7. The rise and fall of employer sanctions

Abstract

ABSTRACT Workplace raids by gun-wielding Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents that resulted in the mass arrests of dozens and sometimes hundreds of employees have ceased under the Obama administration. But silent raids, or audits of companies' records by federal agents, that replaced them have resulted in the firing of thousands of undocumented workers. The administration defends these softer, gentler operations, yet the result is the same: workers who are here to support their families are out of work. In this essay, David Bacon and Bill Ong Hing argue that ICE raids--be they of the Bush or the Obama kind--should cease. The basis for these operations--employer sanctions--should be repealed, and true reform that recognizes the rights of all workers should be enacted. TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract Introduction I. Obama's Interior Enforcement Strategy II. Background on Employer Sanctions III. Union Focus--Coincidence or Intentional IV. Institutionalized Racism Conclusion INTRODUCTION Ana Contreras would have been a competitor for the national tai kwon do championship team in 2009. She was fourteen years old. For six years she went to practice instead of birthday parties, giving up the friendships most teenagers live for. Then in October 2009, disaster struck. Her mother Dolores lost her job. The money for classes was gone, and not just that. only bought clothes for her once a year, when my tax refund check came, Dolores Contreras explains. She continues: Now she needs shoes, and I had to tell her we didn't have any money. I stopped the cable and the internet she needs for school. When my cell phone contract is up next month, I'll stop that too. I've never had enough money for a car, and now we've gone three months without paying the light bill. (1) Dolores Contreras shared her misery with eighteen hundred other families. All lost their jobs when their employer, American Apparel, fired them for lacking immigration status. For months she carried around the letter from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), handed to her by the company lawyer. It says the documents she provided when she was hired were no good, and without work authorization, her work life was over. (2) Of course, it was not really over. Contreras still had to keep working if she and her daughter were to eat and pay rent. So instead of a job that barely paid her bills, she was forced to find another one that would not even do that. Contreras is a skilled sewing machine operator. She came to the United States thirteen years earlier, after working many years in the garment factories of Tehuacan, Puebla, Mexico. There, companies like Levis make so many pairs of stonewashed jeans that rumor has it the town's water has turned blue. In Los Angeles, Contreras hoped to find the money to send home for her sister's weekly dialysis treatments, and to pay the living and school expenses for four other siblings. For five years she moved from shop to shop. Like most garment workers, she did not get paid for overtime, her paychecks were often short, and sometimes her employer disappeared overnight, owing weeks in back pay. Finally Contreras got a job at American Apparel, famous for its sexy clothing, made in Los Angeles instead of overseas. (3) She still had to work like a demon. Her team of ten experienced seamstresses turned out thirty dozen tee shirts an hour. After dividing the piece rate evenly among them, she would come home with $400 for a four-day week, after taxes. She paid Social Security too, although she will never see a dime in benefits because her contributions were credited to an invented number. (4) Now Contreras is working again in a sweatshop at half what she earned before. Meanwhile, American Apparel took steps to replace those who were fired. (5) Contreras says they are mostly older women with documents, who cannot work as fast. …