The Wall Street Journal published a worried analysis about the April 10 day of action for immigrant rights, pointing to widespread absenteeism by workers who participated, which forced many employers to shut down.
Workers at an Excel meatpacking plant in Dodge City, Kansas, walked off the job after several workers were disciplined for staying away from work to demonstrate. After they marched into the company cafeteria and announced they wouldn't return to work, management was forced to back down and withdraw the disciplinary action.
In Chicago, workers at the Cobra Metal Workers Corporation were fired after skipping work to participate in the march of 300,000 people on March 10. But they won reinstatement after activists organised by the Chicago Workers Collaborative rallied to their defence. Martin Unzueta, the group's organiser, spoke with Socialist Worker's Lee Sustar about the central role of workers in the new immigrant-rights movement — and the national movement to skip work, to march and protest on May 1.
When Latino workers walked off their jobs on April 10, the employers were suddenly talking about the importance of immigrant labour, and many were fired. Why are workers willing to take this risk?
You can find many workers who can be fired from one job and find work easily in two or three days. We tell them, "You have rights, you've worked there for five years, and you should get compensation". But the reality is that it's not a big priority for them to keep working for one company.
Many of the people we work with are legal residents or citizens. Their problem is their understanding of the law in the US — that they have rights.
If you're a Latino, even if you're a citizen, you're paid $11 or $13 per hour. We can find people who earn $17 or $20 per hour, but there aren't a lot. Because we find institutionalised discrimination.
If you come to a company, maybe they pay $20 per hour. But if they see that you're Mexican, and you don't speak good English, they're going to pay you $13 per hour. This is the big discrimination against the community.
That's why many of those who are marching now are not undocumented immigrants. There are lots of citizens, lots of green cards. They march because this isn't just an issue of regularisation, or of amnesty, or whatever it's going to be.
The thing is that we're discriminated against in this country each time we go to work every day. That's our anger here right now.
Why is the May 1 protest important?
It's important because now the unions are coming with us. We have a coalition — the Service Employees International Union, UNITE HERE, the Steelworkers and the Teamsters — coming together with the community organisations to make May Day the workers' day, like it should have been many, many years ago.
The workers who were killed here in Chicago [on May 1, 1886] were immigrant workers. And this day should be for them.
We had Mexican-American community organisations, but now those coming to our meetings include the Korean community, the Polish community. We're trying to reach the Irish community, and we need to reach the Muslim community.
If the unions don't see what's happening and they miss this, then they are dead.
Are you calling for workers to strike on May 1?
We're not asking people to strike — not exactly. We're using a different strategy. If you request your employer to get this day off, then perhaps you can get an agreement — perhaps in exchange for working more hours the next week.
We're trying to make this a day for the civil rights of immigrant workers. And who in this country wants to be opposed to civil rights? Workers can say, "I know you're the owner, and you make a lot of money from us — are you opposed to our civil rights?" And they'll say, "No, no".
We have a petition the workers can use to request a day off. It doesn't say it, but basically, this gives them protection under the National Labor Relations Act.
[Abridged from Socialist Worker, weekly paper of the US International Socialist Organization. Visit <http://www.socialistworker.org>.]
From Green Left Weekly, April 26, 2006.
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