Earlier this month, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), one of America’s largest unions, passed an important resolution at their national convention in Boston, MA calling for comprehensive immigration reform that respects workers and condemning the Arizona law, SB1070:
“That Arizona’s law is an affront to American values and our constitution. It is impractical, unenforceable and a waste of scarce public resources. It undermines workers’ rights. As Martin Luther King Jr. wrote from a Birmingham jail: “An unjust law is no law at all. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.” We cannot support politicians, like Gov. Brewer, who support such a ban. We call on the U.S. Department of Justice to bring legal action against Arizona to stop implementation of this law…”
AFSCME’s resolution was just the most recent in a series of major decisions and announcements made by America’s unions on the issue of immigration reform and the Arizona law. Similar statements have been made by Central Labor Councils in California and Massachusetts. In April, the National Education Association sent a letter to Governor Jan Brewer expressing strong opposition to the Arizona law and deep reservations about its impact on educators, children and their families. In May, the American Federation of Teachers condemned the Arizona law and President Randi Weingarten had this to say:
“The law targeting immigrants is egregious-it legalizes racial profiling, generates fear and perpetuates discrimination. This goes against our fundamental beliefs as a nation, and is the wrong message to be sending to our schoolchildren,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten. “We are gravely concerned that Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s latest action on Tuesday banning ethnic studies, combined with the law targeting immigrants, compromise the fundamental rights that we have worked so hard to embed in our national consciousness.”
In June, the United Auto Workers, made this announcement with regard to the Arizona law:
“We reject those who would fan the flames of prejudice. Like millions of other Americans, we were appalled when Arizona gave local law enforcement authorities the right to demand proof of citizenship or immigration status from anyone they have a “reasonable suspicion” is in the country illegally. Supposedly directed at illegal immigrants, the new law is an attack on the rights of legal immigrants and native-born citizens whose names, appearance or accent are deemed “foreign.” We join with those who are seeking to overturn or repeal this unjust law, and will continue to oppose those who play on fears of terrorism and cultural or religious differences to push other measures that would restrict civil liberties, deny access to safety net programs, criminalize immigrant workers and those who help them, or slam the door shut on further immigration. Attacks on immigrants hurt families, including millions of children, and weaken freedoms for everyone in our nation.”
And also in June the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement passed a strongly worded resolution that included the following:
“BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED, that the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, (LCLAA), support the efforts of the Maricopa County Chapter of the LCLAA to withhold support from any elected official that publicly supports or voted in favor of SB 1070 to include Governor Jan Brewer who signed SB 1070 into law and that National LCLAA agree to not hold any further meetings or conduct any business in the state of Arizona until SB 1070 is repealed.”
Last month, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka gave an important address on the issue of immigration. In his address he had this to say:
“I grew up in a small town in Southwestern Pennsylvania, not that far from here. The immigrant path led from the coalmines to Pittsburgh to Cleveland.
And if you look around Cleveland at the ethnic clubs and the churches, you see a city that immigrants built–Hungarians and Poles, Irish and Italians, Serbs and Croats and Jews, as well as African Americans. Cleveland is a city where the traditions of the places we came from are the very foundation of our community.
It was not easy when my family came to this country. My parents fled poverty and war from different corners of Europe. When I was a kid, there was an ugly name for every one of us in all twelve languages spoken in Nemacolin, PA—wop and hunkie and polack and kike. We were the last hired and first fired, the people who did the hardest and most dangerous work, the people whose pay got shorted because we didn’t know the language and were afraid to complain.
We got to the mines and the mills, and the people already there said we were taking their jobs, ruining their country. Yet in the end the immigrants of my parents’ and grandparents’ generation prevailed, and built America. This is the history of my family, and this is the story of Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Detroit and Chicago and Baltimore and a thousand cities and towns across America.
And yet today I hear from working people who should know better, some in my own family – that those immigrants are taking our jobs, ruining our country. Haven’t we been here before?
When I hear that kind of talk, I want to say, did an immigrant move your plant overseas? Did an immigrant take away your pension? Or cut your health care? Did an immigrant destroy American workers’ right to organize? Or crash the financial system? Did immigrant workers write the trade laws that have done so much harm to Ohio?”
He spoke with the strength of the labor movement behind him.
Throughout the Reform Immigration FOR America Campaign, we have relied on our allies in labor, including the AFL-CIO, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, the United Farm Workers Union, the Service Employees International Union, UNITE HERE, the Laborers International Union, the National Education Association and so many others. And state federations, local labor councils, and union locals have passed resolutions in support of comprehensive immigration reform in states as diverse as Alaska, Maine, Florida, Michigan, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Ohio.
Trumka summed up the importance of immigrant workers to organized labor when he said:
“My friends, we are most of us the children of immigrants. But there was no labor movement in America until workers learned to look at each other and see not immigrants and native born, not white and black, not different last names, but our common fate as workers.”
Tags: immigration reform, labor movement, labor unions, workers' rights
