UE Convention Resolutions
Stand Up for the Rights
Of Immigrant Workers
UE’s vision of solidarity is enshrined in the preamble to our constitution. Today that vision is tested as employers seek to exploit divisions between immigrant and native-born workers in order to drive down wages and strip away the hard-won rights of workers. Throughout our history, UE has always recognized that dividing workers only benefits employers.
For hundreds of years, immigrants have come to the U.S. seeking a better life for themselves and their families. They have been driven from their native countries by hunger, political repression and a lack of decent jobs. Today, these conditions are primarily the result of U.S. military and trade policies. The same trade deals that have cost U.S. workers millions of jobs have wreaked havoc upon the economies of developing countries. In Mexico, for example, 1.3 million farmers have gone bankrupt because of NAFTA. Starvation and unemployment drive the world’s workers and poor to leave their home countries. There is no solution to massive immigration, just as there is no solution to the exodus of many U.S. jobs, as long as U.S. foreign and trade policies guarantee that workers in other countries are unable to win substantially improved wages and benefits.
The corporate elite creates general insecurity about employment. This fuels an ongoing attempt by anti-labor politicians, hateful vigilante groups and right-wing media figures to blame economic woes on immigrants, diverting the attention of native-born workers. Studies show that immigrants contribute far more to U.S. society than they receive. Undocumented immigrants pay taxes the same as the rest of us, but do not receive social security benefits, and are often denied equal access to public education, college scholarships, drivers licences, healthcare, food stamps, and other benefits.
The ability of government and employers to deny immigrant workers decent wages and conditions undermines the wages and conditions of all. Employers benefit by exploiting a category of workers without meaningful labor rights in order to chip away at hard-earned wages and working conditions and prevent future gains.
The Supreme Court’s Hoffman Plastic Compounds ruling in March 2002 decreed that immigrant workers fired for organizing a union are not entitled to back pay or reinstatement. The Court decided, in effect, that immigrant workers have no rights that bosses need respect. Employers now routinely use the Hoffman ruling to fire union activists.
Social Security Administration no-match notices are used by employers to terrorize immigrant workers and squash their labor rights. This situation will worsen under new Homeland Security regulations that grant employers even more freedom to use no-match letters to discriminate against immigrant workers trying to improve their working conditions. Many UE locals have faced such attempts by employers to use no-match letters to bust our Union.
U.S. immigration enforcement is discriminatory and racist. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents use heavy-handed raids to terrorize communities and strike fear in workplaces throughout the country. Families are often ripped apart in the process. Children are left in school while parents are deported.
Despite these obstacles, immigrant workers are fighting back. In response to anti-immigrant legislation they organized the largest worker protests our nation has ever seen. On May Day in 2006 and 2007 hundreds of members of UE Locals 1110, 1421, 1103, 1104, 1101 and others marched alongside millions of immigrant workers in defense of basic workers’ rights. These mobilizations illustrate the stake that all workers in the U.S. have in defending one another, regardless of immigration status. Despite the setback posed by the Hoffman decision, immigrant workers are organizing in greater numbers. Our success as a union and as a labor movement in organizing immigrants – some of the lowest-paid and most disadvantaged workers in the U.S. – can only strengthen our hand in dealing with the bosses.
As a result of the mobilizations for immigrants’ rights during the past two years, the U.S. Congress considered long-overdue legislation to legalize many undocumented immigrant workers. This legislation failed under the weight of too many compromises in favor of employers and pressure from far-right anti-immigrant politicians.
Several local governments have passed anti-immigrant ordinances designed to harass undocumented immigrants. Hazleton, Pennsylvania and Riverside, New Jersey have since had their laws rescinded.
The proposed guest-worker program would recreate the failed "bracero" program of the 1940s, which ripped families apart and denied workers basic labor protections. Any program that makes a worker’s visa contingent upon their job or employer creates conditions for exploitation and deprives workers of the right to organize.
Proposals to militarize the southern U.S. border do not address the root cause of immigration; but only deepen the humanitarian crisis. These proposals, if enacted, would function only to divert needed government funds from our schools and infrastructure toward White House cronies in the defense industry in the form of no-bid boondoggle contracts.
Our immigration system is broken. We need comprehensive immigration reform, including legislation that ensures legalization of immigrant workers, unification of immigrant families, access to education for immigrant children and the overturn of the Hoffman Plastics decision.
Immigrants built this country and have played a central role in our union since its inception. All workers, regardless of immigration status, must have the right to form unions, to file complaints against unfair treatment without fear of reprisal, to receive unemployment, disability and workers’ compensation benefits, to have access for themselves and their families to affordable housing, healthcare, education, and transportation, and to enjoy what few protections and remedies the law provides.
Successful fights for the rights of immigrant workers on the job and in society are possible. UE must work with other unions, religious and community groups to fight collectively for legalization and against anti-immigrant laws and sentiment.
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 70th UE CONVENTION:
- Demands that Congress enact comprehensive immigration reform legislation that:
- Includes a legalization program, allowing all immigrants living in the U.S. in the year 2007 to remain here permanently and without penalty;
- Protects worker’ rights for both current and future immigrants, including overturning the Hoffman Plastics decision;
- Prioritizes family unification;
- Protects our civil liberties;
- Liberalizes political asylum procedures;
- Rejects guest worker programs;
- Repeals the REAL ID Act;
- Rejects "English-only" measures as a divisive tool;
- Demands an immediate moratorium on all ICE raids, arrests, deportations, harassment, seizures and other abuses of undocumented workers;
- Calls upon all UE locals to educate their immigrant members about their rights, and to educate non-immigrant members about the oppressions faced by their immigrant brothers and sisters;
- Encourages UE locals to work with local immigrants rights coalitions, unions, churches and community groups to assist undocumented workers, repeal employer sanctions; streamline citizenship procedures; ensure passage of a general legalization program and win fair treatment for all immigrants.
- Calls on UE locals with immigrant members to educate employers on the rights of immigrant workers and the employers’ right to resist ICE harassment and intimidation and on the perils of ICE’s voluntary enforcement initiatives;
- Denounces anti-immigrant laws and initiatives nationwide, including any that would deny housing or public services to immigrants and those that would allow local police to enforce federal immigration laws;
- Denounces anti-immigrant, vigilante hate groups;
- Encourages UE locals to assist their immigrant members in attaining documented status and citizenship if they so desire;
- Demands that state motor vehicle agencies change policies and programs that make it impossible for immigrants to own and operate vehicles as this unjustly limits their opportunities and access to work, education and services;
- Urges UE locals to negotiate contract language that:
- Protects the jobs and contract rights of all UE members, regardless of immigration status;
- Allows undocumented workers to update their immigration status without loss of rights;
- Prevents the employer from taking adverse action against an employee in the event of the receipt of a Social Security "no-match" letter;
- Prevents the employer from participating in voluntary ICE enforcement programs;
- Obligates the employer to refuse entry to ICE agents who do not possess a valid warrant and notify the Union if contacted by ICE;
- Requires the company to supply an independent translator when communicating on any important matter with a worker not fluent in English;
- Makes available copies of the contract in each language spoken by a workers in the bargaining unit, as decided by the local and consistent with civil rights law;
- Calls upon UE at all levels to continue to develop an analysis of the real causes of worker migration to the U.S. and elsewhere, and to provide education and materials for UE members so we can better understand this issue and effectively build unity.