an underclass of poorly paid foreign workers.

The disagreement among labor leaders over the guest worker plan, which has simmered mostly behind closed doors, has been overshadowed in recent months by the fractious debate among Republicans about how to handle the swelling population of illegal workers in the United States.

But the guest worker plan is also generating tensions among those on the left, particularly in the nation's labor movement.

"I don't think there's a tolerance in the country for an unlimited, unregulated future flow of foreign workers," said Donald Kaniewski, political director for the Laborers International Union of North America, which opposes the guest worker plan endorsed by Mr. Medina.

The laborers union is one of several unions that have joined the service employees in a rival labor federation to the A.F.L.-C.I.O. The laborers currently belong to both federations.

"Let's face it," Mr. Kaniewski said. "There is a reality that immigrants, particularly those out of status, put downward pressure on wages."

Mr. Medina, who supports the immigration legislation proposed by Senators John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, has received support for his guest worker position from Unite Here, a union that, like the service employees, counts many immigrants among its members. And Mr. Kaniewski and others emphasize that unions are united in supporting the legalization of the nation's illegal workers.

But the decision of the service employees union to champion a guest worker plan alongside the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, often viewed as adversary of organized labor, has left some of its allies uneasy.

Mr. Medina said he would work to ensure that additional labor protections were included. He says he firmly believes that the McCain-Kennedy plan offers the best opportunity to bring undocumented workers out of the shadows.

He points out that this proposal, unlike others that have tied foreign guest workers to one company, would allow workers to leave the company that applied for visas on their behalf to find better jobs and better salaries.

But some of his passion for this issue is also personal.

Mr. Medina was 10 when he and his family left Mexico for the United States. His father had worked in the bracero program, which brought in 4.6 million Mexican farm workers from 1942 to 1960, and he grew up hearing stories about how those workers were exploited.

And so on this debate, he said, he could not afford to sit on the sidelines.

"Clearly, this is something very personal to me because of the experiences I had, working as a farm worker and with my father as a bracero," Mr. Medina, 60, said in an interview earlier this week.

"It's a tough question because of that history," he said. "People are justifiably concerned to make sure that this program works for everybody, for the immigrants, for the country, and that it doesn't get used to undermine the already deteriorating standards of American workers."

"I think in the process, in the legislative process, we're going to try to get it to do what we need done," he said. "But we've got to get into the debate, the discussion in Congress. You can't just simply get into that debate by saying nothing out there meets our expectations. Because then you can be sitting on the outside looking in without ever having any chance to solve the problem."

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, has been working on a new draft of the immigration legislation. Some union officials hope it will better address the concerns of labor, which has been increasingly engaged in immigration policy in recent years.

In decades past, labor unions have often viewed immigrants as the enemy, accusing them of depressing wages and breaking strikes. That view has changed as the number of immigrants in the work force has surged. In 2000, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. reversed course and called for the legalization of illegal immigrants and an end to most sanctions against employers who hire them.

But the question of a temporary guest worker plan remains thorny.

The Kennedy/McCain plan, which has been embraced by labor for its plan to legalize illegal immigrants who are already in the United States, would allow employers to bring in 400,000 foreign workers in the first year of the program. By the end of the sixth year, it could include as many as three million temporary workers, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. said.

Fred Feinstein, a labor expert at the University of Maryland, said many unions were wrestling with how to advocate for immigrant workers without allowing immigration policy to create downward pressures on wages and working conditions.

"That's quite a challenge," said Mr. Feinstein, who served as general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board in the 1990's.

Ana Avendaño, associate general counsel of the A.F.L.-C.I.O, said guest worker programs had historically depressed wages and resulted in worker exploitation. And many union officials fear that the McCain/Kennedy plan does not ensure that American workers will not be displaced by the new foreign workers.

Under the plan, an employer is required to post the job on the Department of Labor's Web site for 30 days and is then free to import temporary workers from abroad. Union officials fear that the legislation taking shape in the Judiciary Committee may not ensure that those workers have the right to become citizens.

"That would radically reshape the notion that we have always had of ourselves as a nation of citizens, not a nation of guests," Ms. Avendaño said. "And if you look at the entire labor movement, I don't think there's majority support for this kind of guest worker construct at all."

Mr. Medina, who praised Mr. McCain, the guest of honor at the rally on Thursday night, said he understood those concerns. He also knows that Republican opposition may make it difficult to get such a measure passed this year.

"I think we're in an uphill battle, but you know the problem isn't going to go away," Mr. Medina said. "This immigration system is broken. You can't sweep that under the rug."

So much for unions protecting the American worker.

Man, that's depressing.

Well, it just means we've got to make sure our Representatives know how we feel! I DAMN sure know how I feel!