Report: Unbalanced Immigration Enforcement Hurts All Workers’ Rights
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When Josue Diaz, an immigrant worker and his co-workers protested the inhumane and illegal working conditions at a construction site in Texas, their employer called local police and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a division of the Department of Homeland Security. But the law enforcement officials didn’t enforce the workers’ rights or penalize the employer. They arrested the workers.
Diaz’s experience is not unusual. According to a new report released today, the federal government’s immigration enforcement in recent years—including a heavy reliance on raids and often inadequately trained enforcement agents—has severely undermined efforts to protect workers’ rights, which in turn harms both immigrant and native-born workers alike.
The comprehensive report, “ICED OUT: How Immigration Enforcement Has Interfered with Workers’ Rights,” was prepared by the AFL-CIO, American Rights at Work and the National Employment Law Project (NELP). Drawing on case studies like Diaz’s from across the country, the report examines a series of alarming incidents between 2005 and 2008.
Workers’ Struggle at Blue Diamond Shows Need for Employee Free Choice
Last year, workers sought a union at Blue Diamond, a nut processing company, hoping to redress unfair pay, unsafe conditions and mistreatment of sorters and packers. But in large part due to a vicious anti-union campaign by management, the workers lost their election and could not form a union.
A judge ruled an election under such circumstances is valid—and acknowledged that Blue Diamond took part in a broad array of unfair conduct against workers.
The fact that Blue Diamond’s wrongdoing went unpunished, denying workers a fair choice, is a sign that our labor laws are broken, says Kimberly Freeman, acting executive director of American Rights at Work, and is evidence America’s workers need the Employee Free Choice Act to prevent the unfair conduct by corporations that is all too common today.
In a letter to the Sacramento Bee, Freeman says the case shows the effects of unfair labor laws that allow corporations to intimidate employees seeking a voice on the job:
It’s no surprise that in the face of aggressive anti-union tactics, Blue Diamond’s employees lost in a system that was tilted to favor management from the beginning.
Op-Ed Highlights: Building Worker Power
Here are two great op-eds on the continuing fight for the Employee Free Choice Act.
In North Carolina’s News & Observer, Arne Kalleberg, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, calls the Employee Free Choice Act an “effective tool” for workers to improve their own lives and communities.
The Employee Free Choice Act, Kalleberg says:
…would help to level the playing field by giving workers a real opportunity to decide whether or not they wish to be represented by a union. Studies by sociologists and economists have demonstrated conclusively that unions raise wages and benefits for working people and protect them from discrimination and unsafe workplaces.
It would provide some ballast to out-of-control business lobbying influence and it would help us to resume the long American march toward a more humane and democratic society. It protects America’s employees’ freedom to choose whether or not to form a union and provides them with the opportunity to improve their economic situation.
Employee Free Choice Act Hits the Airwaves Over Labor Day
Members of Congress will be returning to Washington, D.C., next week, and they’ll get a reminder that America’s workers need the Employee Free Choice Act. The campaign to get the U.S. Senate and House to restore the freedom to form unions and bargain kicks off the fall with two TV ads.
The two ads, “We Don’t Ask” and “Fabric of America,” connect the Employee Free Choice Act to a healthier economy, where workers have a chance to join the middle class and get fair wages and benefits.
Produced by American Rights at Work, the ads will begin running on Labor Day around the country. In addition to the ads, supporters of the freedom to form unions will keep up their efforts calling, writing and speaking to members of Congress about the need for the Employee Free Choice Act. On Sept. 10, allies of workers from a broad coalition are coming to Washington from 15 states to ask their senators to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.
Kimberly Freeman, executive director of American Rights at Work, says the ads are part of a large grassroots effort to restore a stronger, fairer economy:
We are redoubling our efforts to show how the Employee Free Choice Act will rebuild the economy and restore workers’ rights. As lawmakers return from the August recess, they will be reminded that Americans see the Employee Free Choice Act as fundamental to meaningful labor law reform and creating an economy that works for everyone.
You can help get great Employee Free Choice Act ads like these out by clicking here to donate to the Turn Around America Fund.
Reports Document How Union Membership Helps Communities, Workers
As the fight to pass the Employee Free Choice Act continues, it’s worth noting that this is not just an issue of an individual worker’s freedom to join with other employees and bargain for a better life. It’s also important to note the role that unions have on communities and the economy, for members and nonmembers alike.
American Rights at Work has put together two great new reports that show how unions help create a well-trained and skilled workforce and healthier communities.
The first report, “Unions on the Cutting Edge: A Workforce Trained for the 21st Century,” focuses on how unions take the lead in creating innovative training programs for our workforce. In industries ranging from construction to health care to green energy, unions are breaking new ground and making sure America’s workers are prepared to be the very best at critical jobs.
Employee Free Choice Will Ensure Workers Get a Fair First Contract
The freedom to form unions and bargain is critical to workers and to a stronger, fairer economy—but weak law that allows delay and stalling blocks workers from gaining the first contracts that can bring them a better life.
Studies show that when workers vote for unions, fewer than half of them have a contract a full year later—and in more than a third of cases, workers still don’t have a contract two years later. Despite exercising their freedom to form unions against great obstacles, workers aren’t able to bargain for health coverage, retirement security, fair wages and safe workplace conditions.
The Employee Free Choice Act would end this injustice by providing a process to help bargainers reach an agreement through mediation and, for issues the parties are unable to resolve on their own, arbitration. Arbitration would occur only under the Employee Free Choice Act if either side requests it, after months of negotiations.
Big Business: Two-Faced Talk on Arbitration
The big-money corporate interests against the Employee Free Choice Act are continuing their disinformation campaign, throwing around misleading rhetoric and bad-faith arguments, seeking to confuse policymakers, the press and the public.
The latest Big Business tactic is to attack the provision of the Employee Free Choice Act that guarantees workers who form a union a fair first contract—a vital provision, because more than 50 percent of workers who form a union don’t have a contract after one year and more than a third still don’t have a contract after two years.
Corporations are crying about the possibility they might have to take part in arbitration with employees if they don’t reach a first contract after three months of talks—even though they’re enthusiastic about arbitration in a wide variety of circumstances where they have the advantage.
Corporate Hypocrisy on Bargaining Highlights Need for Employee Free Choice
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The misleading attacks by Big Business on the Employee Free Choice Act now are aimed at the provision that would guarantee that workers can get a fair first contract. Their scare tactics are not only misleading, they’re hypocritical.
Right now, workers lack a legal means to ensure they get a fair first contract. Recent research shows that even after workers successfully win a union and the ability to bargain, they’re too often blocked from getting a fair first contract. Fifty-two percent of workers don’t have a contract a full year after the election, and 37 percent don’t have a first contract two years after the election. For too many workers, the promise of the freedom to bargain is out of reach because the law doesn’t offer them any help.
The Employee Free Choice Act provides a process to help first-time bargainers to reach an agreement, through mediation and, for issues the parties are unable to resolve on their own, arbitration. The reason we need first-contract arbitration is to create an incentive for companies to bargain voluntarily with their workers.
Employee Free Choice Act: A Signature Battle for Our Future
At the three-day America’s Future Now! conference going on now in Washington, D.C., many workshops are focused on empowering people and building a stronger, fairer economy, and few issues are more critical to those goals than the Employee Free Choice Act and restoring workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life.
At a session this morning on the Employee Free Choice Act, some of the people most involved in the fight to pass the bill discussed why we need it and how we’re going to make it happen.
Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, a co-sponsor of the bill, said the leadership in the Senate is strongly behind the bill and he won’t back down on giving real freedom to workers who want a union, making sure workers can get a first contract and that there are meaningful penalties to violations of workers’ freedom.
If senators refuse to compromise, if they refuse to come to the table in good faith, I will take the original bill to the floor and demand an up-or-down vote. We will see where everyone stands, and working people can vote accordingly.
Workers Face Increasing Abuse in Attempts to Form Unions
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Today on Capitol Hill, labor law experts and a California worker exposed the ugly truth about corporate abuses of workers trying to exercise their freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life.
At the center of the discussion: Kate Bronfenbrenner’s new report, “No Holds Barred: The Intensification of Employer Opposition to Organizing,” released by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and the American Rights at Work Education Fund. The report shows that the problems the Employee Free Choice Act would address are getting worse.
Bronfenbrenner has studied these issues for decades as the director of labor education research at Cornell University’s School of Industrial Relations. This is her fourth survey over 20 years, enabling her to put into historical perspective the obstacles workers face today.
At the Capitol Hill briefing, Bronfenbrenner said weak laws and a hostile environment have emboldened corporations, over the past decade, to step up their abuses against workers trying to form unions.
The research provides a detailed portrait of a system that has failed private-sector workers. Workers have come to understand what our data confirms: Employers are using an arsenal of legal and illegal tactic to interfere with workers trying to organize, and they are doing it with impunity.
