As an attorney representing low-wage and undocumented immigrants, Michael Dale has heard the question many times before: Why don’t these people just get in line for citizenship like everybody else?
The answer is easy: Because there is no line. The maze of immigration bureacracy, beset with catastrophic pitfalls, often has no discernable beginning or end for people seeking citizenship and a living wage.
For 25 years, Dale worked as a legal services attorney in Oregon on the state’s migrant program. In 1995, the federal government prohibited using federal funds to represent undocumented workers and class-action litigation, so Dale created the Oregon Law Center. As the executive director of the Northwest Workers Justice Project, based in Portland, Dale works, through court and advocacy, to ensure the workplace and organizing rights of low-wage, contingent and immigrant workers. He is currently involved in a class-action lawsuit against Labor Ready for wage violations, and has joined a coalition of advocates petitioning for the United States to honor labor agreements for immigrant workers established in the North American Free Trade Agreement.
In Portland, through a series of forums on labor and immigration, Dale speaks with the community about the complexities of gaining citizenship and the need for cooperation between the labor and immigrant movements.
J.Z: You’ve made the distinction in the past that much of the debate on immigration is actually about labor rights and the powerlessness of workers. Could you elaborate on that?
Michael Dale: One of the things that happens in the debate about immigration is that immigrants are scape-goated for the economic problems that working and middle class people are having these days. A union carpenter may feel threatened by the fact that work that might otherwise go to his employer is directed to non-union contractors paying low wages to immigrant workers. This is natural, and not completely without basis, but needs a bit more analysis. Immigrants may be forced by circumstance into accepting work on substandard, unsafe conditions, and that hurts all workers. But the solution is not to crack down on hard-working immigrant workers for trying to earn a living. This only drives the immigrant community further underground and into a deeper dependence on unscrupulous employers. It would be far better to assure that all workers have the right to enforce lawful conditions, and can unite with others to push for better conditions. That means that unions have to be open to organizing all workers. And all workers need to have rights that are respected by employers and those charged with enforcing labor rights.
J.Z.: You’re part of a coalition that has petitioned the Mexican government, arguing that the United States is not honoring its obligation to enforce labor laws associated with NAFTA. You’re working on behalf of workers who say they have suffered physical abuse, unsafe housing, dangerous working conditions and stolen wages while working in the United States. What are the politics that have led to this situation?
M.D.: This case arose when Mexican and Panamanian workers were brought to the Pacific Northwest to work in reforestation with lawful, temporary visas called "H-2B" visas. They were badly abused by their employer. Although they were lawfully in the country, and paying US taxes on their wages, they were not eligible to get help from any legal services organization that gets federal money. They worked in Idaho, and the only existing program could not represent them because of this prohibition. Their efforts to get help from the U.S. Department of Labor and the State of Idaho were also fruitless. The petition in Mexico asks Mexico and Canada to take the United States to task for not enforcing its law and not providing access to its courts. The Mexican government has written a detailed set of questions directed to the United States asking for an explanation for this situation, and we are waiting for the Department of Labor to submit its response. In the meantime, press accounts about the filing of the petition and the abuse of forestry workers led to Congressional hearings, and as of this year the restriction on legal services representation was loosened to permit federally funded programs to represent H-2B forestry workers, at least. We continue to press for allowing all H-2B and other workers access to US courts to defend their rights.
J.Z.: Immigration seems to have become a divisive issue in organized labor, pitting unions against immigrant labor policies and unions against unions with diverging opinions. What impact has the politics of immigration had on union organizing and their efficacy?
M.D.: Actually, most of the leadership of the union movement in the United States has come to a pretty broad consensus that it makes no sense for unions to hurt immigrant workers. Instead, unions should organize and defend all workers, including those who are immigrants. While this view isn't universally held by rank and file, the labor movement has come a tremendous way from the day when many unions were hostile to immigrants from a policy perspective. It is simple realism. Immigrant workers are here. They will continue to be in the work force. Unity builds strength, and division creates weakness. If working people allow themselves to be pitted one against the other, the future is very dim. If we can find ways to work together, much is possible.
J.Z.: The Northwest Workers Justice Project has sued Labor Ready regarding its treatment of workers. What’s your argument of that case and where does it stand now?
M.D.: Labor Ready is a temp agency, supplying workers to other employers on a temporary basis. When a worker works one day and the customer employer asks for the worker back the next day, Labor Ready has had a policy that the worker had to report the next day to the Labor Ready office an hour before starting time to be dispatched to the job site. But Labor Ready only pays employees in that situation from the time that work starts at the job site; the time waiting at the Labor Ready office and traveling from there to the job site is not paid. Working with several private lawyers, we argue that, since Labor Ready is controlling the workers' time, it should pay them from the time that they are required to report.
The case is being handled as a class arbitration for certain affected workers in Oregon. We are in the process of exchanging evidence about the facts of the case.
J.Z.: Both candidates for president, Barack Obama and John McCain, have at onetime said they were willing to reopen NAFTA for negotiation. What opportunities are there for labor if that were to happen?
M.D.: NAFTA was negotiated to deal with the movement of capital and goods across national boundaries. It dealt with the effects of this on labor and the environment only as a hasty afterthought, and not at all effectively. When Europeans crafted their market, they were much more thoughtful and generous in crafting ways to bring standards up everywhere. I'd suggest beginning with looking at some of how they dealt with integrating poorer countries. More attention must be given to establishing enforceable, transnational labor standards.
