Thread: Using OSHA name to trap immigrants damages trust

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Aug. 3, 2005, 11:21PM



WORKING
Using OSHA name to trap immigrants damages trust
By L.M. SIXEL
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

IT happened in North Carolina, but immigrant rights groups say concerns are reaching Houston.

On July 6, contract workers at the Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, N.C., were instructed to attend an "OSHA" safety meeting.

But instead of talking about hard hats and safety gloves, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration representatives turned out to be special agents from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal offices looking for illegal immigrants.

In all, agents arrested 48 of the startled contract workers.

Although immigration agents might have been pleased with the sting's outcome, officials with the Labor Department and the Equal Employment Oppor-
tunity Commission were not.

They didn't like that agents used OSHA's name to carry out its sting on undocumented workers. Some also worry that such stings will damage years of building trust with the workers who toil in the most dangerous jobs and often don't receive the federally mandated minimum wage.

"I think it's outrageous," said H. Joan Ehrlich, who, as former district director for the EEOC in Houston, helped organize a multinational, multiagency program designed to encourage Hispanic immigrants to report workplace violations.

Justice and Equality in the Workplace uses billboards, fliers and videos to advertise a central telephone number for immigrants to call if they are being mistreated or become aware of violations. The tips are then passed along to the EEOC's Houston office, the Labor Department's Wage and Hour Division and OSHA.

The program has been effective, leading to discrimination lawsuits, payments of back wages and OSHA investigations.

It has also gotten widespread support and participation from several consulates in Houston. The consulates of Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, for example, work to get the word out among their citizens living the Houston area.

"It's hard enough to establish our credibility to get immigrants to trust a government agency, and this kind of action is extremely destructive to this credibility," said Ehrlich, who is now the district director of the EEOC in San Francisco.

She is setting up a similar immigration rights project with 18 consulates on the West Coast.

The Labor Department was also not happy with the sting.


Effects on health, safety
"We work hard to build trust with immigrant workers, including Hispanic workers, through numerous efforts that are successful in greatly improving their health and safety in the workplace," said Pamela Groover, a department spokeswoman. "This is not something we were involved in and we do not condone the use of OSHA's name in this type of activity," she said.

The immigration agency said, for its part, it will work more closely with the Labor Department, OSHA and EEOC in the future.

"ICE understands the concerns raised by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration about the use of its name during the arrest of illegal aliens at the military base," the agency said in a prepared statement. "ICE has put in place new procedures to ensure that appropriate coordination is completed before future operations."

The immigration agency also said it used a "safe and efficient tactic" to arrest the workers at the site.


No place to run
"The purpose was to have all the illegal aliens gathered at one location for a controlled arrest to help ensure the safety of the aliens, the agents involved, as well as the community at large," the statement said. "By arresting everyone at a single location, agents avoided chasing down 48 different individuals who may have scattered across the Air Force base or fled into the general community."

Richard Shaw, former chairman of the Justice and Equality project, said it's too early to gauge the local impact of the sting. But there's a lot of chatter on the Internet, with immigration groups sending out alerts.

"It's making the rounds," said Shaw, who is also secretary-treasurer of the Harris County AFL-CIO, which participates in the program.

News of the sting comes at a critical time for groups like the OSHA-funded Houston Workers Safety Initiative, which has trained about 200 low-income, immigrant and young workers in Houston. The group's most recent training session was at the day labor site in the East End of Houston and focused, in part, on knowing health and safety rights on the job.

Shaw is worried employers will use the news of the sting as a way to warn employees from reporting safety problems to OSHA.


'Here for the work'
But another labor leader isn't too worried and sees the sting more as a temporary setback than anything else.

"Regardless of what those idiots do, the people are coming and they're going to stay," said Orell Fitzsimmons, field director of the Service Employees International Union Local 100. "They're here for the work."

Fitzsimmons, who represents Head Start workers and school district employees in the Houston area, likens the effort to snare undocumented workers to the war on drugs.

"If the consumption would stop, the drug trade would stop," he said.

If companies didn't hire undocumented workers, they wouldn't come, Fitzsimmons said, But the government turns a blind eye.

"It's a nuisance and they shouldn't be doing it," he said, referring to the sting. "But they don't have enough gasoline, enough buses and enough planes to ship everyone back."

The FBI mispresents themselfs all the time to catch crimals, the DEA does it to bust drug dealers, the courts have said that law enforcement CAN misrepersent who they are and outright lie to crimals inorder to arrest them. Nobody cries about that ! Its called " GOOD POLICE WORK!"

If the INS mispresents themselfs to catch crimals then they should be given a pat on the back.!
It seems the only ones crying over this are the ones that don't like seeing the LAW being enforced.
If they had said theres gonna be an INS meeting how many crimals would have shown up? I'll tell you NONE !
Maybe these people crying would have rather had teams of INS busting down doors and having high speed chases thur the streets.

To the INS officers that planned out this sting operation I say good job !
They planned out a good sting , nobody was hurt, no property was damaged, no shoots fired... and EVERYONE got to go home!
A PERFECT textbook operation in my book !

not a thing wrong with that. I think they should have a big sign saying Day labor site and all that come arrest and the people hiring them arrest them to. As for the employers. I think they should have all there assets taking from them and maybe drop them off in Mexico City.