Defeat the guest-worker program

Chris Silvera WW photo

This is the 130th [anniversary] of Haymarket, which was mostly immigrant workers. The labor movement and immigrant rights movement have always been one, in which the boss seeks to create divisions to weaken that movement. So I don’t really believe that we created something new on May 1; I think we struck a chord that made people get up and risk everything to be on the front line of change.

I believe that labor needs to make some of the same demands that capital has made. Capital has said that it wants to tear down borders and have unfettered freedom to surge the globe looking for profit. If that is true, why can’t labor have the same unfettered right in looking for work?

What we have to do here is to build and make this movement significant, so we have got to tie in mainstream labor, and we have to make sure the mainstream labor movement has a focus that is purely in the interest of workers from a global perspective.

So where is the labor movement in this struggle? What is the demand of labor and is it different from the Democratic Party, and does the Democratic Party have a demand that’s even worth listening to? The Democratic Party is a failure, certainly for working people. I suspect that if you are on the upper side of a quarter million dollars a year, then the Democratic Party is as favorable to you as the Republican Party.

I can’t tell you what the significance of the immigrant rights movement is, but what I can tell you is that we have positioned ourselves to become a very important part of this resolution. But Congress is running with a group of people who you didn’t see in the march. Most are on the payroll, and those people are going to be the ones to say yes to guest worker programs.

In enslavement time you had slaves and indentured servants. The indentured servant is the original guest worker, and their situation was so bad that at many times, they banded with enslaved people to seek freedom. So the guest worker is an absolute no-starter in trying to resolve this issue. It’s got to be defeated up front.

If the unions properly got on board with this solution, I believe we’d have three, four million members quick. We have an opportunity that we have not had since 1886.

The eight-hour day didn’t just come in one day because of Haymarket. Hay market was one day in years of building what were known as “Eight-Hour Leagues.” So we are gonna have to continue to fight. We have to build a series of actions that are coordinated and effective, because we have proven we have the numbers and the power.

—Chris Silvera, secretary-treasurer, Teamsters Local 808; chair, Teamsters National Black Caucus