Socialist Action /March 2000
AFL-CIO Backs Amnesty for Undocumented Workers
Give me your tired,
your poor....
Send these, the
homeless, tempest-tossed
to me, I lift my
lamp beside the golden door!
-Inscribed on the Statue of Liberty
By CHARLES WALKER
In February, the AFL-CIO Executive Council unanimously adopted a resolution
urging the end of sanctions against employers who hire undocumented workers,
as mandated by the so-called Immigration Reform and Control Act. The labor
federation's action is a dramatic turnaround, seeing that it backed the
passage of that law in 1986.
The union officials also now call for amnesty for an estimated six million
immigrants, and declare that legal status should be granted to 350,000 immigrants
denied amnesty under the 1986 law, as well as 500,000 Central Americans,
Haitians, and Liberians denied refugee status during the past two decades.
Further, the "AFL-CIO continues to support the full restoration
of benefits that were unfairly taken away through federal legislation in
1996, causing tremendous harm to immigrant families."
"Current efforts to improve immigration enforcement," the resolution
said, "while failing to stop the flow of undocumented people into the
United States, have resulted in a system that causes discrimination and
leaves unpunished unscrupulous employers who exploit undocumented workers,
thus denying labor rights for all workers."
The 1986 law was intended to block undocumented workers from getting
a job, by requiring employers to verify a worker's status by demanding identification,
such as birth certificates and social security cards.
Nevertheless, undocumented workers did find employment. However, when
they tried to protect themselves from unfair working conditions, some bosses
sought their deportation
The federation declared it favors a new "policy to reduce undocumented
immigration and prevent employer abuse. Any new policy must meet the following
principles: (1) it must seek to prevent employer discrimination against
people who look or sound foreign; (2) it must allow workers to pursue legal
remedies, including supporting a union, regardless of immigration status;
and (3) it must avoid unfairly targeting immigrant workers of a particular
nationality."
The federation's turnaround partly is the result of the changing ethnic
makeup of the membership of its many diverse unions. Across the nation,
the building trades, the industrial unions and the service unions increasingly
have a multi-national identity. While not common yet, some unions now provide
translators for membership meetings, and translations of contracts.
The change of view is also driven by bosses who fire or turn in to the
federal immigration agency undocumented workers attempting to organize unions.
Recently, six hotel workers in Minneapolis voted for a union, and then were
arrested after their boss called in immigration agents. Even though the
workers, supported by their union, won a $72,000 settlement, the government
still intends to deport them.
The AFL-CIO's policy change is a big step in the right direction. Whatever
the motives for changing their minds, the federation's leaders have objectively
given workers' solidarity a big boost. Solidarity that stops at the city
limits, the state line, or the national border is a caricature of the real
thing; and no less so when labor unions call themselves "internationals."
When unions are not guardians of workers' solidarity, there can be no
reasonable hope for justice in the workplace, nor in society at large. That
insight was at the heart of American industrial workers' stunning victories
over entrenched financial power during the Great Depression. But somewhere
along the line, even in the industrial unions, workers' solidarity was more
often sung about at Labor Day picnics, than experienced first-hand.
Not everyone will cheer the AFL-CIO's resolve to stand-up for the undocumented
worker. For instance, The New York Times (Feb. 22) says the union's new
proposal is "hasty" and "should be rejected ... because it
is also unfair to unskilled workers already in the United States."
According to The Times, the gap "between the wages of high school
dropouts and all other workers" will, in part, continue to widen due
to competition from unskilled undocumented workers.
Yes, that's probably true, unless the unskilled workers are organized
and mobilized-that is, unionized to stand up and fight for a larger share
of the wealth they produce. In that case, The Times need not shed crocodile
tears for the unskilled workers. For with organization the workers will
be in a position to duplicate the heroic achievements of the 1930s unskilled
rubber workers, steel workers, auto workers, and the like whose battles
and victories still hold forth the promise of fundamental social and political
change.
Unfortunately, the AFL-CIO resolution also reflects the union bureaucracy's
continuing attempts to forge partnerships with the employer class: "Labor
and business should work together to design cooperative mechanisms that
allow law-abiding employers to satisfy legitimate needs for new workers
...without compromising the rights and opportunities of workers already
here."
They mean that the AFL-CIO won't squawk about new immigrants, if, one,
the bosses can make a case that they need them in order to compete with
other bosses, and two, that the bosses get the government to take more effective
steps, even harsher steps, to keep undocumented workers from crossing the
borders.
Clearly, that position has no merit. That's partly because the AFL-CIO
can't count on the bosses to keep the agreement. After all, the AFL-CIO
holds that the 1986 law was undermined by "unscrupulous employers."
Not to mention that the bosses tore up the post-war so-called "social
pact" with the labor bureaucracy.
More important, the notion that, in this instance, the unions and the
bosses should join together against needy workers in other lands disregards
the urgent need to build cross-border solidarity in order to take on the
multi-national corporations, as proclaimed in Seattle at the anti-WTO demonstrations.
Even though America is a settler nation, mainly populated by wave after
wave of immigrants, the AFL-CIO tops seem to have forgotten why other workers
leave their homelands and often their loved ones for a chance at a healthier,
longer, and more prosperous life.
If they gave thought to their origins and that of their members, they
surely should conclude that only a struggle for a better life for workers
everywhere can reduce poverty-driven immigration.
The more promising course for the AFL-CIO to take is to aid the organization
of all workers so that they can stand side by side with American workers
in a common defense of their right to decent life. For example, the Teamsters
could use their resources to promote the organization of Mexican truckers,
rather than cutting political deals with the White House that keep Mexican
drivers from working hand in hand with American drivers.
The United Auto Workers Union and the United Steelworkers Union could
ignite a worldwide fight to win shorter workweeks with no cuts in pay for
all steel and auto workers and to remove from their members' backs the burden
of the two industries' worldwide excess capacity. Every worker on a picket
line knows that together they stand, but if divided they fall.
For all it's worth, the AFL-CIO's resolution would be much better with
a dose of that picket-line common sense.
Socialist Action /March 2000 |