Global Labor Strategies

Immigration Backlash?

In our last post, we wrote about a possible backlash on immigration in the US and concluded that:

As the number of undocumented immigrants in labor’s ranks grows, it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine a situation in which one part of the labor movement is demanding the deportation of the other half.

In a recent article in the American Prospect journalist Harold Myerson writes about how Republicans may use immigration as an issue during next year’s election:

The conventional wisdom is still unpersuaded that the Republican Party is about to mount a full-force attack on American's undocumented immigrants -- of whom, by some counts, there are 11 million. After all, the Republicans are the party of employers -- large (agribusiness), medium (construction companies), and small (restaurateurs) -- who have long depended on immigrants for cheap labor. The cheap labor sectors of American capitalism are a huge source of donations for the GOP. How could the Republicans turn their back on them?

But the conventional wisdom is wrong. Republicans are coming up on a midterm election in which their control of both houses of Congress is very much at stake…... With control of Capitol Hill very much in the balance, they will beg the forbearance of their longtime friends at the building contractor, big agra, and restaurant lobbies, and go after the immigrants tooth and nail.

And no wonder. Fear and resentment of the effects of an open border -- primarily the economic effects, and only secondarily the cultural ones -- are rampant throughout the American working class. That is clear from all available polling, and to any journalist who writes about the economy and gets responses from his or her readers.

There is a response to this argument that is popular among both employers and pro-immigrant liberals: that immigrants take jobs that no native-born workers would want. Among affluent liberal professionals, comfortably cocooned, it is almost possible to see how this illusion could be sustained: immigrants mow the lawns and take care of the kids, something nobody else in the neighborhood would do. But this belief is utterly wrong, and pro-immigrant liberals who invoke it are doing their cause, and themselves, no favor.

Myerson is right.  Today, immigrants—documented and undocumented -- work in many jobs once held by long-established workers. They work in hotels, in construction, in retail, in fast food, in food processing, in manufacturing—sometimes in jobs that were once decent paying, even unionized. And it is not just unskilled workers that have been affected by immigration.  In the last few years, many workers in the high-tech industry suddenly found themselves competing with temporary workers from around the world working in the US on short term visas. These workers often expressed their resentment by supporting  anti-immigrant organizations and legislation.  In addition to those directly affected, jobs that once were held by teenagers and younger workers are now held by immigrant workers sometimes provoking resentment in working class families.

Over the past decade or more we have worked directly with both new immigrant workers (some documented, most not) and with native US workers employed in a whole range of jobs. We have generally been struck by how tolerant people are of the newcomers. That tolerance—build in part on a shared history of immigration--is something US workers can be genuinely proud of, something that we can build on, and something we can offer a world struggling with migration. But the tolerance is wearing thin as jobs become scarcer.

It is easy to dismiss the fear and resentment that Meyerson talks about as “xenophobic” and “right-wing”-- a lot of it is. But a lot of it is legitimate fear-- particularly among those directly in competition with immigrants -- that wages will be driven down even further by competition with immigrants willing to work for less.  While this fear can be exploited by xenophobes and right-wingers, it often reflects the actual ability of employers to create and then exploit a labor surplus.

As we noted in our previous blog, the labor movement today is often a leader in the fight for immigrant rights. But we will need to do more to prevent a great split in the membership.

Ironically, there is a bit of old fashion trade unionism involved in the talk about restricting access to jobs: whether externally through hiring halls and closed shops, or internally through job ladders, bidding rights and seniority systems, restricting access to jobs has been a traditional way that unions have raised wages and improved working conditions.

The problems associated with immigration will not be solved by simple public policy fixes. Nor with the threat of a backlash. These are complex issues that require complex solutions. We suggest the labor movement should take the following steps:

•    Frame immigration as a global issue—workers must leave home to find work because of a global economy dominated by footloose corporations that roam the world looking for cheap labor costs.
•    Develop a full public policy and action program on immigration that matches the complexity of the issue, including support for amnesty; opposition to the militarization of the borders; opposition to global economic policies  that force people to migrate; support for effective economic development  strategies here and abroad; support for a global bill of employment rights for all workers regardless of their immigration status; and support for a global labor dialogue on immigration in the labor movement and beyond.
•    Conduct a vigorous education program for union members—all of the good institutional intentions in the world will mean nothing if there is no support among the membership.

In future blogs we will explore in detail the elements of an action program. Failure to tackle this problem head on could lead to divisions that could tear the labor movement apart.

Globalization, Immigration, and Organizing

The US labor movement has staked its future on aggressive organizing, and it has scored some recent successes. But fundamental shifts in the global economy ranging from increased outsourcing to massive immigration could reverse those successes and undermine labor’s organizing efforts. There is an urgent need for new strategies not only to confront the global challenges that threaten labor, but to take advantage of new opportunities for building a global labor movement.

Consider this:
•    Following the purchase of AT&T by Cingular Wireless, CWA has organized 16,000 former AT&T workers, many of them in call centers, around the country.
•    In the face of chaos in the car industry, the UAW has actually increased union density in the auto parts sector in the past year or so reversing a long decline.
•    SEIU recently won recognition-- involving 5,300 workers-- at the major contractors that clean 70% of Houston’s big buildings. It’s the biggest private sector union victory in years in the South.

These victories have, for the most part, been the result of sophisticated organizing strategies that leverage the muscle of existing union members, along with community and political support, to get card check recognition agreements.

In Houston, for instance, SEIU won a card check agreement after the union built strong community and labor support and threatened action by the contractors’ unionized workforces in other cities. 

It’s easy to see how globalization could affect the CWA’s call center workers and the UAW's auto parts workers: corporations are already outsourcing many of these jobs to lower wage regions of the world. What to do about outsourcing has bedeviled labor for decades. (We will discuss our suggestions for strategies to deal with outsourcing in later blogs. But see our report, “Outsource This? American Workers, the Jobs Deficit and the Fair Globalization Solution” for a more detailed look at the problem and possible solutions.)

But how does globalization affect the janitors in Houston? Well, Houston’s janitors represent the other side of the same coin: while cleaning jobs may not be highly mobile, the people that fill those jobs are.

Houston’s janitors are nearly all Latino immigrants, many are undocumented.  They are part of a massive global migration of people in search of work that has reshaped labor markets around the world. The global south is now in the global north. As Frank Sharry wrote recently in the American Prospect, “We [already] have an integrated labor market with Latin America.”  More immigrants (in absolute numbers) came to the US during the decade of the 1990s than during any other decade in the history of the US—including the decades of the mass migrations at the end of the 19th and early 20th century.

Undocumented immigrants coming into the US now outnumber those with visas.  Despite an economic downturn in 2001 and a severe clampdown following 9/11, the flow of immigrants has continued unabated. The percentage of immigrants in the workforce actually increased from 13 to 15% from 2000 to 2004.

But if the labor markets are becoming globally integrated, the laws and institutions which regulate them are not. Existing laws and institutions are simply inadequate to the task of regulation.

Now, natavist and xenophobic forces are moving fast to fill this regulatory vacuum. While Houston’s largely undocumented janitorial workforce was organizing, the House of Representatives was passing draconian legislation that would make many of them felons subject to arrest and deportation. Across the country there is a potential tsunami of nativist, anti-immigrant sentiment building that is finding an audience-- and not only among the usual xenophobes but in working class and low income communities where workers are forced to compete with the newcomers for jobs.

As the number of undocumented immigrants in labor’s ranks grows, it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine a situation in which one part of the labor movement is demanding the deportation of the other half.

Unions have come light years in the past decade or so on immigration issues. Today most unions understand that immigrants—documented or undocumented—are an integral part of the US workforce. Most unions seek to organize immigrants and most advocate for immigrant rights. Now it’s time to develop strategies that match the complexity of the problems immigration presents.

Most migrants are looking for work, therefore the world's labor movements are in a special position to lead a global discussion on immigration. And the US labor movement is in a good position to kick off such a global discussion. First, it was largely build by previous waves of immigrants and can draw on positive cultural imagery about immigration, and secondly, because the US is experiencing a surge of newcomers that unions are trying to organize. Today, the question of immigration reform can no longer be separated from the question of organizing.

We will look at the discussion about immigraton reform in and around the labor movement in future blogs.