Author: Fight Back

On April 17, a bipartisan group of eight senators released their proposal for “Comprehensive Immigration Reform.” While there are parts of the proposal that would improve the lives of millions of undocumented, it falls far short of a real legalization plan and it includes many bad parts that cannot be supported. What needs to be done, first and foremost, is to rebuild a mass and militant movement for legalization and against more militarization of the border and against workplace repression. We need to go all out to mobilize for May 1 and keep the pressure on politicians to come up with a better immigration reform bill.

The proposal would establish a temporary “Registered Provisional Immigrant” (RPI) visa for the undocumented that would have to be renewed after six years. This RPI visa would help millions of undocumented to come out of the shadows and to work without fear of ICE raids. The RPI visa would let the former undocumented get drivers licenses and be able to drive without fear of having their cars impounded. Many of the undocumented who have not been able to visit their relatives outside the U.S. for many years would be able to travel with the RPI visa. Their families here in the U.S, which include many legal permanent residents and native-born and naturalized U.S. citizens, would not have to continue to live in fear of being broken up by deportations.

While the RPI visa would improve the lives of the undocumented, it falls far short of the “legalization for all” that the community needs. Unlike legal permanent residency, those with an RPI visa cannot sponsor their family members to come to the U.S., nor can they apply for citizenship. There is an arbitrary cut-off date of Dec. 31, 2011 to qualify for the RPI visa, excluding all those who came in 2012.

The proposal also sets up four major barriers to legalization. First of all, there is at least a ten year wait in order to become a legal permanent resident. Second, there is a requirement that the U.S.-Mexico border be declared “secure” and that 90% of the undocumented who try to cross are being turned away before any of those with RPI visas can legalize. Third, there is the requirement that anyone with an RPI visa show that they had no more than 60 days of unemployment at any one spell in order to legalize. Finally, those on an RPI visa must apply for a new visa under a new system that emphasizes education and English speaking ability, which could exclude many from Mexico and Central America.

A major exception to this long wait and many barriers is made for undocumented youth who have a college degree or who have served in the military, and for agricultural workers, who only have to wait five years to become legal permanent residents. In addition the “DREAM” youth can apply for citizenship immediately after becoming legal permanent residents. On the other hand, the requirements to qualify are stricter than from the DACA (Deferred Action for Child Arrivals), since the DACA only requires a high-school degree, while the DREAM part of this proposal requires a college degree or two years progress towards a bachelor’s degree or military service.

There are other positive parts of the proposal, such as the expansion of immigration by immediate family of legal residents (spouses and minor children), as well as a number of smaller fixes to problems in the current immigration law.

On the other hand, the proposal would eliminate visas for siblings of U.S. citizens and married children of citizens who are over 31 years old. There is no recognition of same sex partners in the proposal. And the proposal puts into law an effort to shift immigration away from family reunification to a point system that favors those who speak English and are highly educated. Instead of the ideal, written on the Statue of Liberty, of “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free…” there is a philosophy of give us your leisured, your rich, your highly educated that serve the needs of U.S. corporations.

The proposal vastly increases temporary worker programs to the benefit of U.S. businesses. It increases the number of skilled temporary workers (H-1b) from 65,000 per year to as much as 180,000 per year. The bill also establishes a new temporary worker program for unskilled workers that ramps up to 75,000 per year. These visas are not guest workers as they could switch employers and could apply for permanent residency.

But worst of all, the proposal begins, and is very clearly focused on, increasing the militarization of the border, including the deployment of the National Guard. The current policy is killing hundreds of people trying to get into the U.S.; the current bill would increase this. In addition, the proposal wants to expand a federal program to arrest, charge, convict and jail undocumented migrants on criminal charges for crossing the border. This is another step towards criminalization of the undocumented.

The proposal also wants to step up enforcement in the U.S. It would ramp up the E-verify workplace system, making it mandatory over the next five years. This would facilitate the development of a national ID card system. The proposal also calls for a whole new system to track visitors to the U.S. to make sure that they leave the country. It also maintains the Secure Communities program, so that local police can be an arm of ICE.

There is also scarcely veiled racism in the bill. The Immigration Act of 1990 established a “Diversity Visa” to allow more immigrants from countries that don’t send many people to the U.S. It was widely seen as an effort to allow more Irish to immigrate and to allow for the legalization of undocumented Irish immigrants in the U.S. But over the years the Diversity Visa has become a major path for immigration from Africa. The proposal would eliminate the Diversity Visa, which would cut immigration from Africa in half and at the same time the proposal would add a new visa for immigrants from Ireland!

So what is to be done? Most importantly, we need to reflect on one of the best parts of the bill, the relatively faster legalization, with fewer barriers, of the undocumented youth. Why did they get a better deal? Because the undocumented youth carried out mass protests and militant actions, under the slogan, “Undocumented and unafraid.” What is needed more than ever is to rebuild a mass and militant movement for legalization that widens the legalization for youth by dropping the college and military service requirements, and opens up faster legalization for all the undocumented, not just youth and agricultural workers. This struggle for legalization for all needs to go hand in hand with the fight against more militarization of the border and the moves to expand E-verify.

Jacksonville, FL – On April 21, union members from the Jacksonville area gathered in the IBEW 177 union hall to hear labor activist and author Joe Burns speak about his book, Reviving the Strike. Burns, an attorney and negotiator for the Association of Flight Attendants-Communication Workers of America (AFA-CWA), spoke about the struggles of working people in the U.S. and argued that reviving the strike weapon is the key to rebuilding the labor movement.

The event was organized by the North Florida Central Labor Council and the newly founded Young Workers Group in Jacksonville. The small but lively crowd included members of many different unions, including the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the Communication Workers of America, the United Faculty of Florida, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers.

Burns began with a 25-minute presentation. Beginning with the importance of the strike in building the labor movement, Burns said, “In the 1930s, 400,000 workers engaged in sit-down strikes, everyone from autoworkers to women at Woolworth’s counters. They took over the workplaces and demanded collective bargaining and that their rights be upheld, including their right to strike.”

Burns continued, “The strike really did create the modern labor movement, but even if you look at the 1950s and 1960s, trade unionists were able to use the strike to transform an entire way of life for a whole generation of working Americans.”

The next part of Burns’ presentation focused on the negative effects of trade unions losing and abandoning the strike weapon. Among others, he pointed out, “If you look at income distribution patterns in the U.S., right now without the strike we’re back to where we were in the 1920s, in terms of the skewed distribution of income and wealth in this country.”

After his presentation, Burns led a robust group discussion and fielded questions from the audience.

Many of the union workers who attended were public-sector employees, whose right to strike is severely limited or banned by pro-business state and federal laws. Several questions focused on the illegality of strikes for public sector workers, to which Burns noted that most of the early strikes that won in the early 20th century were also illegal.

Burns noted a study done on strikes in the 1960s, the 1970s and the 1980s. “Surprisingly, they found that workers struck at higher levels in states that outlawed strikes or collective bargaining then they did in states that allowed striking.” He explained this trend, saying that “Workers had no choice. The only way workers could force them to the table was to engage in an illegal strike and during the high-point of public unionism, you could win those strikes, get rid of those sanctions and win a better contract.”

The discussion eventually came to ways of getting rank-and-file workers more invested in their union. The audience voiced enthusiasm for a point that Burns raised about building a culture of solidarity in the union through day-to-day struggles. “Solidarity is not something that was just existing in the workplace. It was something built in the course of struggle. People drew courage from each other and they grew together by successfully confronting their employers.”

One audience member brought up the camouflage uniforms worn by striking Mine Workers in the successful Pittston Coal Strike of 1989 as an example of this culture of solidarity in action. In Reviving the Strike, Burns wrote that these uniforms “helped create group cohesion and fostered an identity of a militant unit of guerrilla fighters up against a corporate behemoth.”

The historic Chicago Teachers Union strike of 2012, which used Burns’ book as an inspiration, and the small series of strikes at Wal-Mart Supermarkets across the country in the same year came up in the discussion several times. In both of these instances, the willingness of a militant minority to stand up to management and lead inspired other workers to join the striking efforts.

“We think of the 1930s as a period when there were all these militant workers and they were just down for it [striking],” said Burns. “But that’s not what it was like. The reason that the UAW did sit-down strikes was because they couldn’t have won an election in the entire plant. They had a minority of the workplace who was willing to step forward, which is usually how it is.” Burns called this “‘Courage built upon courage,” meaning that the more people that stepped forward, the more people had confidence.

After the lively discussion, the audience gave Burns a round of applause. Members expressed interest in forming a discussion group on Reviving the Strike and looked forward to Burns’ next book, which focuses on public-sector unions.

At the hospital of the University of Illinois at Chicago, one of the most recognized union stewards is Randy Evans of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 73. With 33 years of employment as a Building Service Worker (BSW) in Environmental Services, and 18 years of service to his coworkers as a steward, you would think that Randy would have a place of honor at the medical center.

But in December, he was given a two-week suspension without pay. The charges against Randy stemmed from his defense of a coworker in his duties as a union steward.

What led management to suspend Randy?

Several of the departments in the hospital, including Environmental Services, Central Sterile Supply, Patient Transport, Dining Services and Material Management, have a terrible history of violations of the union contract, such as failing to meet the deadlines for providing information, failing to respond to requests for meetings and allowing grievances to go unanswered.

Randy won’t tolerate the union contract being treated this way, and is forceful in demanding the respect of these managers. This is the first reason that management has attacked him.

Randy is their scapegoat

Why is this suspension happening now? In November 2011, there was a murder that occurred in the Medical Center. A man killed his ex-wife after management put them both on the same shift, together with her new boyfriend. All three employees involved worked in Environmental Services and the incident exposed the failures of the management methods in that department.

These methods include:
— Disrespect of employees: BSWs should be recognized for their contribution to keeping the hospital free of germs. Instead they get yelled at and told to work harder.
— Overwork: As the medical center has multiplied the number of patients it sees, the work load on every building service worker has increased.
— Denial of benefit time usage: Management doesn’t want employees to use benefit time for vacation and sick leave.
— Divide and conquer: In order to keep workers from uniting against them, older workers are pitted against new; men against women; and nationality against nationality.
–Discipline equals punishment: Workers get written up all the time. They work in fear of being moved to a new assignment or work area; of the loss of pay if suspended; and the ultimate threat of loss of their job.

Shadow of the plantation

There’s another underlying reason for the attack on Evans: racism. UIC is an employer whose labor relations were built on white supremacy. When UIC was built in the 1960s, the administration created a racist, two tier pay system. Mostly white workers in Urbana were paid one rate; mostly Black workers in Chicago were paid $1 or $2 an hour less. This system stayed in place until Local 73 grew strong enough to win the Urbana pay grades for all (see Fight Back article http://www.fightbacknews.org/2001fall/chiworkerswin.htm )

What management gives with a tea spoon, they take away with a shovel

When the workers – Black, Latino and white – won that victory in 2001, it didn’t bring an end to the system of racist discrimination at UIC. At the time of the victory over the pay disparity, there were almost 400 BSWs at UIC. Today there are only 250. This was management’s revenge for the workers victory in 2001: downsizing. Today, each worker is doing the work that had been done by two.

Taken together, this labor system is what led to the toxic climate in which the murder took place last year. Rather than dealing with this underlying tension, management is sweeping it under the rug. Are workers angry? Of course they are! Working hard in the face of disrespect, while top bosses get rich off their labor, makes people angry.

The murder last year put the spotlight on hospital administration. Now management is taking the attention off them and putting it on Steward Evans.

Local 73: The only defense workers have

With management like this, workers need union stewards like Evans, a person who is not afraid to speak up.

Local 73 is defending Evans. The union has grieved the suspension, will file an unfair labor practice charge against UIC for targeting a steward for union activity and continue to fight managers who behave like this.

This is not a threat: this is a promise. Human Resources at UIC needs to learn the difference.