Thread: Unions work to lure Hispanics

Unions work to lure Hispanics
Major challenge for labor in Athens, Gerogia

http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/090 ... 2062.shtml
By Blake Aued | Staff Writer | Story updated at 11:44 PM on Sunday, September 2, 2007

In his 17 years at an Athens Pilgrim's Pride plant, Robert James has watched his industry change faster than an egg frying on a griddle.

Everything from the way the plants are run to who works there to who belongs to the union local is different, said James, a maintenance mechanic at the Barber Street plant and the United Food and Commercial Workers union steward.

"When I first started working here, it was probably 95 percent African-American," James said. "Now I'd say it's 80 percent Hispanic."

Immigration and changing demographics turned the state's $3 billion poultry industry upside down beginning in the early 1990s, and already-embattled labor unions in Athens and elsewhere are still trying to catch up. At the same time as Hispanics began replacing blacks, union membership dropped from about 80 percent to 40 percent at one of two Athens Pilgrim's Pride plants and 50 percent at the other. The plants employ a combined 2,500 people.

"I know it's gone down because of the change in cultures," James said. "A lot of (Hispanics) don't want to join."

As Labor Day approaches, Pilgrim's Pride workers, United Food and Commercial Workers organizers and local progressive activists are highlighting efforts to bring Hispanic workers into the union fold.

"One of the things we're trying to do is bring different groups together and say 'Your struggle is our struggle,' " said Ralph Porras, a representative with Suwanee-based UFCW Local 1996.

Considering the complex blend of politics, language barriers and cultural differences, it won't be easy.

A dirty job

The shadow of immigration, the hottest of hot-button issues in Georgia, envelopes everything in the meatpacking and poultry industries, where in the blink of an eye hundreds of thousands of Hispanic workers replaced the blacks who'd been manning the plants since the 1940s.

Many of Athens Pilgrim's Pride workers are no doubt in the United States illegally, but no one can say for sure how many. The company complies with all federal laws, uses a voluntary U.S. Department of Homeland Security program to check Social Security numbers against a federal database and conducts internal audits of its hiring practices, said Ray Atkinson, communications director for Pilgrim's Pride. However, no system is foolproof, he said.

"(C)omplying with the country's complex and changing immigration laws is extremely challenging because of the strict prohibitions against requesting too many documents or requiring that applicants present a specific document during the hiring process," Atkinson said in an e-mail. "Employers are required to accept documents that reasonably appear to be genuine and relate to the employee presenting them."

UFCW officially supports comprehensive federal immigration reform, including ending the guest worker program, offering more permanent green cards as a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, and stopping immigration raids on workplaces and severe punishments for employers who hire illegal immigrants. But union representatives don't ask about members' immigration status or intervene in individual cases, Porras said.

"My job is to have a union contract and make sure the company adheres to that contract," he said.

Companies began recruiting Hispanics after President Reagan's immigration reform in 1986, in response to a workforce shortage, said David Griffith, an East Carolina University sociologist who studies the poultry and meatpacking industries. Hispanic workers recruited friends and relatives back home, and within a few years, the majority of workers were Hispanic, he said.

"They were farm workers, but they really didn't like the migrant lifestyle, and they wanted to settle out," Griffith said. "I don't think they like the job that much, but you don't have to speak English and you can get a job pretty quick."

While Hispanics are drawn to the industry by relatively high wages - Athens Pilgrim's Pride workers start at $9.27 an hour, not quite a living wage, but skilled veterans can earn up to $17 an hour - for managers and executives, they are a compliant, hard-working and very replaceable labor pool.

"I have been told by both African-American and Latino workers in those plants that labor relations with management can be pretty authoritarian," Griffith said. "They look at these employees like they're cogs in a machine."

Poultry jobs can be dangerous. Workers are three times more likely than average to get hurt on the job, according to a 2004 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics study, though in Athens workers say the plants are relatively safe.

The jobs can also be dirty, smelly and demanding. Some workers reported that they dress off the clock, can't take restroom breaks and aren't allowed to leave work to visit a doctor or pick up sick children from school. If they speak up, management can use the threat of deportation to keep workers in line, said Alfonso Mondragon, a Pilgrim's Pride worker and union steward.

"At the time they want to terminate an employee, for example, they just call him into the office and ask him for legal documents," Mondragon said through a translator. "If they come to work and they show U.S. documents, why should they have to show them again?"

Membership down

At the same time as immigrants were flooding across the Mexican border into construction sites, crop fields and poultry plants nationwide, manufacturing workers were leaving unions in droves.

Unions never took root in the South the way they did in the North - one reason why factories are moving to the South - and membership has been declining nationwide for decades. At its peak in the 1960s and '70s, about 35 percent of private-sector workers belonged to a union, said Ron Warren, a University of Georgia economist. Today that figure is 10 percent. Higher productivity, an increase in traditionally non-union service jobs and manufacturing plants moving overseas contributed to the drop, Warren said.

Unions are divided over how to deal with the decline in membership. Three of the country's largest unions - UFCW, the Teamsters and the Service Employees International Union - split with the AFL-CIO in 2005 because they believed the AFL-CIO wasn't doing enough to recruit new members.

Membership has been flat at UFCW for years, inching up from 1.2 million in 1980 to 1.4 million in 2005, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. The union, which represents mostly retail, meatpacking and other manufacturing workers, has focused on recruiting Hispanics.

"UFCW has been active in various plants," Griffith said. "As the workforce changes, they've been trying to get the Latino workers."

The focus on Hispanics makes sense, Warren said.

"Unions have been most successful in the manufacturing sector, and Hispanics are a growing faction in the manufacturing work force," he said.

But recruiting Hispanics isn't easy. They don't often stay at jobs for long, are prone to quit rather than protest if they don't like the work, and are often afraid of being discovered by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Griffith said.

UFCW is trying to overcome the distrust by hiring bilingual representatives like Porras, who is of Nicaraguan descent.

Organizers still are running into problems in Athens, though. The first thing Hispanic workers often ask when they are approached by recruiters is whether the union can help them with their immigration status, Porras said. When he tells them no, they sometimes walk away, he said. Others are suspicious of institutions, think they might be turned in to ICE or believe ICE raids target unionized plants, though there's no proof of that, he said.

Forging a partnership

To help with UFCW's union drive, the Economic Justice Coalition, a local progressive group, is focusing its annual Labor Day march on poultry workers. EJC members decided the union was a natural partner after meeting with representatives earlier this year.

"The poultry plants have conditions for workers that are highly egregious," coalition Chairman Ray MacNair said. "They are cold, extremely fast and often painful jobs."

The march begins at 11 a.m. at the University of Georgia Arch in downtown Athens and ends at Athens City Hall at noon, where there will be speakers and free lunch from Food Not Bombs. A town hall meeting is scheduled for Oct. 12 at the Athens-Clarke County Library, and also will feature speakers from UFCW, EJC and civil rights groups like the NAACP and Rainbow/PUSH Coalition.

The timing of the Monday march coincides with contract negotiations with Pilgrim's Pride. One plant's contract expired in May, and another ends in October. UFCW is mainly asking the company not to raise employees' share of health care costs, union negotiators said. Overall, though, the relationship between workers and management is good, said James, the union steward.

"We sit down with management and talk about the issues here," he said.

Atkinson, the corporate spokesman, declined to comment on contract negotiations.

Published in the Athens Banner-Herald on 090207

So maybe when they get deported...the Blacks can get their jobs back...Doing the jobs no-one will do..RIGHT...they kicked the blacks out.... that is not right....The blacks are citizens....and they were doing the job....not right...

civil rights groups like the NAACP and Rainbow/PUSH Coalition.

What are they doing involved? It's the blacks who have been hurt by this. Talk about worthless and traitrous organizations!!

This is more proof Big Businesses used Illegal Immigrants to break Unions,lower wages, by-pass OSHA laws as well as cut benefits with the blessing of our president and congress.