| ‘Work without Justice’
By ARTHUR JONES
NCR Staff
For most Americans, Labor Day is little more than a punctuation
mark at the tail end of the summer. For “the serfs of the service
economy,” however, those who support most American’s affluent
lifestyle by contributing their low-cost labor to low-cost foods, hotel bills
and less-than-minimum-wage restaurant jobs, Labor Day represents an ideal, a
star they can see but not touch.
In its recent study, “Work Without Justice: Low Wage
Immigrant Laborers,” the Catholic Legal Immigrant Network, which goes by
the acronym CLINIC, describes once again reality for those in the white coats
busing the holiday tables, in the grease-stained coats serving up food 12 hours
a day seven days a week, in the green overalls keeping the resort gardens
manicured, in the crisp uniforms working the toilet bowl brush in the vacated
hotel room and in the sweat-stained shirts and blouses plucking the greens for
the all-you-can-eat salad bar. And those in the hardhats building the next
resort a mile further along the beach.
The foreign-born, states CLINIC, constitute 10 percent of the U.S.
population. They make up 34 percent of those working in private households;
21.4 percent in personal services (hair styling, etc.); 18.5 percent in eating
and drinking places; 12.8 percent in construction.
Eighty-one percent of farm workers are foreign-born.
“They endure,” states the report, “sub-minimum
wages and non-payment of wages, or receive pay checks and do not earn enough to
escape poverty. From 1968 to 1994 the incomes of the bottom fifth of wage
earners increased only 8 percent, a decrease in real dollars. By contrast, the
incomes of the top fifth increased by 44 percent.” At the same time, these
sacrificing, impoverished laborers manage to send home $30 billion annually to
families poorer than themselves.
“Work Without Justice” reports that despite recent
successes at organizing immigrant laborers, membership in unions has declined
from 39 percent of workers in 1954 to 13.9 percent today, “with lower
rates in service industries.”
In the absence of unionization, low-wage laborers depend heavily
on federal and state enforcement of workplace safety and anti-discrimination
regulations, but the Department of Labor has only 942 “wage and hour”
investigators for the entire country.
When workers try to organize, other laws -- those of the
Immigration and Naturalization Service -- can be suddenly used against them.
CLINIC reports on a 1999 roundup at the Holiday Inn Express in St.
Paul, Minn., when an organizing drive took place.
The Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union Local 17 helped
organize the housekeeping staff. On Aug. 26, the employees voted in favor of
the union, 11 to 7. “Before the bargaining meeting,” CLINIC reports,
“hotel management scheduled a housekeeping meeting. The general manager
ushered housekeepers into a conference room where they were greeted by an INS
agent who asked for their papers. When none of the workers produced their
papers, they were handcuffed and told they would be deported to
Mexico.”
“They made us feel like criminals, when all we were doing was
working,” said one housekeeper who, with the others, was taken to an INS
detention center. Most were transferred to county jails to await removal
hearings. The housekeeper’s manager told two workers that management had
called INS because they had voted yes for the union.
The union filed an unfair labor practices complaint, the National
Labor Relations Board ruled against Holiday Inn; the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission found the Latino workers’ civil rights had been
violated, and the hotel settled the case earlier this year.
Things are no better elsewhere. In 1999, as a community boycott of
its green grocery stores began, the New York store chain Adinah’s Farm
threatened or tried to bribe employees who signed union organizing cards.
“The owner tried to force workers to sign a document that said they were
only working eight hours a day and had all legal holidays off.” Eight
refused to do so. In fact, a typical employee was working 72 hours a week,
earning a weekly $250 non-minimum wage, without overtime, vacation or sick
pay.
The local union doing the organizing, the Union of Needletrades,
Industrial and Textiles Employees -- UNITE -- Local 169, filed an NLRB
complaint for unfair labor practices and a complaint with the Department of
Labor for overtime back pay. This year, as the NLRB ruled against him, the
owner agreed to let the workers join unions.
Meanwhile, the average U.S. garment worker is earning less than
$8,000 a year, the average farm worker $5.94 an hour, and the poultry
production worker $7.82 an hour in an industry where real wages have been
falling steadily since 1980.
For 20 percent of all American workers, those at the bottom, this
Labor Day weekend signals only that every day is an arduous labor day.
Arthur Jones’ e-mail address is
ajones96@aol.com
National Catholic Reporter, September 1,
2000
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