FLOC: Mexico Doing Nothing to Solve Organizer’s Murder
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The murder two years ago of Rafael Santiago Cruz, an organizer for the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) in Monterrey, Mexico, is part of a corrupt system of supplying immigrant labor to harvest crops on America’s farms, says FLOC President Baldemar Velasquez. Over the past two days, Velasquez and members of his union have been in Washington, D.C., meeting with members of Congress and international human rights panels to push for justice in Cruz’s murder.
Yesterday, FLOC brought the case of Cruz’s murder before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), an arm of the Organization of American States. After Cruz’s killing in 2007, the IACHR granted protective measures to Velasquez and FLOC staff located in Mexico.
The Mexican government has done little to solve the case. Of the four people who are known to have participated in the murder, all but one of Cruz’s killers remain at large, said Leonel Rivero Rodriquez, a Mexican human rights lawyer, at a briefing today at AFL-CIO headquarters.
Taking the Next Steps to Build Strength Through Diversity
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The diversity of the union movement is its strength. Building on the success of the historic Resolution 2 passed in 2005, the AFL-CIO Convention adopted a far-ranging policy to create more inclusive unions and a more diverse leadership.
The resolutions, “A Diverse and Democratic Labor Movement” and “Unions Should Give People with Disabilities a Voice and a Face,” call on unions to reach out at every level to build diversity.
The resolutions require every state federation and central local bodies to establish concrete goals for expanding diversity in their leadership. We also will increase our commitment to include lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers and workers with disabilities at all levels. And to secure the future of the union movement, we will actively recruit, train and include young workers in all activities and programs and provide opportunities for leadership.
AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer William Lucy said the union movement stands on the threshold of a crusade to rebuild the middle class. The progress made in including new workers in union leadership has chipped away at one more source of divisiveness in our movement. He praised the unions for successfully carrying out the mandate of Resolution 2 to make convention delegations more inclusive—43 percent of delegates are women or people of color.
Immigrant Rights Are Workers’ Rights
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As long as America’s mostly immigrant day laborer workforce is discriminated against and denied their rights on the job, no workers’ rights are safe, a key organizer told the AFL-CIO Convention.
Pablo Alvarado, executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), said day laborers have become the symbol of what critics say is wrong with the nation’s immigration system. In reality, he says, they are the symbols of a drastically changing economy. While the economy depends on their labor, it refuses to allow them to fully participate in the American Dream.
Day laborers work in an economy that accepts the fruits of their labor but does not accept their humanity.
Here’s How to Fix Nation’s Broken Immigration System
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The current immigration system is badly broken and needs a comprehensive overhaul. The Obama administration has put immigration reform on the legislative agenda this year by calling for a new system that “controls immigration and makes it an orderly system.” The White House also says such a plan should include a path to legal status for undocumented workers.
A new report released today by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) lays out an approach to fixing the system in a way that protects the rights of all workers. Written by former Labor Secretary Ray Marshall, this approach already has been adopted by both the AFL-CIO and Change to Win.
Marshall told a Capitol Hill press conference this morning:
Current immigration laws subject foreign workers to grave risks, exploitation, and uncertain futures, while depressing wages and working conditions for all workers. This framework addresses these defects. All workers will benefit from these reforms.
