DREAMers at Work: Immigrants and Unions Are Putting Movement Back into the Labor Movement
DREAMers at Work: Immigrants and Unions Are Putting Movement Back into the Labor Movement
Last month, tens of thousands of undocumented young people from around the country inaugurated the Obama administration’s deferred action policy by applying en masse to live and work in the United States for a renewable two-year term. Among the applicants were numerous union activists and organizers like Fermin Hernandez, a carwash worker in Los Angeles who was brought here from Oaxaca, Mexico at the age of fifteen. Hernandez is an organizer with the CLEAN Carwash Initiative, which has forged innovative partnerships with the United Steelworkers, worker centers, and dozens of community groups to change the rock-bottom conditions at L.A. carwashes. Hernandez, along with thousands of other immigrant workers and union members, is a DREAMer.
The DREAM movement—named for the perpetually stalled bill that would create a legal roadmap for young aspiring citizens who attend school or serve in the military—has grabbed headlines through bold and relatively successful direct action. From organizing a march from Miami to Washington, D.C., to occupying Obama campaign offices, to “outing” themselves to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to expose abuses in the immigration detention system, DREAMers have inspired many to join their cause, and, after years of congressional inaction, they are finally starting to build positive momentum around the issue of immigration reform. The support they have built gives one hope that the Obama administration’s deferred action announcement is only the beginning of a more profound immigration policy debate.
Beneath the headlines and the election-year posturing, DREAMers like Fermin Hernandez are contributing to a movement that goes beyond the issue of immigration status and into a far-reaching campaign for inclusion in both the workplace and the community. From the start, they have had an ally in organized labor. Labor unions across the country have put their political muscle behind supporting the DREAM Act and recently partnered with United We Dream, a nationwide network of youth-led immigrant organizations, to aid applicants with the deferred action process. Organized labor’s support for the DREAMers reflects both an interest in progressive coalition building and the labor movement’s legacy of broad-based organizing in immigrant communities. While organized labor has historically struggled between nativist tendencies and inclusive, combative organizing, there is a growing unity among labor unions, DREAMers, and immigrant communities that could remake the labor movement as we know it.
An embattled labor movement has found few brighter spots in recent decades than low-wage immigrant workers’ activism and willingness to organize. Since around the time of the 1990 SEIU Justice for Janitors strike, organized labor has become more inclusive, and immigrant workers have in turn injected much dynamism into the movement. Most recently, even as mainstream political pundits proclaimed the recall election of Wisconsin governor Scott Walker a “death knell” for unionism, labor activists were encouraged by the militancy and passion of immigrant workers on strike at Milwaukee’s Palermo’s Pizza plant who took time from their strike to canvass for the recall effort.
These developments aren’t just about replenishing organized labor’s diminishing ranks; they get to the core of how organized labor functions within a broader labor movement. In many places, immigrant worker organizing has taken on elements of social movement unionism, combining traditional workplace demands with a focus on social justice and community mobilization. This activity often occurs not within the institutional bounds of union contracts and NLRB elections, but in community-based worker centers, which advocate through litigation, political action, and community moral suasion. These centers fight for better wages and conditions, primarily in the construction, landscaping, hospitality, domestic work, and service industries. The DREAM movement fits prominently within this trend, simultaneously serving as a vehicle for young aspiring citizens to fight for political rights as students and workers in the United States, and intertwining itself within broader labor struggles.
Cuahuctemoc Salinas, a Berkeley student who was brought from Acapulco to the United States at age two, offers an instructive individual example of this movement on the ground. After becoming involved in DREAM advocacy, Salinas spent this past summer with the AFL-CIO’s Union Summer, an educational program that aims to introduce participants to labor organizing. As part of the AFL-CIO’s CLEAN Initiative, Salinas led pickets and boycotts of non-union carwashes in L.A., side by side with workers like Fermin Hernandez. According to Salinas, making these kinds of connections is central to building power: “Organizing is the foundation of everything. Everything around us is organizing.”
Traditional collective bargaining, of course, continues to hold an appeal to low-wage immigrant workers as an institutional protection on the job. Karla Campos, a deferred action–eligible worker at a California recycling plant, has been a leader in an organizing drive with the Teamsters to improve the dangerous safety conditions and poverty wages at her workplace. Unions have cultivated these relationships in the workplace by engaging immigrant communities, providing support and training to DREAMers and other immigrant workers, working for immigrant rights and immigration policy reform in the political sphere, collaborating with community-based worker centers, and organizing collective power through movement building.
This shift in labor union strategy coincides with a growing interest among community worker centers and immigrant activists in building a stronger, broader labor movement. As movement-based worker centers have run up against the limitations of litigation and resources, they have begun to seek the institutional muscle of organized labor. Worker centers focused on sectors like day laborers, taxi drivers, domestic workers, and guest workers have established formal ties with the AFL-CIO to expand the reach of their work. This dynamic could be seen in the much-publicized No Papers, No Fear Ride for Justice that stopped at the DNC after riding through anti-immigrant states in the South and Southwest. In conjunction with the National Day Labor Organizing Network (NDLON), organizers expanded their campaign against racist secure communities programs to support day labor organizing efforts in Alabama. As rider Eleazar Castellanos explained in her blog, “as workers, day laborers, undocumented immigrants, and people, we were sharing tools for [the day laborers] to defend themselves and become unafraid…and [continuing] to show that unity is power.”
Deferred action is an important step that will allow nearly 1.7 million immigrants to attend school, integrate into their communities, and leave the darkness of an underground economy that depresses wages and erodes workers’ rights. However, the fight to reclaim the political system and build a more equitable society is far from over. So long as over 11 million undocumented immigrants reside in the United States without the rights of fully enfranchised citizens, moneyed interests will continue to subvert and divide the interests of working people. A common sense immigration process is necessary not only for humanitarian reasons, but also because it will allow immigrant workers to assert their rights in the workplace and reshape a deteriorating labor market.
The past years have seen the corporate citizenry finance divisive campaigns of racist exclusion, union busting, misogyny, and militarism. As the top earners continue to claim more resources and power, Randian ideologues in politics are threatening our basic social safety nets at a time when people need them the most. But these forces are pushing workers and organizers to construct more inclusive, creative, and fluid organizations and movements in response. On the front lines of the low-wage economy, unions, worker centers, and immigrant activists are crossing institutional lines to organize for both workplace and social justice. This kind of grassroots mobilization holds much promise for those who dream of a more democratic future.
Ana Avendaño is the Director of Immigration and Community Action at the AFL-CIO. Charlie Fanning is a Researcher and Writer in the AFL-CIO’s Office of Immigration and Community Action.
