Unions to Support Day-Labor Groups

When I post about immigration, I often get taken to task in comments for not separating legal and illegal immigration. But for a lot of questions the label you attach to the laborer - legal or illegal - doesn't much matter for the economics of the problem.

Unions are embracing day laborers who are often undocumented because they believe that improving the working conditions for this group helps workers participating in these markets more generally, legal or not. Unions also hope it is a group that will be likely to join unions and help with falling membership:

AFL-CIO Moves to Embrace Day Laborers, by Karin Brulliard, Washington Post: The AFL-CIO agreed today to work with a national network of day laborer organizers, a move that could bring representatives for some of the most publicly scorned illegal immigrants to the policymaking table of the nation's largest union group and provide day workers with a potent ally in local efforts to establish hiring halls and national campaigns for legalization.

Six years after organized labor's pivotal policy shift toward support of illegal workers, the resolution, approved by the AFL-CIO executive council in Chicago, further cemented the struggling labor movement's embrace of illegal immigrants as key parts of the American workforce and potential union members. The partnership does not require day laborers to join unions.

Research indicates about three-fourths of day laborers are in the country illegally. For the day laborers and their grassroots organizers, ... the historic agreement offers access to perks of big organized labor: Teams of expert lobbyists and lawyers and a chance to devise strategies on work-related issues with local councils of the 9 million-member AFL-CIO, which for decades saw illegal immigrants as threats to native workers and pushed for sanctions against them.

"Day laborers in the United States often face the harshest forms of workplace problems, and this exploitation hurts us all," AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said... "Through this watershed partnership, we will strengthen our ability to promote and enforce the workplace rights for all workers -- union and non-union, immigrant and non-immigrant alike." ...

Day laborers and their hiring sites have been targeted by anti-illegal immigration activists and legislation. ... Officials said the groups will immediately begin pushing for workers' rights and an immigration bill that includes a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants but not a guest-worker provision, something the AFL-CIO has maintained will create a second-class workforce beholden to employers who control and could exploit their immigration status. ...

Most day labor jobs are in residential construction, an area where unions have little presence. And day laborers frequently fall victim to the kind of employer abuse and workplace hazards unions have long battled...

Not everyone agrees that joining forces with illegal immigrants is good for organized labor. In Allentown, Pa., unions of carpenters, iron workers and sheet metal workers are backing a city law prohibiting the hiring of illegal immigrants, arguing it would help eliminate a source of cheap labor that undercuts wages.

A bit more from the WSJ:

AFL-CIO Signs Partnership With Day-Laborer Association, by Kris Maher, WSJ: The AFL-CIO announced a partnership agreement with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, the country's biggest day-laborer association, signaling the ailing mainstream labor movement's wider embrace of immigrant workers.

Some experts see the move as an attempt by the AFL-CIO to leverage the energy and dynamism of the fast-growing day-laborer movement and its organizers and emerging labor leaders. "It's a bold move by the AFL-CIO of targeting an increasingly critical part of the work force that could well be receptive to unions," said Harley Shaiken, a labor and economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley. ...

The move presents some risks for the AFL-CIO. In the past, many rank-and-file union members have been wary of day laborers because they were thought to undercut the wages of unionized workers. In the current immigration debate, some groups have singled out day laborers for criticism, because many are undocumented workers. "It will no doubt provoke anti-immigrant groups," Mr. Shaiken said. ...