Exploiting Immigrant Labor

By SETH SANDRONSKY

Employers love immigrant employees. Why is that? Immigrant employees lack the rights of native-born employees on the job.

One is the right to withhold labor to gain higher pay. Resisting employer and state violence, US-born workers struggled for decades to gain that right. It weakens employers control over employees.

When employees withhold their labor, they get stronger and win higher wage-income. Accordingly, employers can and do exploit immigrant labor that lacks the right to strike.

Employers do not stop there. Some refuse to honor their promise to pay workers for their labor.

Wage theft is an employer tactic that immigrant labor experiences. Alejandro Zuniga is the field manager with the Fe y Justicia Worker Center in Houston, Texas.

With Mr. Zuniga translating, a reporter asked an immigrant construction worker, who spoke anonymously, to describe his experience with the loss of wages, and what he did or did not do to recover the stolen compensation.

“The theft of wages has been a very bad experience that has happened several times to me,” the immigrant construction worker said. “I worked in May with an employer for three days painting and roofing and am owed $1,100.

“The last time I contacted the employer was at the end of May. She told me to give her time and that she was going to deposit my pay. She never did. Now I am going to start a process with the Worker Center to see how to get my money back.”

There are over two dozen such worker centers advocating for immigrant labor across the US. According to the Cincinnati Interfaith Workers Center website, “the CIWC is part of a network of 27 worker centers across the country which serve more than 16,000 workers each year.” That is not all.

Together, they are forcing progressive change for immigrant employees. Along with Fe Y Justicia in Houston, worker centers in Grand Rapids and Southwest Florida (Miami) “have all successfully passed wage theft ordinances in their communities.” (See www.cworkers.org/wage-theft/)

In New York, Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo may sign a bill that the State Legislature passed (A3350/S2766) to help workers in construction and other industries fight wage theft. If Gov. Cuomo signs A3350/S2766, it would require that general contractors are jointly and severally liable for violations that subcontractors commit on construction sites where immigrant workers are at-risk of wage theft.

While GOPsters such as former Pres. Trump scapegoat immigrants, successfully, for political gain, employers in private industry sing another tune. Why?

They rely upon non-native born labor for reasons of the bottom line. Businesses, economy-wide, would collapse without the daily labor of immigrants. Take residential construction.

According to a 2020 study from The National Association of Home Builders, nearly one in four US construction workers is foreign-born. “Immigrants comprise close to 40% of the construction work force in California and Texas. In Florida, New Jersey and New York, close to 37% of the construction labor force is foreign-born, and in Nevada, one out of three construction industry workers come from abroad.”

Seth Sandronsky lives and works in Sacramento. He is a member of the Pacific Media Workers Guild. Email sethsandronsky@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, September 1, 2021

Populist.com