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Fired in ‘silent’ ICE raid

Pacific Steel workers fight back

Published Feb 20, 2012 10:35 AM

Over 200 Pacific Steel Casting Company workers were fired just before Christmas in a “silent” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid in Berkeley, Calif. This past year has seen record high deportations by U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s ICE as a result of their “employment eligibility audits,” which check social security numbers of workers, as submitted on federal I-9 forms. There were a record 2,338 I-9 audits by June for the 2011 fiscal year, according to the E-Verify I-9 blog.

The majority of fired Pacific Steel workers had from five to 20 years seniority. In addition to losing their income, the firings caused these workers and their families to lose health care benefits and all the money which they had paid into their pension plans.

Pacific Steel Casting is among the largest steel casting companies remaining in the U.S. Approximately one-third of their work force were fired. Despite being a unionized company based in Berkeley — which is a “sanctuary” city for undocumented workers — working conditions at the plant are awful, including substandard pay, denial of proper breaks and inadequate eating facilities. These workers put up with poor conditions for decades out of fear of losing their jobs, as now has occurred.

Reportedly, ICE has stepped up the quantity and intensity of these I-9 audit raids on the presumption that those fired as a result would “self-deport.” The Berkeley workers, members of Glass, Molders, Pottery, Plastics, and Allied Workers Local 164B, are resisting this attempt to remove them from their families and communities. They instead have organized, garnering the support of a host of community organizations. They are holding a March for Dignity in Berkeley on Feb. 17.

They are determined to fight not only their own losses, but to fight against the exploitation of their documented co-workers, as well. They are filing a class action lawsuit against Pacific Steel Casting for systematically denying all workers, undocumented and documented, proper lunch breaks and an adequate cafeteria.

Friday’s March for Dignity starts in front of Berkeley City Hall. The Committee of Fired Workers from the Pacific Steel Casting Company are asking marchers to wear white shirts.

This struggle has also brought to light the case of Jesús Navarro, one of the Pacific Steel workers, fired after 14 years, who was next in line for a kidney transplant. When his immigration status was revealed, he was taken off the list. The case so outraged people all over the country that upwards of 50,000 signed petitions demanding that the University of California San Francisco Medical Center’s transplant center put him back on the list and conduct the transplant, for which he has a willing donor.

In response to UCSF’s excuse that transplant patients need to be able to show the means for receiving long-term drugs and medical care to prevent organ rejection, the California Nurses Association demanded in an online petition and letter that UCSF “provide all follow-up medical care and needed medicine, regardless of whether the cost is covered by medical insurance.” They also demanded that UCSF publicly state that they “will no longer ask any patient about their immigration status … deny care based on immigration status … take affirmative steps to ensure that all patients at UCSF are treated equally without regard to their immigration status or nationality.”

The overwhelming public outrage has forced UCSF to put Jesús back on the list. They claim to be working out a long-term support plan for him.