http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/loca ... un07.story

Consulate here will step up to aid Mexican workers
Chicago-area unions, community groups join job help effort


By Stephen Franklin
Tribune staff reporter

June 7, 2005

Eduardo doesn't exactly know what to do about his paychecks, which, he says, keep bouncing.

"I go back there, and they give me other checks, and they are no good, too," explained the middle-aged construction worker, who had come Monday to the Mexican Consulate for some minor paperwork.

His problem is exactly the kind that Carlos Sada, Mexico's consul general in Chicago, talked about Monday as he spelled out a precedent-setting agreement between the consulate and Chicago-area unions and community organizations to defend the rights of Mexican workers here.

With the help of the groups, pamphlets detailing workers' rights will be given out, directing anyone with workplace problems to contact the consulate, he said.

For the time being, staff from community groups will be on hand twice a week to field the complaints at the consulate, and the consulate hopes to set up a telephone hot line to help with the complaints, Sada said.

The reason for such an effort, he added, is a promise by Mexican President Vicente Fox to help improve the lives of its citizens living in the U.S.

As for the need for it, Sada said that the consulate received 120 workplace-related complaints last year and 100 so far this year. Most complaints, he said, deal with workplace accidents, salary problems or discrimination.

But, he added, those numbers probably do not reflect the reality.

"We estimate that for every worker who comes to the consulate [with complaints], there are at least three or four more who do not come, because they do not know or they do not have access," he added.

Indeed, most of the union officials who took part in a news conference at the consulate said it is common for them to encounter immigrants complaining about some form of workplace abuse.

"Third World sweatshops are not exclusively in the Third World. They are here in Chicago too," said Carl Rosen, district director for the electrical workers union. His union often comes across these conditions at low-wage factories where many of its organizing drives are focused, he said.

Jim Robinson, district director for the steelworkers union, said that organizations like his do not simply focus on the problems faced by its members or the workers it is trying to reach in organizing drives.

"We stand up for anyone's rights, regardless of who they are," Robinson said.

Similarly, Robinson said his union frequently faces employers who threaten undocumented workers with calling U.S. immigration officials if the workers support a union organizing effort.

In Eduardo's case, he wasn't the only one, he said, with complaints about the Chicago construction contractor for whom he had been working.

Most of the others had problems too, and like him, most are undocumented workers from Mexico, he said.

"[The company] didn't pay overtime to some people. And sometimes they didn't pay the minimum wage," he said.

Yet Lopez, who said he has been living in the U.S. for five years, shrugged when asked why he hasn't complained.

"People just don't know," he said.