Immigrant workers march for their rights
By
Teresa Gutierrez
On Oct. 16 immigrants and their supporters will be marching
on Washington. They will be demanding amnesty for undocumented
workers, an end to raids and deportations by the Immigration
and Naturalization Service, work permits for all, fair wages
and an end to the attacks on bilingual education.
Immigrant workers, especially those without documents, make
up the most oppressed sector of the working class in the U.S.
They can be seen bussing tables, working at fruit and vegetable
stands in all hours and weather, picking crops, clipping
hedges, laying bricks, sewing in sweatshops--and all for wages
that force them to work 70 and 80 hours a week just to
survive.
Most are torn between the need to stand up and fight for
their rights and the worry that exposure will bring arrest,
detention and deportation.
All for one and one for all
It is of vital importance to the working class as a whole
that immigrant workers win the rights they are fighting for.
The ability of the bosses to super-exploit one section of labor
puts intense downward pressure on the wages, benefits and
working conditions of all. The only answer is to strengthen
worker solidarity.
Demonstrations like the one in Washington are a wake-up
call, not only to the unions and the progressive movement, but
also to the bosses and corporations that exploit the labor of
immigrants.
For at least two decades the political climate in the U.S.
has not lent itself to great upsurges in the labor or
progressive movement. Unlike times in history when the working
class led great mass struggles, such as in the 1930s and to
some extent the 1960s, this has been a period of great
reaction, with the ruling class on the offensive in every
area.
But this is just the calm before the storm.
The changes in the economy over the last 20 years have laid
the basis for great struggles in the near future by workers and
oppressed, who are already much more union conscious than a
decade ago. The restructuring of industry has eliminated many
of the older unionized jobs and replaced them with lower-paying
jobs, often part-time or temporary, with no union
protection.
The workers joining the labor movement today don't take
unions for granted. They know they have to fight for them.
Labor law in the U.S. is backward compared to the rest of
the industrialized capitalist world. There are great obstacles
to becoming organized--and these obstacles are multiplied for
immigrants. Nevertheless, there have been dramatic gains for
workers in industries once considered too difficult to
organize--like the home health aides in southern California who
this year won the largest organizing drive in recent
history.
Working class has changed
The social composition of the working class has changed
forever. Today's work force has more African Americans as well
as Latinos, Asians, Arabs, Africans and other immigrant women
and men. More women than ever are working for wages--women now
make up nearly half the workforce.
The typical worker is no longer a white male. There are
fewer high-paid "skilled" workers and more semi-skilled than
ever before. Many more people now work in services because of
new technology that has reduced the workforce in heavy
industry.
Most of today's immigrants come to the U.S. because of the
desperate conditions in their homelands. Particularly in the
formerly colonized areas, the effort to realize economic
independence and justice in the world system of trade and
commerce has been brutally thwarted by imperialism. Military
interventions against progressive regimes have been followed by
oppressive economic, political and social policies of the
U.S.-dominated International Monetary Fund and the World
Bank.
The resulting poverty has forced millions of Third World
workers to seek a livelihood elsewhere.
That is why so many immigrants come from countries like
those in Central America where the progressive forces were
massacred by U.S.-sponsored military regimes.
The addition of workers from all over the world to the U.S.
workforce can spur the kind of international working class
solidarity that is absolutely necessary in fighting today's
global corporations. There must be no borders in the workers'
struggle!
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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