written by building bridges radio
at Wednesday, September 5, 2018
Supporting Immigrant Labor, Fighting For
Their Rights
with
Pablo Alvarado, executive director, National Day
Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON)
and
Kent Wong, Director of the
UCLA Labor Center and founding president of the Asian Pacific American Labor
Alliance
Whether immigrants workers, documented or
undocumented seek to hold crooked and exploitative bosses accountable for wage
theft, and pay that is below the prevailing wage or work just too many hours
for too little pay and benefits and are subject to abusive treatment to their
personage, such as sexual harassment or want the freedom to push for decent jobs
and organize unions without risking arrest, they deserve legal protections. Now
with Trump threatening to bring a reign of lawlessness to American cities, the
most precarious workers are subjected to more militarized and extensive
workplace raids, mass arrests, family separation and expedited deportations.
Then there is the all-too-familiar story of scape-goating
immigrant workers and deliberately pitting them against American workers as big
corporations cut wages as they seek to reap bigger profits. They replace one set
of workers with another—from other regions or other countries—or by automating
work. Meanwhile, CEO pay and bonuses continue to rise while workers’ wages fall.
When you are scrambling to find work or getting beat out for a job by someone
willing to work for less, there’s an allure to an anti-immigrant stance. But
taking that bait doesn’t get us very far.
The issue may not come up in
contract talks, but a safe, fair workplace regardless of immigration status is
key to social inclusion, promoting economic fairness, and helping communities
exercise the rights they do have—especially those without a say in who gets
elected to office.
Migrants seeking asylum and immigrant workers aren’t
pulling the strings of our rigged economy. Those making the decisions that cause
economic hardship can more likely be found at Mar-a-Lago, not at the border. If
we don’t focus on holding the ultra-rich and greedy corporations accountable,
workers will continue losing. All the raids in the world will not help
native-born and documented workers with job security.
This false notion
that we are in competition with immigrants limits our ability to see each other,
even when the collateral damage is children. At this moment, wealthy
corporations and billionaires, not immigrant children and their parents, are
sacrificing workers for profits. We should see this as a warning. When people
are so dehumanized that forcing kids to sleep in kennels becomes acceptable, the
value of life for everyone goes down. Instead of scapegoating children,
mothers and fathers, we should reconnect with our humanity and demand change
from the true source of our hardship: an out-of-control corporate class. Let’s
be clear: We have found the culprit, and it’s not our fellow workers and
certainly not children.
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