NLG Labor & Employment Committee

News & Views

This News & Views section contains blogs, reports, law review articles and books, and news articles related to labor and employment law and includes related stories concerning immigrant workers' rights, workers' centers, and other labor and employment related information and research that may be of interest. Although such is very incomplete, we hope you will find it helpful. News stories which are in order of date.

Blogs

Jordan's Blog - click here for our favorite blog

Stupid and Deadly: Undocumented Workers Lured Into Arrest With Promise of Safety Training - Check out this July 11, 2005 posting.

Reports, Law Review articles & Books

Center for Justice, Tolerance & Community

Immigrant Workers Empowerment and Community Building: A Review of Issues and Strategies for Increasing Workforce and Economic Opportunity for Immigrant Workers

Communities Without Borders

Communities Without Borders - press release on David Bacon's new book on the reality of the migrant experience - November 2006

Ellen Dannin

Clck here for Taking Back the Workers' Law: How to Fight the Assault on Labor Rights Cornell University Press 2006
Click here for Why At-Will Employment is Bad for Employers and Just Cause is Good for Them 58 Lab.L.J.5 (2007)

National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum

Asian American Women: Issues, Concerns and Responsive Human and Civil Rights Advocacy (2nd Edition) by Lora Jo Foo (Click here for the paperback version.)
Asian American Women is an exposé of the human and civil rights violations inflicted on Asian American women and their fighting spirit to end the injustices against them. The second edition was published by the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum and updated by Asian American women activists, advocates and organizers who have dedicated their lives to the elimination of the human and civil rights violations described in this book.

National Lawyers Guild Publications

The Social and Economic Consequences of Exclusionary Immigration Laws
by Felix S. Cohen - Oct 1939 issue of the National Lawyers Guild Quarterly (Vol. II, No. 3)
This article discusses the anti-immigrant climate in Congress and the country, that that these attitudes are commonly supported on the theories that (a) immigrants threaten the American standard of living, (b) that immigration increases unemployment, and (c) that immigration lowers the cultural level and menaces the American way of life. It then analyzes facts and statistics to show that each of these arguments are completely wrong (summary by Tova Indritz).

Northeastern University - Center for Labor Market Studies

Foreign Immigration and the Labor Force of the U.S.: The Contributions of New Foreign Immigration to the Growth of the Nation's Labor Force and Its Employed Population, 2000 to 2004

Pew Hispanic Center

Rise, Peak and Decline: Trends in U.S. Immigration 1992-2004
by Jeffrey S. Passel and Roberto Suro

Unauthorized Migrants - Numbers and Characteristics
by Jeffrey S. Passel

UCLA Center for the Study of Urban Poverty

On the Corner: Day Labor in the United States - UCLA Center for the Study of Urban Poverty - January 2006 - This first nationwide study on day laborers found that such workers are a nationwide phenomenon. There are over 117,600 people gathering at more than 500 hiring sites to look for work on a typical day.

News Articles

Immigrant related OSH information. Click here to jump to occupational safety and health issues related to immigrant workers including news and blog articles. You will need to scroll down to the end of that section.

January 10, 2008
Homeland Security's Latest Weapon Against Illegal Immigration Could Cost Legal Workers Their Jobs
Chicago Reader
Tori Marlan
There are almost 18 million discrepancies in the social security database, in about 4 percent of all entries, according to a 2006 report by the SSA's own inspectors. An estimated 71 percent of these (nearly 13 million) pertain to the records of U.S.-born citizens. This article discusses the problems that workers face because of no-match letters and also the ramifications of the recently-proposed Safe-Harbor Procedures for Employers. Anticipating abuse from unscrupulous employers and confusion among good ones, local organizers and activists (UE, Interfaith Worker Justice, Chicago Workers' Collaborative, and other like-minded organizations) formed the Chicago Coalition Against No Match in August. Around this time, UE also launched a no-match hotline to assist workers whose bosses were using the letters as an excuse to threaten or fire them.

May 10, 2007
Update on FLOC in Mexico
FLOC
Ken Barger
The police in Mexico have shown a visible effort in investigating the murder of FLOC staff member Santiago Rafael since widespread calls for justice from around the world.

April 14, 2007
Labor Contractors Suspected; Farm labor Organizer Murdered in Mexico
Counterpunch
Dan La Botz
Santiago Rafael Cruz, an organizer for the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) based in Toledo Ohio, was found murdered in the union's office in Monterrey, Mexico on the morning of April 9. He had been bound hand and foot and beaten to death. Circumstances suggest labor contractors may have had him killed.

March 16, 2007
Local Contractor Accused of Defrauding Day Laborers
Adam Martin
The Examiner
San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris announced charges Thursday against a man who allegedly hired day laborers and then withheld their pay.

March 16, 2007
Unlicensed Contractor Charged in Labor Exploitation Case
The Chronicle
Tyche Hendricks
San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris charged an unlicensed San Francisco construction contractor on THursday with four felony counts of grand theft for allegedly cheating temporary workers out of their wages

March 15, 2007
DA: Man Shortchanges Day Laborers Out of Wages
NBC 11
Prosecutors in San Francisco have filed felony charges against a contractor they said allegedly cheated day laborers out of wages. Abdelmohssen "Mike" Abozaid was arrested on suspicion of picking up workers in San Francisco and not paying them full wages after they performed work, according to District Attorney Kamala Harris.

December 14, 2006
Raids Draw Skepticism From Both Sides in Immigration Debate
Jennifer Talhelm
The Associated Press
A series of raids on meatpacking plants in six states added up to the largest-ever workplace crackdown on illegal immigration. "It breaks my heart when I see the pictures that I saw in this morning?s paper of scared children. That?s not the America of law and order ... of compassion, that I know," said Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar, a Democrat who pushed for the guest-worker bill.

December 13, 2006
U.S. Raids Six Meat Plants in ID Case
Julia Preston
New York Times
In simultaneous dawn raids, federal immigration agents swept into six Swift & Company meatpacking plants in six states yesterday, rounding up hundreds of immigrant workers in what the agents described as a vast criminal investigation of identity theft.

November 14, 2006
Madeira v. Affordable Housing Foundation
The Second Circuit ruled that the New York Scaffold Law was not preempted by the Immigration Reform and Control Act and, therefore, a jury could award damages to an undocumented laborer for his loss of wages and future earnings. The court opined that nothing in IRCA "demands that employers, site owners, or general contractors be absolved from New York-imposed duties of workplace care whenever undocumented aliens provide labor on construction sites."

October 4, 2006
Laguna Beach Is Sued Over Day Laborer Center
Jennifer Delson
LA Times
Conservative advocacy group files suit alleging city violates federal law by funding facility that helps undocumented workers find jobs.

October 2, 2006
Getting it Right
David Bacon
Will a new balance of power in hotels make housekeeperes and cooks the inheritors of the San Francisco's waterfront labor tradition, and lead to the kind of rise in the standard of living that longshoremen experienced decades ago?

August 17, 2006
Post-Katrina Immigrant Workers Sue
Michelle Roberts
Detroit Free Press
Immigrants recruited post-Katrina have filed a lawsuit against Decatur Hotels LLC and its officials after promises of financial stability remain unfulfilled. According to the immigrants' attorney, Decatur has not yet reimbursed costly relocation expenses and hardly provides sufficient work hours. The suit also alleges that Decatur has abused their participation in the H-2B visa program, which prevents workers from working with other employers.

August 3, 2006
Peores Trabajos en el Calor
María Vega
El Diario
Los empleos de construcción (carpinteros, pintores), el trabajo en fábricas y los de jornaleros tienen lo más peligro en el calor. Es responsabilidad del patrón asegurar que los empleados no sufran por el calor.

June 7, 2006
Study Finds Immigrant Workers in New Orleans are Vulnerable
Associated Press, USA Today
Illegal immigrant workers rebuilding New Orleans are vulnerable to exploitation according to a study by professors at Tulane and UC Berkeley.

April 6, 2006
Congress Must Face Reality
David Bacon
TruthOut
Senators will pat themselves on the back this week, for agreeing to their most pro-corporate, anti-immigrant bill in decades. Tens of thousands of people may be forced to leave the US as a result. Millions more would have to become braceros - guest workers on temporary visas - just to continue to labor in the jobs they've had for years.

March 6, 2006
Hotline to help day laborers turn in contractors who cheat
POLICE SAY IMMIGRANTS DESERVE PROTECTION
Ken McLaughlin
San Jose Mercury News
The city of Santa Cruz, which often takes controversial approaches to social issues, has now established what is believed to be the nation?s first hotline for day laborers -- most of whom are undocumented -- to report unscrupulous employers.
The creation of the hotline, announced Monday, swiftly drew complaints from activists who said government should not offer such protections to illegal immigrants. ``The number of illegal immigrants is exploding, and this will only encourage more to come," said Yeh Ling-Ling, executive director of the Oakland-based Diversity Alliance for a Sustainable America.
But police officials, citing reports that employers regularly abuse day laborers, said everyone deserves the protection of the law.

March 3, 2006
Recourse Grows Slim for Immigrants Who Fall Ill
Nina Bernstein
New York Times
When Ming Qiang Zhao felt ill last summer, he lay awake nights in the room he shared with other Chinese restaurant workers in Brooklyn. Though he had worked in New York for years, he had no doctor to call, no English to describe his growing uneasiness.

March 3, 2006
Equality, or Not
David Bacon
TruthOut
Equality has become an unmentionable word in Congress. It doesn't come even once in the 300-page omnibus immigration bill introduced last week by Senator Arlen Specter, nor in any of the others Congress is considering. They all deny equality to millions of people. In the testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which Specter chairs, no one even dares to advocate it. Is this what we stand for?

February 11, 2006
U.S. Officials Defend Ploys to Catch Immigrants
Steven Greenhouse
NY Times
Despite criticism from advocates for immigrants, federal immigration officials said in recent days that they would not forswear the practice of impersonating occupational safety officials to round up illegal immigrants. Last July, federal agents arrested 48 workers at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina on charges of being illegal immigrants after the agents tricked the workers into attending what was billed as a mandatory training session sponsored by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

February 2006
Divided We Fall
David Bacon
Colorlines
If Congress' current proposals for immigration reform pass this year or next, will they help the immigrant workers now doing reconstruction on the Gulf Coast? What about the residents hoping to return home - what might these proposals mean for racial divisions already fanned by New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and syndicated newspaper columnist Ruben Navarette in the wake of the flood?

January 22, 2006
Broad Survey of Day Laborers Find High Level of Injuries and Pay Violations
by Steven Greenhouse
New York Times
The first nationwide study on day laborers has found that such workers are a nationwide phenomenon, with 117,600 people gathering at more than 500 hiring sites to look for work on a typical day. Click here for the National Day Labor Study.

January 16, 2006
Advocate Honored on King Day- Her Cause: Helping Immigrants Feel Safe at Work
Meg Heckman
Concord Monitor
Judy Elliott begins her lessons with words such as safe, dangerous, caution and watch out, simple but crucial terms for the immigrants she helps prepare for jobs in their new country.

January 4, 2006
The Erosion of Worker Safety
Peter Rousmaniere
The Boston Globe
Article about the poor status of Massachusett's worker safety system, particularly as it relates to immigrant workers.

November, 2005
What is My Back Yard? Why Workers' Centers are a Sensible Short-Term Response To the Problems of Low Wage Immigrant Labor
by Dean Hubbard

November, 2005
Lifeline (Laborers' Intl Union of NA)
Challenging Stereotypes of Immigrant Workers

November 7, 2005
Measures to protect Latino workers in Illinois
press release

September 13, 2005
SF Pledges to Use Purchasing Power to Produce Sweatshop Reform
by Lisa Leff
Associated Press
San Francisco supervisors unanimously approved a new law Tuesday that requires city contractors to guarantee in writing that the uniforms, computers and other goods they supply were not made by workers exploited in so-called "sweatshopts."

September 2, 2005
Suit Filed To Block Herndon Labor Site - Group Says Town Is Acting Illegally
by Carol Morello
Washington Post Staff Writer
ABSTRACT: The city of Herndon is being sued by the advocacy group, Judicial Watch, for establishing an official day laborer site. The legally sanctioned site provides an alternative to the parking lot at 7-Eleven. The group filing the suit believes it shouldn?t go forward because it "undermines and violates federal immigration law."

August 15, 2005
Invisible to Most, Immigrant Women Line Up for Day Labor
by NINA BERNSTEIN (NYT) 1542 words
Late Edition - Final , Section A , Page 1 , Column 4
ABSTRACT - Immigrant women line up for day labor on streets of New York City, despite risks; in discreet sidewalk negotiations they are hired at minimum wage or less to work in struggling garment factories in Manhattan, or to do housecleaning in Williamsburg section of Brooklyn; experts say such female shape-ups may be only significant ones of their kind in nation--places where women put their personal safety in jeopardy for few hours of work; almost unobserved, these female shape-ups have doubled in size in recent years; their growth reflects larger overlooked reality: women make up 44 percent of nation?s low-wage immigrant work force; global patterns indicate that women are easily half the immigrant workers flowing to lage metropolitan areas like New York; they depend on one another and their own instincts for safety; women describe their desperation for job, and some of their experiences; photos

August 12 - 18, 2005
Sour Grapes - California's farm workers' endless struggle 40 years later
Marc Cooper, LA Weekly
Arvin, California
When I knock on the door of the Orange Street address I?ve been given in this dusty down-at-the-heels agricultural town, I get only a shrug when I ask for Pedro Cruz. Pedro works the same Valpredo bell-pepper farm as did 41-year-old Salud Zamudio-Rodriguez, who passed out and died in 105-degree heat, one of three California farm workers to die last month.

July 26, 2005
New Bracero Program is Not the Answer
United Farm Workers
"Today, July 26, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing on proposals for comprehensive immigration reform. The voices of hardworking immigrants living in the shadows of our society need to be heard."

July 16, 2005
Community Dialogue on Immigration Reform- Oakland, California
David Bacon
"On Saturday, July 16th, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas visited Oakland's First Congregational Church to hold a dialogue with members of the community, labor organizations and faith groups about her immigration reform proposal - HR 2092, also known as the 'Save America Comprehensive Immigration Act of 2005.'"

July 14, 2005
Judge Rules U.S. Government Not Liable for Migrant Deaths
Michael Kiefer
U.S. District Judge John M. Roll dismissed a wrongful death lawsuit filed agains the U.S. government for the dehydration deaths of 11 undocumented immigrants. The lawsuits blamed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge for their deaths because they denied an application to install "water stations" for immigrants crossing the border. The judge wrote the government 'owed no duty to affirmatively assist trespassers illegally crossing Cabeza Prieta in avoiding the obvious dangers of a hostile desert.'

July 7, 2005
Talking Points on Guest Workers
David Bacon
"Guest workers are given a visa to enter the US to work on a temporary basis. To obtain a guest worker visa, a worker must have an offer of employment, or a job waiting in the US. This requirement sets up a system of labor recruitment, in which labor contractors offer workers jobs, and make the travel arrangements for them to come."

June 23, 2005
One-Quarter Of Day Laborers Hurt On Job
Jordan's Blog
...and more than half cheated out of their wages.
In case you had the impression that immigrant day-laborers are exploited and hurt (or killed) on the job, you were right. More than half of day laborers in the Washington area have been cheated out of their wages and one in four has been harmed on the job, according to a study being released today that tries to sketch a portrait of the informal workers. The study is based on the experiences of 476 day laborers in the District, Northern Virginia and Maryland, who were interviewed last year by a team affiliated with the University of California at Los Angeles. It depicts the typical worker as an industrious Latin American man who earns $991 a month.

June 16, 2005
New York Immigration Coalition Make the Road by Walking
New York State Trial Lawyers Association

June 8, 2005
Housecleaner Sues for Back Wages
Jay Wein
San Francisco Examiner
A Menlo Park woman, with support from La Raza Centro Legal, has filed suit against a former employer, arguing she was abused on the job repeatedly over the last ten years. The employer was allegedly in violation of several workplace safety and compensation regulations.

January 28, 2005
Undocumented Immigrant Workers: What a Deal!
Jordan's Blog

November 2004
The Political Economy of Immigration Reform: The Corporate Campaign for a US Guest Worker Program
Multinational Monitor - November 2004 - VOLUME 25 - NUMBER 11

November/December, 2004
How US Corporations Won the Debate Over Immigration
David Bacon
Washington Free Press - #72
The story documents the way in which over 30 of the largest trade and manufacturing associations in the United States, grouped together in the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition, have promoted the vast expansion of guest worker programs. Today, in Congress, at least two major bills, from both Republicans and Democrats, embody proposals that originate with EWIC.

June, 2004
Foreign Born Workers: trends in fatal occupational injuries, 1996-2001 (pdf)
Monthly Labor Review