Thread: AZ-Low-income women have ally to defend labor rights

Neto's Tucson by Ernesto Portillo Jr. : Low-income women have ally to defend labor rights
Neto's Tucson by Ernesto Portillo Jr.
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 07.20.2008
Finding and keeping a job is difficult in this souring economy. Even holding a job doesn't always guarantee a paycheck.
Rosario Martinez and Cruz Cardenas discovered that.
Martinez, 54, worked as a domestic. Cardenas, 48, worked at a charter school. They both were denied money owed them.
Unlike some workers, however, Cardenas and Martinez knew they had a chance to get their back wages.
Cardenas, the mother of five children, has worked a variety of low-wage jobs since she came to Tucson in 1984 from Agua Prieta, Sonora, across the border from Douglas.
She sold home-cooked food. She cleaned motel rooms. And she did janitorial and cooking chores for a local charter school.
Martinez also immigrated to Tucson, from Southern Sonora, in the mid-'80s. The mother of three children worked in restaurant kitchens and recently worked five days a week as a domestic in a private home.
Both women said they believed they were working hard and dutifully up until they didn't get paid.
Independently of each other, the two women did not meekly accept their predicament. They turned to Nina Rabin at the University of Arizona for help.
Rabin is with the Southwest Institute for Research on Women at the UA. She also teaches at the UA's James E. Rogers College of Law.
And she directs the Tucson Women Workers' Project, co-sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee.
The project's goal is simple and straightforward: advocating women's legal and labor rights. "Many women don't know their rights," Rabin said.
As jobs shrink and the specter of unemployment expands, a larger number of employees are likely to ignore workplace abuses, Rabin said.
The program's first client was Cardenas. She had lost her job and was owed back pay, when someone told her about Rabin.
Cardenas said she had no reservations in asking for assistance.
"I wasn't intimidated. I wanted to right a wrong," she said last week. I met her and Martinez at Cardenas' South Side home. It was the first time the two women had met.
Cardenas said she had worked at the charter school during her vacation to earn extra money. She painted some classrooms.
She was owed a bonus but didn't receive it, she said. Cardenas contacted Rabin last September, and Rabin went to work.
She has practiced labor and immigration law in California. She worked on pro bono cases in San Francisco, offering free legal services to female truck drivers, refugees, domestic workers and farmworkers.
Rabin contacted Cardenas' former employer. She contacted the National Labor Relations Board, a federal agency that resolves unfair labor practices, among other responsibilities.
The case was complicated, but six months later, Cardenas received a check for several thousand dollars.
Martinez's case was easier. Martinez felt the homeowner was taking advantage of her by making her work more than eight hours a day cleaning the woman's large home.
"I told her I was not a slave," Martinez said. The next day Martinez didn't go to work.
When her daughter-in-law called the homeowner to ask for Martinez's $289 paycheck, the homeowner balked. Then she agreed to pay.
Martinez received a check for $89. Her former employer kept $200 for "expenses."
In this case, Rabin didn't call the employer. A volunteer UA law student made a brief but persuasive telephone call, and Martinez received her money.
Rabin said some employers take advantage of employees' fears over losing jobs, their legal status or lack of knowledge about their rights. Women, more often than not, are the ones wronged, Rabin added.
Martinez and Cardenas said it is part of their life mission to help other women. They are telling other women about their experiences, their rights and about Rabin.
"I am not afraid of losing my job," said Martinez, who expects to become a citizen next year. "I know my rights."
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Rabin is with the Southwest Institute for Research on Women at the UA. She also teaches at the UA's James E. Rogers College of Law.
And she directs the Tucson Women Workers' Project, co-sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee.
The project's goal is simple and straightforward: advocating women's legal and labor rights. "Many women don't know their rights," Rabin said.

This has nothing to do about "women's rights!" This has everything to do about aiding and abetting illegal invaders! What about the rights of American citizens to be free from the devastation caused by those who are illegal working in this country! I guess we don't count...

And I had to include this quote from the invader herself:

Cardenas said she had no reservations in asking for assistance.
"I wasn't intimidated. I wanted to right a wrong."

We know illegal invaders are not shy about asking for assistance. This doesn't sound like someone who is living in the "shadows" to me!

I would also like to "right a wrong." It was "wrong" for you to enter this country in violation of immigration law and I would like to "right" that by seeing you deported!

If you hire someone and have them work for you then you should pay them. It matters before you hire some worker if they are an illegal. If you overlook that then you are aiding an illegal. If you hire someone, they do the work for you and you do not pay them you are a cheat not a Patriot. The women should have been paid but they should not have been hired if the employers knew they were illegal.

Generally, I agree with you Richard. However, illegals by virtue of their status and those methods they have adopted in order to remain, does not reflect well for their veracity. A disgruntled illegal who has an issue with an employer can simply lawyer up in, which that lawyer can exploit their client's illegal status to their advantage. How do we know this employer did not already pay this woman everything she was entitled to?

All the more reason for a business and anyone who is considering hiring, employing or other wise doing business with an illegal, to think twice before they do so.

Actually, as far as i'm concerned, anyone who hires an illegal in order to make a buck, thereby displacing an American citizen, deserves what they get!