Chicago Teachers Union members gather at a 2012 Labor Day rally. Photo: CTU
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This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and Labor Notes.
This is a frightening time for immigrant workers. President-elect Donald Trump ran on the slogan “mass deportations now,” and has appointed a team of anti-immigrant hardliners. The leadership of the Democratic Party has lurched to the right on this issue, adopting Trump’s rhetoric about “securing the border,” and embracing core Republican policies.
A bill that would target undocumented people for deportations if they are merely accused—not convicted—of nonviolent crimes like shoplifting passed in the House with bipartisan support. It’s moving forward in the Senate where only eight Democrats opposed its advance.
Fortunately, some unions and workers’ centers have been busy mobilizing a robust defense, through direct action, political action, and negotiating protections into union contracts. Many of these efforts started long before Trump was elected.
The need is great: The United Farm Workers reported on January 8 that some of its members were detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) traveling home from work in Kern County, California. “Random actions like this are not meant to keep anyone safe,” the union wrote on X, “they are intended to terrorize hardworking people.”
And some employers are already instituting identity and employment authorization checks. At least 100 custodial and kitchen workers at New York City’s Tin Building were fired after the building’s corporate manager, Seaport Entertainment Group, carried out one such crackdown, according to Gothamist.
Workers and unions face a dual challenge: They must defend their undocumented co-workers and ensure that no crackdown will deter their ongoing battles to improve workers’ lives.
ORGANIZING BEATS FEAR
“We are not going to stop trying to organize immigrant workers, regardless of who is in office,” said Savannah Palmira, director of organizing at Painters and Allied Trades District Council 5.
Palmira says she has already seen how unscrupulous bosses are taking advantage of the current moment. Some employers are telling workers that they aren’t owed overtime because they’re immigrant workers, which is not true. Others are telling workers who were hired as independent contractors that they are owners in the company. Workers “believe that it’s the American dream,” says Palmira, “but in reality they’re being taken advantage of because they don’t have any protections if they get hurt.”
In response, the union is providing legal assistance to immigrant members and offering political education workshops to address widespread misconceptions, such as the notion that immigrant workers can’t be in unions.
Community groups and workers centers are also mobilizing against Trump’s vicious deportation machinery. Iowa City-based Escucha Mi Voz is steadily laying the groundwork for a multi-front battle: The community group runs a legal aid program, helps workers enroll for government assistance programs like WIC and SNAP, and has supported worker organizing campaigns at Tyson and West Liberty meat processing plants.
They also mobilize deportation defense, including by getting community members to accompany immigrants to ICE check-ins. “We’ll take a crowd of people with us, because ICE typically doesn’t make detentions during public events,” says David Goodner, co-director of Escucha Mi Voz. “We saw that a lot during the Trump administration: if a group of people circled an immigrant, ICE couldn’t get them.”
Last April, Governor Kim Reynolds signed a law directing Iowa law enforcement to arrest anyone who had been deported in the past (including people who had since been granted asylum or were brought to the country as children). Hundreds of community members protested, and ultimately a federal court issued a temporary injunction against that law. But Goodner remains concerned about legislation that would authorize states to enforce federal immigration laws.
The battle won’t be fought only in the courts. “We need to expand our base beyond the already converted,” Goodner says. “We need to go and talk to people, including Trump supporters, and win them over one by one, the same way organizers do when they organize a union. So we have a plan to have 6,000 one-on-one conversations in churches in the area.”
Arise Chicago, a workers’ rights organization with around 2,500 members, is busy organizing know-your-rights trainings for community networks, faith congregations, and workers. They also distribute an immigrant worker toolkit. The work intensified three months before Trump won the election.
“It’s all hands on deck,” said Laura Garza, the worker center director for the organization. Workers and community members have been turning out to training en masse. But, she cautioned, “we can never forget the mission is to organize workers to better the working conditions. The last thing we want is for workers to scale back their fight against workplace injustices, like sexual harassment or not enough breaks.”
To keep up the offensive fight, defense may be necessary. Organized workers can pressure employers to deny entry to ICE agents who arrive without an arrest or search warrant—or at least restrict the search area only to what is listed in the document.
Currently, a Memorandum of Understanding between the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Labor requires ICE to refrain from most enforcement activities at worksites where there is a pending labor dispute. So long as that agreement holds, employers can’t use ICE raids as a tool against union drives.
GUARDING WORKERS THROUGH THE CONTRACT
ICE I-9 Audits
When workers are first hired, they fill out an I-9 form, with their address, Social Security number, and immigration status.
ICE has the power to conduct I-9 employment verification audits: They request copies of employment files, cross-check them with their own databases—and tell bosses to fire undocumented workers or else face fines or other consequences. ICE can also arrest undocumented workers directly. The Trump administration may escalate such workplace crackdowns—as did both former President Obama and Trump during his first term.
In the face of such an audit, there are things workers and unions can do, including:
- Ask for a copy of ICE’s audit letter to make sure there actually is an audit. Sometimes employers use this as a false pretext to fire or intimidate workers, or get rid of those with more seniority and higher wages.
- If workers face consequences of any kind, check in with a legal contact or a workers center before the worker leaves the workplace. “You may lose all your rights and benefits if you quit or stop working,” Arise Chicago warns in its toolkit.
Employer internal audits
Workers can also organize against employers’ own internal audits, which can give bosses an excuse to fire workers or even report them to immigration authorities. Sometimes employers use inflammatory anti-immigrant rhetoric from the federal level as a reason to increase their own internal monitoring.
United Electrical Workers Local 115, which represents around 200 Refresco workers in Wharton, New Jersey, won innovative language in its contract to protect against such internal audits.
The contract says the company must give the union four months’ notice before conducting an internal I-9 audit, and can conduct no more than one internal audit every calendar year. If a worker doesn’t have their documentation, they are entitled to four and a half months of unpaid leave. If they can produce the required documentation during that time, they can return to work and are entitled to health care, though they must pay the usual premiums. After the four and a half months, they’re eligible for rehire for another 20 months, with full seniority.
“This agreement provides workers and our families with more stability,” says Ivan Rios, a steward who was on the committee that negotiated the I-9 language. “Unions and workers should be organizing and fighting to secure these rights.”
Since the new policy was officially implemented in October, it has already been used to win workers’ jobs back. One of those workers was Licinia Ochoa, who helped lead the years-long effort to win the union. The company had fired her in August, charging that it couldn’t find her documentation. (UE believes the company used its self-audit as an excuse to boot this union activist.) The union argued that even though Ochoa was fired before the contract was implemented, her firing violated its spirit. UE backed this up with organizing, including a bilingual petition signed by hundreds of workers and community members. Ochoa got her job back nine days after the new policy was enacted.
SEIU Local 26 janitors in the Twin Cities recently negotiated a contract that requires employers to disclose in writing any inquiries into workers’ documentation, and protects workers’ jobs for up to 120 days, with full seniority, while any issue is addressed. Any worker who is fired due to documentation issues must be paid out all accumulated vacation. The union has included similar language in its contracts since the Obama administration, and a Local 26 organizer said the provision has protected the vacation payouts of several workers over the years.
Contract protections against company internal audits can show bosses that they don’t have to overcomply or do internal policing, no matter how inflamed the rhetoric of an incoming administration.
Other Protections
In 2019, Chicago Teachers Union members won key sanctuary provisions: Their contract declared that Chicago Public Schools could not ask about or keep track of the immigration status of students or their families. It barred ICE agents from entering school grounds unless they provide their credentials, a reason for their request, and a signed warrant.
Of course knowing your contract is just as important as winning a good one: “Somebody in the building has to… be in that office and say, ‘No, you don’t have a warrant. We’re not unlocking the door,’” says Disney Magnet School music teacher Kathryn Zamarrón. “That’s a lot easier if, say, Chicago Public Schools agrees to the proposal that they need to train principals on our contract.”
Also, as with any contract language, these protections are only as good as the organizing that enforces them. It will take incredible organizing to weather this coming era and ensure that all workers are protected.
Some unions have declared themselves to be sanctuaries outside of the contract. In 2017, Teamsters Joint Council 16 (including 27 Teamsters locals in the New York metropolitan area) announced that it was a sanctuary union. The locals pledged to resist cooperation with federal agents in prosecuting or deporting members and to fight for contract language protecting immigrant workers. The National Union of Healthcare Workers passed a similar resolution in 2017, pledging that the union “will not voluntarily cooperate with federal agents to enforce immigration laws.”
Labor Notes and Workday Magazine have compiled a repository of collective bargaining agreement language protecting immigrant workers as well as resources on sanctuary resolutions and workers’ rights. You can access it here.
Even with union density at a low point, unions still represent 14.4 million workers. That is a massive base for resisting attacks on undocumented workers. Our unions and worker organizations have the might to apply political pressure in creative ways, and there are many tools in our toolbelt.
Unions and worker organizations are capable of political pressure—and political strikes. Thanks to the organizing of some labor leaders, the concept of mass, simultaneous strikes is no longer foreign to union members and their allies. While workers’ struggles start on the job, there’s no limit to how far they can go. As Garza from Arise puts it, “The goal is to go from a state of fear to a state of action.”