Working Indiana - Working for Democracy and Justice

Saturday’s New York Times reported the sentencing of 270 predominantly Guatemalan undocumented workers, formerly employed at the nation’s largest kosher meatpacking plant, Agriprocessors, Inc., in Postville, Iowa .  The laborers, who had been toiling up to 14 hour shifts without overtime pay, were convicted, condemned to five month prison sentences and deportation, actions calculated, according to ICE special agent Claude Arnold, to demonstrate our commitment “to enforcing the nation’s immigration laws in the workplace (and) to maintain the integrity of the immigration system.”  According to the Times report, few of the workers had prior criminal records and all pled guilty in the face of threats of prosecution on much harsher felony charges.  The felony charges could have resulted in two years in prison.  Despite its clear symbolism, there is every reason to believe that this radical criminalization of undocumented labor will exacerbate the problem the government wishes to solve.
Eric Schlosser, author of Reefer Madness correctly observes that lax enforcement of U.S. Immigration laws amounts, in reality, to a subsidy reducing labor costs but also blinding employers to innovation.  Quoting Phillip Martin, former member of the Commission on Agricultural Labor, Schlosser notes, “Cheap labor benefits labor in the short run…but it also helps to blind farmers to the technological changes they will have to make in order to compete with with foreign producers, who have access to even cheaper labor.”  The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that, expressed in 1993 dollars, it cost over $19,000 a year in 2003 to house a federal prisoner. [click here for reference] Thus, not counting the cost of prosecution, the incarceration of these workers will add approximately $2,137,500.00 in direct costs (unadjusted for inflation) to the damage suffered by the Postville, Iowa labor market. 
 The New York Times reported in February, 1987 that the then newly passed Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) “appear[ed] to be having a marked and growing effect in deterring Mexicans and other foreigners from entering the United States illegally.” [New U.S. Law Appears to Deter Illegal Aliens, NYT Feb.20, 1987, Robert Reinhold special to the NYT]  IRCA criminalized the act of knowingly hiring illegal immigrants, imposing monetary sanctions on employers of up to $10,000.00.  Despite early hopes of success it is estimated by the AP’s Steven Ohlemacher that the number of illegal immigrants hit twelve million, accounting for one in 20 U.S. workers.  The estimate is drawn from surveys conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center.  PHC concludes that 82% of U.S. population growth by the year 2050 will be attributable to immigration, with well more than half of this number drawn from the ranks of hispanics. [click here for reference]  This translates into further enormous direct costs if we are to pursue a policy of criminalizing our immigration problem.  Fortunately, there are alternatives. 
Although the U.S. Supreme Court sharply curtailed the rights of undocumented workers under the National Labor Relations Act (Hoffman Plastics v NLRB 535 U.S. 137 92002)) local statutes in most jurisdictions retain their vigor and can be powerful tools for addressing the immigration problem by attacking its core: the “subsidy” of illegally depressed wages.  Indiana law provides two important tools that may be deployed to protect labor markets: the Wage Claims and Wage Payment statutes and the Common Construction Wage statute.  The former statutes provide sufficient penalties in the form of treble damages and attorney fees to attract the interest of attorneys while the latter, in effect, sets wages at market rates, removing the decision from the employer.  Although the lack of solidarity between American Unions and the Mexican counterparts has been remarked elsewhere (Mexico-U.S. Migration and Labor Unions: Obstacles to Building Cross-Border Solidarity, Julie Watts, Visiting Fellow, CCIS, The Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, University of California, San Diego, Working Paper 79, June 2003) Fort Wayne’s construction trades organized a project, collaborating with The Worker’s Project, aimed at securing treble damages, attorney’s fees and the Common Construction Wage settings for appropriate crafts employed to construct dormitories at Indiana Univ/Purdue Univ.’s Fort Wayne campus.  Retreating from earlier plans to picket the work site the Unions instead reached out to the undocumented workers.  After much effort the Worker’s Project facilitated access to labor economists and lawyers and the resulting lawsuit against one subcontractor resonated throughout the local market.  Unions continue to report hearing from Project Owners that they don’t wish to be involved in an “IPFW Dorm situation,” years after the case and resultant claims were settled.  This labor market based approach had the advantage of not only removing the subsidy but the moral advantage of being the “right” thing to do for the workers who were, after all, the victims of exploitation.  Perhaps, then, the correct approach to America’s immigration problem is the fair and equal enforcement of laws aimed at protecting worker’s wages—regardless of their immigration status.  There is no advantage, no subsidy, in hiring undocumented workers who have the right to demand fair, market based, wages and, in fact, the obstacles posed may finally outweigh them.