------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Sept. 14, 2000 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- IMMIGRANT WORKERS LEAD LABOR'S UPSURGE Organizing Victories from Los Angeles to New York By John Catalinotto Immigrant workers are emerging as the heart of a dynamic upsurge in the U.S. labor movement. New victories have brought into the front lines the fastest growing section of the workforce. In a recent report, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that the number of immigrant workers has climbed by over 2.2 million over the past three years to 15.7 million. This makes immigrant workers 12 percent of the U.S. workforce, the greatest level it has been in seven decades. Couple this news with stories of immigrant labor organizing victories from home-care workers in Los Angeles to green- grocery workers in New York, and the impact on the fight for workers' rights in general is clear. Immigrants are an especially large proportion of the workforce in the hardest and lowest-paying jobs. These include fruit and vegetable pickers, meatpackers, poultry plant workers, gardeners, hotel housekeepers, restaurant workers, janitorial service and building demolition workers. This large influx of immigrant workers is already having a tremendous impact on the class struggle. The bosses who hire them are trying to keep their wages low. They also try to keep these workers in an insecure legal state, so that they can use the threat of deportation against the estimated 6 million that are undocumented. But these workers are capable of the greatest worker militancy and solidarity. This development offers a tremendous opportunity for labor to organize large numbers of new members, strengthening the entire working class. Last Feb. 16, in a landmark policy change hailed in immigrant communities from coast to coast, the AFL-CIO Executive Council unanimously called for amnesty for the 6 million undocumented workers and their families in the United States. The AFL-CIO called on Congress to repeal a 1986 law that has victimized these immigrants. The resolution commits the federation to push for new immigration laws that would protect undocumented workers from firing or deportation if they try to unionize or complain to the government about violations of labor laws, including minimum wage and safety requirements. This policy of solidarity with immigrant rights, if fought for consistently, would help organized labor win millions of new adherents. A victory here would weaken the bosses' ability to intimidate immigrant workers. This could breathe new life into the workers' side of the struggle for better wages, benefits, working conditions and jobs. This came to life on Feb. 25, 1999, when in a stunning and historic victory for organized labor, the Service Employees union brought over 74,000 Los Angeles home-care workers into its ranks. It was the biggest union organizing victory since 1937, when the Auto Workers won its battle to represent workers at General Motors. These workers, who care for elderly and disabled people in their homes, are overwhelmingly immigrants, women, African Americans, Latinos, Asians and people of other oppressed nationalities. VICTORY IN GREENGROCER STRUGGLE A substantial number of undocumented immigrants live in the New York metropolitan area. Organizing among Latino/a greengrocer workers, African delivery workers, and garment workers from Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean takes place under the constant threat of INS raids and deportations. But it does happen. Indeed, the latest organizing victories are taking place among greengrocer workers in downtown Manhattan. Some 14,000 Mexican workers are employed by the produce industry in New York. Most work 14-hour days, seven days a week, preparing fruits, vegetables and flowers in sweatshop conditions. Most make less than the minimum wage and receive no benefits. Last winter, after months of strike and boycott activity involving immigrant-rights and community groups, Local 169 of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees signed union contracts with two greengrocer owners on the Lower East Side. The contracts provide workers for the first time with at least minimum wage, overtime pay, health insurance, paid sick days and one week of vacation per year. The struggle continues at other stores. Charles Twist, a union organizer and regular participant in the picket lines on the Lower East Side and Fifth Avenue, told Workers World that UNITE announced a legal victory at a news conference at the end of August. "New York State Attorney General Elliot Spitzer was finally forced to recognize and act on the fact that there are such horrible sweatshop conditions existing in the greengrocers and delicatessens in New York City," said Twist. One worker, Silverio Otero of Mexico, will receive $7,000 in back wages through a settlement Spitzer arranged. Otero was required to work 72 hours a week for $240, which amounts to $3.33 per hour, far below the already low $5.15 minimum wage. Twist said, "Two stores on the Lower East Side were fined a total of $100,000 for 10 workers who had been working for around $3 per hour for the last few years." Twist pointed out that "there has been strong support from the community--people silently throw up fists of support as they walk by, others are outraged when they learn that people are being paid so little. And many people have refused to shop. Business is down from 60-70 percent at most stores being boycotted." East Natural and Abigail's on Fifth Ave. and Olympic on the Lower East Side have been picketed for the last few months. "Valentino's on Fifth Ave. settled quickly," said Twist, "and workers can look forward to support from progressive students at nearby New York University and the New School as the fall term opens." The Mexican American Workers Association began the drive for unionization. UNITE and the Lower East Side Community Labor Coalition joined together to organize effective support for the strikers. They joined forces to build community outreach, a boycott of the stores and student activity in solidarity with the workers. STATUE OF LIBERTY'S MOTTO It is an example of what can be done to strengthen workers' rights in the U.S. But it must be combined with a fight for immigrants' rights in general. In an Aug. 30 New York Times story on documented immigrants facing deportation for minor crimes, one imprisoned immigrant, Alejandro Bontia, said, "The motto of the Statue of Liberty in today's America is: give me your poor, your tired and your hungry, because we still have empty jail cells." Progressive unionists will make sure that what new immigrant workers face is not sub-minimum wages and a jail cell but union wages and the solidarity of the organized labor movement. - END - (Copyleft Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org) ------------------ This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. 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