It can be done!
Low-wage immigrants win back pay
By Milt Neidenberg
New York
How sweet it is. A group of immigrant, undocumented workers
in this city has won a substantial settlement following a
bitter, protracted struggle.
Thirty-one poor and oppressed workers, mostly Mexicans, have
won a settlement of $315,000 from a powerful group of merchants
and business leaders who dominate the produce market in this
city. Their victory is particularly significant in light of a
deepening recession and a war climate in which President George
W. Bush and company are bashing immigrant workers, whether they
come from Mexico, the Middle East or Central Asia.
To defend their unfair labor practices, the greengrocers had
formed the Korean Produce Association, which represents 820
merchants. Contrary to the myth that these merchants came from
South Korea as oppressed workers, most were financially well
off before they arrived here. In their fight against union
organization, they falsely charged this very diverse union with
racism and an anti-Korean bias.
The first breakthrough in this hard-fought struggle came a
year ago. Two merchants agreed to pay 10 workers over $100,000
in back pay and damages. New York State Attorney General Elliot
Spitzer, who released the information and brokered both
settlements, said other agreements are in the works.
Local 169 of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial &
Textile Workers has been waging a valiant fight for over two
years to organize these oppressed workers. Local 169 Staff
Representative Mike Donovan told reporters after this second
victory: "In the green-grocery industry alone, there are some
2,000 stores employing about 14,000 people, most of them
Mexicans.
"In 100 percent of the 100 stores our union looked at, we
found [federal] Fair Labor Standards abuses. Workers were paid
as little as $2.50 an hour and worked as many as 72 hours a
week, with no overtime. They're often threatened with
deportation if they complain."
Criticizing the government for lack of oversight or
accountability, Donovan added, "With union contracts, the
workers would have protection against exploitation." (New York
Daily News, Nov. 25)
Organizing these young workers, whose extreme poverty and
undocumented status have isolated them from many of the workers
around them, demands great sacrifices and stamina. UNITE Local
169, including Mexican workers who were added to the union
staff, spent years picketing some of the stores. They worked
closely, befriending the workers who felt isolated under the
slave-labor conditions imposed by the bosses.
The union reached out to the communities around the
greengrocers, which responded time and again by boycotting the
stores. Local 169 also coordinated the organizing campaign with
anti-sweatshop and living-wage coalitions.
Youths and students joined the union, its allies and other
constituencies at rallies and marches. These struggles, which
included facing up to cops and arrest, were indispensable to
the victories that followed.
International Action Center members volunteered and worked
full-time for the union during the course of this hard-fought
campaign. Recently, Local 169 agreed to turn over the campaign
to organize the greengrocers to the United Food and Commercial
Workers.
This kind of networking is essential to the strategy to
organize the lowest-paid workers, who are subject to immigrant
bashing, racism and ethnic profiling. Anti-worker attacks
emanate not only from bosses such as the greengrocer merchants,
but from giant corporations, agribusiness and all those
employers that dominate the service-oriented industries.
President Bush is a major player. He encourages and cheers
on the powerful multinational corporations and the bankers. He
is aiding them with anti-immigrant, repressive executive orders
violating civil liberties and constitutional rights while
pushing for more racist and punitive laws that would be
immediately implemented by the Justice Department, FBI, and
Immigration and Naturalization Service.
His efforts to get fast-track legislation to speed up a
so-called Free Trade Area of the Americas, encompassing all of
Central and Latin America, are meant to further increase the
flow of oppressed workers who leave their impoverished
homelands to seek jobs here and abroad.
The struggle with the greengrocer merchants has shown how to
respond effectively to the all-out assault against the workers,
the oppressed and the labor movement. In spite of a widening
U.S. war in Central Asia and a deepening global recession,
workers can fight back to get a measure of economic
justice.
As Local 169 Staff Representative Donovan told Workers
World: "The victory of these victimized, low-paid,
multinational workers is a victory for all labor. But we need
many more strong campaigns and many more such victories."
Reprinted from the Dec. 13, 2001, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
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