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NEWS & LETTERS, October 2004Chicago
day laborers fight for centers
Temporary
labor is growing at a phenomenal rate in this so-called “global”
environment. While not new, there is a growing trend for producers to work in a
permanent temporary status. This maintains them at minimum wage levels without
benefits. These people are technically employed by the agency. But the National
Labor Relations Board has said in the past that people in this situation have a
“double employer” status that allows them to form bargaining units based at
the point of production--giving them the ability to organize into unions.
UNITE-HERE has succeeded in helping people organize in this situation with the
help of the San Lucas Workers Center, Jobs with Justice and the Interfaith
Committee on Workers’ Issues. USED
AS STRIKERS Permanent
jobs are being filled by “temporaries” every day. It will take internal
organizing by the day labor workers, the labor unions and people in the
community to put people into those jobs at the same status as regular employees.
Labor, grassroots, faith-based, political, and social pressure must be brought
to bear on the greater business community demanding that contingent labor as an
employment strategy will not be tolerated. This needs to be part of a world-wide
social revolution that demands alternatives to corporate neo-liberal
exploitation. The
Five-Star Laundry strike of 2000 (a UNITE victory!) and the Congress Hotel
strike are instances in which day labor agencies have been scabbing on permanent
employees. In strike situations, state law requires agencies to tell its
employees that they are entering a labor dispute. In the Five-Star situation,
many people refused to cross the picket lines. The Congress Hotel situation has
not been as successful in this respect. Refusing
work from agencies is never a good idea if one is desperate for work. Exposing
oneself as sympathetic to unions will also threaten any further work with that
agency. The onus must be taken off the individual by making the law concerning
day labor scabbing stronger and part of the federal labor law. We still need the
labor law to outlaw hiring “replacement workers” in economic strikes as it
is outlawed in other industrialized nations. The laws need to be strengthened at
all governmental levels while scabbing and crossing picket lines has to become
socially unacceptable again as it was in South Chicago when I was growing up. In
the world of day labor, people’s checks are held up. People are cheated out of
hours and days of pay. People are not picked up from jobs after working in
remote suburbs. People are placed in sweatshop conditions, lacking safety
equipment, and without recourse to any defense from the arbitrariness of the
employers or their “clients.” The “owners” buy Lexuses, Jaguars, fine
houses in “exclusive” suburbs and vacation homes with the wealth extracted
from day labor. Exploiting day labor keeps the client companies from having to
take any responsibility for the people who produce their products. They have
purchased abstract labor power and will mine that resource to its fullest with
no regard for the actual laborer doing actual labor.” 'GOOD
CORPORATE CITIZENS' Many
of the clients of the day labor agencies are well known corporations like Sara
Lee and the CHICAGO TRIBUNE--who consider themselves, and are indulged as
“good corporate citizens.” The contractors exploiting jornaleros are
avoiding hiring at union pay scales--pocketing the difference so they can live
and vacation with the day labor agency owners. It is going to take social,
political and economic pressure on the clients of the day labor agencies, the
agencies themselves and the la parada contractors to make them abide by a code
of conduct that reasonably reflects human sensibilities. While the Workers’
Centers can provide space and certain resources for the workers to organize and
help themselves, the wider community is needed to make it impossible for those
who use day labor to treat the workers with less than the dignity that any human
being deserves. How
long people will submit to the systematic destruction of long fought for labor
standards and a return to the Wild West standards practiced by the day labor
exploiters depends on organization. This organization has to take place both at
the grassroots level as well as at the advocacy level--much like one fights a
"ground war" that is supported by an "air war” and the
infrastructure for support services. Clausewitz might call it "politics by
extraordinary means"--at least in the way that most people have learned
politics in this less-than-democratic republic. It has to engage society at
every level. People need to fully comprehend the inhuman effects of contingent
labor in order to combat it. If people broadly work together, we can overcome
the plague of neo-liberal accumulation that drives the contingent labor
“industry.” --Dennis Dixon |
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