The Department of Homeland Security workplace enforcement wave is focusing, not on low-wage employers, but on high-wage, and often unionized ones. There is a long history of anti-union animus among immigration authorities. Agents have set up roadblocks before union elections in California fields, conducted raids during meatpacking organizing drives in North Carolina and Iowa, audited janitorial employers and airline food plants prior to union contract negotiations, and helped companies terminate close to a thousand apple packers when they tried to join the Teamsters Union in Washington state.
Unscrupulous employers use their vulnerability to deny undocumented workers the minimum wage or overtime, and to fire workers when they protest or organize. This affects workers in general. After deporting over 1000 employees of Swift meatpacking plants, former Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff called for linking “effective interior enforcement and a temporary-worker program.” The government is again giving a cheap labor subsidy to large employers. Deportations, firings and guest worker programs all make labor cheaper and union organizing harder.
