Suman Raghunathan

Union Yes! (Coming Soon in Another Language Near You)

I love it when I can actually write about small yet monumental victories on immigration.They’ve been few and far between these days.

In this case, it’s the victory of immigrant delivery workers over some crooked restaurant employers who, in the face of a growing revolt against their unfair labor practices, are raising wages for their workers in some of Manhattan’s trendiest restaurants.

Despite the discouraging conventional wisdom on the demise of the US labor movement, there’s more good news: immigrant workers are getting the union bug. Literally.

According to a new Migration Policy Institute report released yesterday, low-wage, often undocumented immigrant workers are increasingly joining the union shop – and showing how the future of our nation’s unions lies in the hands and hearts of immigrant workers.

The numbers speak for themselves: according to the report's analysis of Census (Current Population Survey, for those stats junkies out there) data, the number of foreign-born union workers increased by a whopping 30 percent between 1996 and 2006. That’s over 2 million immigrants who are represented by a union – 400,000 more who are saying ‘union yes!’ (in various languages, and in growing numbers.) Mind you, this all happened while the number of native-born union members tanked by nearly 10 percent.

After last year’s large-scale immigrant rights protests and this year’s failed bid at humane and comprehensive immigration reform, immigrant activists and workers’ rights groups such as New York’s stellar Chinese Staff and Workers Association are noting an upswing in the number of immigrant workers collaborating with legal groups like the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund on lawsuits and protests aimed at exploitative employers like New York City’s Saigon Grill. These workers, who regularly make as little as $1.65 per hour slogging in chi-chi restaurants and grocery stores in urban meccas like New York and Los Angeles, are increasingly telling owners they’ve had enough – and joining the picket line and the union hall.

In fact, the Saigon Grill protest started with only 30 workers, who’ve been joined in solidarity by hundreds of other immigrants on the picket line.

Employers are well-advised to pay attention to this trend: unions certainly have. Immigrant and labor advocates remember the earth-shattering (and long-sought) victory in the late 1990’s when the AFL-CIO came out to support comprehensive immigration reform. Despite the divide and conquer effect of this spring’s immigration reform proposals (can anyone say horrid guest worker program?), all the major unions (including SEIU,the AFL-CIO, and Unite Here) supported legalizing the nation’s 12 million undocumented immigrants.

I couldn’t say it any better than the Washington Post:

Immigrants have [also] emerged as the cavalry in the United States' flagging labor movement, which is embracing a group of people long assailed by union members for driving down wages.

Slowly but surely, unions have realized that if they go to bat for immigrant workers, those workers can in turn help revitalize the shrinking union movement in this country – particularly in an age of growing income inequality and shrinking pensions. And once immigrant workers are unionized, they'll no longer be bringing down wages.

Hmm, wondering why that sea change actually happened? DMI has written before about how and why unions get it. More specifically, that’s meant understanding immigrant rights is (in addition to legalizing undocumented workers already in the country and honoring their contributions to the American economy) fundamentally also about workers’ rights. Once workers are legalized, employers don’t have a leg up on their undocumented workers – and won’t be able to force them to accept substandard wages and working conditions. As a result, American workers won’t have to compete with the rock-bottom pay and unsafe work conditions imposed on immigrants, because legalization will have leveled the playing field by taking immigration status out of the equation.

More and more, whether it’s via the Immigration Workers Freedom Ride, the Justice for Janitors Campaign, or union organizers joining with immigrant groups to protest the current debacle over No-Match Social Security letters, unions increasingly understand their future strength and relevance, even, lies in foreign-born members who invariably have a huge stake in leveraging union membership and collective bargaining to stand up to shady employers who hold their immigration status above their heads like a dirty letter to accept shamefully low pay and working conditions that are unsafe at best and primitive at the worst.

Clearly, immigrants get the nexus between immigrant and workers’ rights as well. What’s new is how immigrant workers are forging their own brand of union politics – melding secret union drives and picket lines with filing lawsuits against exploitative employers – and how it’s actually proving effective. The 'who' piece of this story is also different: this time it isn’t auto workers or stevedores taking a chance on the picket line, it’s restaurant delivery workers and others at the bottom of the economy’s caste system. It’s these folks who are the most at the mercy of shady employers, and who also have the most to gain from unionizing to demand fair pay and working conditions from their employers.

Stay tuned for more on the (literally) changing face of the union movement. And get ready for some real change.

Suman Raghunathan: Author Bio | Other Posts
Posted at 8:05 AM, Aug 29, 2007 in Immigration
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