Thread: In reversal, unions enroll immigrants

In reversal, unions enroll immigrants

Oct 4, 2007

In a small office tucked inside a Sacramento, Calif., warehouse, a journeyman with Roofers Union Local 81 told apprentices -- in English and Spanish -- to listen up.

Teaching a bilingual seminar for union members puts Victor Garrido on the front lines of his AFL-CIO-based union's push to recruit immigrants, including the undocumented, with guarantees of better pay, career development, pensions and health insurance.

It's a survival tactic for unions, whose leaders see their foreign-born membership increasing and argue that inclusiveness protects all workers. But it's one that can confound not just outsiders but some union rank and file, who fear the presence of illegal immigrants in general erodes working conditions.

It's also a philosophical shift that has unions increasingly clashing with the federal Department of Homeland Security, which regulates immigration.

The AFL-CIO challenged Homeland Security last month in a lawsuit that temporarily halted a campaign to identify illegal immigrants through Social Security information. The union joined the American Civil Liberties Union in the original filing, since joined by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Unions also have urged Congress to allow longtime, tax-paying undocumented workers to earn legal status. They've denounced the July indictment of an Iowa United Food and Commercial Workers union official charged with harboring illegal immigrants and this year's Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids at meatpacking plants.

"These raids are almost thuggish," said John Wilhelm, the New York-based president of the hospitality section of the hotel, restaurant and garment workers' union, UNITE HERE.

The AFL-CIO, the nation's biggest labor network, once supported sanctions against employers who hired illegal immigrants.

But in 2000, leaders reversed course, concluding that employers could exploit with impunity because punishment was rare and fines meager.

"We had employers even calling raids on themselves," to get rid of workers involved in union drives, said the union's immigration project director, Ana Avendano.

During Garrido's class, immigration wasn't part of the curriculum. Students leafed through manuals, in English or Spanish, as Garrido quizzed them on waterproofing roofs and the hazards of combustible materials. Half a dozen students, some fresh off the job in tar-stained clothes, were immigrants.

"We want laborers to come into the union and to set a standard," Garrido said. "Where you get abuse is where the immigrant comes in and gets paid lower."

Robert Balgenorth, president of the California chapter of the AFL-CIO's Building and Construction Trades Department, pointed out that union strength in the housing-construction industry has waned dramatically as undocumented workers arrived not just from Latin America but also from places such as Ireland, Russia and Scotland.

Allowing workers to earn legal status, and be bolder, Balgenorth said, would help unions replenish their ranks.

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/ar ... 40335/1020

UNIONS KNOW THAT IF ILLEGAL SCAB LABOR PRACTICES CONTINUE THAT UNIONS WILL GO OUT OF EXISTENCE. SO THEY ARE TRYING TO SURVIVE. BUT IMO, THEY ARE GOING ABOUT IT THE WRONG WAY. I THINK IT IS PANIC ON THEIR PART. WE NEED TO EXPELL ILLEGALS....NOT EMBRACE THEM. AND EVEN IF THE UNIONS SURVIVE THROUGH THIS TACTIC, IT WONT LAST LONG. BECAUSE EVEN IF ALL OF THOSE ILLEGAL WORKERS BECOME LEGAL AND JOIN UNIONS IT CANT WORK. IN THE LONG RUN THERE WOULD END UP BEING A GLUT OF WORKERS. EVEN IF THEY WERE LEGAL, HAVING TOO MANY WORKERS WOULD ALSO DRIVE DOWN WAGES. IT HAS TO BE STOPPED.