Laurel,
Miss. - On August 25, immigration agents swooped
down on Howard Industries, a Mississippi electrical equipment factory, taking 481 workers to a privately-run
detention center in Jena, Louisiana. Some 106 were also arrested at
the plant, and released wearing electronic monitoring devices on
their ankles, if they had children, or without them, if they were
pregnant. Eight workers were taken to Federal court in Hattiesburg, where they were charged with aggravated
identity theft.
Afterward,
Barbara Gonzalez, spokesperson for the Bureau of Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE), stated the raid took place because of
a tip by a “union member” two years before. Other media accounts
focused on an incident in which plant workers allegedly cheered
as their coworkers were led away by ICE agents. The articles claim
the plant was torn by tension between immigrant and non-immigrant
workers, and that unions in Mississippi are hostile to immigrants.
Many
Mississippi activists and workers, however, charge
the raid had a political agenda - undermining a growing political
coalition that threatens the state's conservative Republican establishment.
They also say the raid, which took place during union contract negotiations,
will help the company resist demands for better wages and conditions.
Jim
Evans, a national AFL-CIO staff member in Mississippi
and a leading member of the state legislature's Black Caucus, said
he believed “this raid is an effort to drive immigrants out of Mississippi. It is also an attempt to drive a wedge between immigrants,
African Americans, white people and unions - all those who want
political change here.” Patricia Ice, attorney for the Mississippi
Immigrant Rights Alliance (MIRA), agreed that “this is political.
They want a mass exodus of immigrants out of the state, the kind
we've seen in Arizona and Oklahoma. The
political establishment here is threatened by Mississippi's changing demographics, and what the electorate might
look like in 20 years.”
In
the last two decades, the percentage of African Americans in the
state's population has increased to over 35%, and immigrants, who
were statistically insignificant until recently, are expected to
reach 10% in the next decade. Mississippi union membership has been among the nation's lowest, but
since the early 1980s, workers have joined unions in catfish and
poultry plants, casinos and shipyards, along with those at Howard
Industries.
Evans,
other members of the Black Caucus, many of the state's labor organizations,
and immigrant communities all see shifting demographics as the basis
for changing the state's politics. Over the last seven years, their
growing coalition has proposed legislation to set up a Department
of Labor (Mississippi is the only state without one), guarantee access to education
for children of all races and nationalities, and provide drivers'
licenses to immigrants. MIRA organized support in the state capitol
for those proposals and Evans, who sponsored many of them, chairs
the MIRA's board.
Earlier
this year, however, the legislature passed, and Governor Haley Barbour
signed, a law making it a state felony for an undocumented worker
to hold a job, punishable by 1-5 years in prison and $1,000-10,000
in fines. Employers are given immunity for employing workers without
papers, so long as they vet new hires through an ICE database called
E-Verify. It is still not known whether the people arrested at Howard
Industries will be charged under the new state law. Evans says the
law and the raid serve the same objectives. “They both just make
it easier to exploit workers. The people who profit from Mississippi's low wage system want to keep it the way it is,” he alleged.
In
the week before the raid, MIRA organizers received reports of a
growing number of ICE agents in southern Mississippi.
They began leafleting immigrant communities, warning them about
a possible raid and explaining their rights should people be questioned
about their immigration status. When agents finally showed up at
the Howard Industries plant, many workers say they tried to invoke
those rights, and warn others that a raid was in progress. One woman,
later detained and then released to care for her child, began to
make calls on her cell phone to workers who had not yet come to
the factory, warning them to stay away. “She first called her brother,
and then began calling anyone else she could think of,” explained
her mother, who works in a local chicken plant. Both feared being
identified publicly. “An agent grabbed her arm, and asked her what
she was doing, so she went into the bathroom, and kept calling people
until they took her phone away.”
Howard
Industries, like most Mississippi
employers, has a long record of opposing unions. Workers there chose
representation by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
on June 8, 2000, by a vote of 162-108. Employment at the plant,
which manufactures electrical ballasts and transformers, grew considerably
after the election, and the company now employs over 4000 workers
at several locations in Mississippi. In 2002 it received a $31.5 million
subsidy from the state government for expansion, and at one point
state legislators were all given HI laptop computers. “The company
is very well-connected politically,” says Evans, who noted that
its owners donated to the campaigns of former Democratic governor
Ronnie Musgrove, and then to Mississippi's
current Republican governor Haley Barbour.
As
it grew, the company hired many immigrant Mexican and Central American
workers, diversifying a workforce that was originally primarily
African American and white. The company has declined to comment,
and released a press statement that said, “Howard Industries runs
every check allowed to ascertain the immigration status of all applicants
for jobs. It is company policy that it hires only U.S. citizens and legal immigrants.”
During
the organizing drive, the union filed charges with the National
Labor Relations Board, alleging intimidation and violations of workers'
rights. After the union and company agreed on a contract, more charges
followed. NLRB Region 15 issued a complaint against the company
for violating the union's bargaining rights. Roger Doolittle, attorney
for IBEW Local 1317, says other charges allege the company threatened
a union steward for trying to represent workers in the plant. In
June, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced
it intended to fine the company $123,000 for 36 violations of health
and safety regulations at the Pendorf plant, where the raid took
place, and another $41,000 in fines for a second Laurel
location.
Tension
between the company and union increased after the collective bargaining
agreement expired at the beginning of August. According to one immigrant
worker, who did not want to be identified, was not detained because
he worked on swing shift. The union was asking for a wage increase
of $1.50/hour and better vacation benefits. Company medical benefits
are also an issue among workers, he said, because family coverage
costs over $100/week, putting it out of reach for most employees.
Mississippi is a right-to-work state, and labor
contracts cannot require that workers belong to the union. Instead,
unions must continually try to sign workers up as members. In past
years, according to other union sources, IBEW Local 1317 had a reputation
as a union that did not offer much support to its immigrant members.
According
to the swing shift worker, who did not belong to the union, there
were just a few hundred members at the Pendorf plant, and in negotiations,
the company used that low membership as a reason not to sign a new
agreement.
To
increase its ability to negotiate a contract, Local 1317 began making
greater efforts to sign up immigrant members. Spanish-speaking organizers
were brought in, and they handed out leaflets in Spanish, explaining
the benefits of membership. They visited workers at home so they
could talk about the union without being overheard or seen by company
supervisors. According to the swing shift worker, many began to
join, especially the immigrants who'd been hired most recently.
IBEW's national newspaper, Electrical Worker, reported that over
200 had signed up last April, according to Local 1317's African-American
business manager, Clarence Larkin. “It's a constant process to keep
the union alive and growing,” he told the paper.
That's
when the plant was raided. Local 1317 will now have to try to negotiate
a contract after the loss of many of its members, who were among
those detained. Those members, who joined the union in hopes of
better wages and treatment, instead have been imprisoned for days
in Jena, Louisiana, a two-hour
drive from Laurel. ICE
spokesperson, Barbara Gonzalez, would not provide an estimate of
how long they might be jailed, but said “the investigation of their
cases is ongoing.”
The
day after ICE agents stormed the factory, MIRA began organizing
meetings to provide legal advice, food and economic help. According
to MIRA director, Bill Chandler, Howard Industry representatives
told detainees' families, and women released to care for children,
that the company wouldn't give them their paychecks. On August 28,
MIRA organizer, Vicky Cintra, led a group of workers to the Pendorf
plant to demand their pay. Managers called Laurel police and sheriffs, who threatened to arrest her. After workers
began chanting, “Let her go!” and news reporters appeared on the
scene, the company finally agreed to distribute checks to about
70 people.
The
swing shift worker was so frightened by the raid that he hadn't
gone back to work after almost a week, and wasn't sure he'd have
a job waiting if he did. “Everyone is still really scared,” he said.
The Hattiesburg American reported Friday that Howard Industries
sent a letter to customers two days after the raid, assuring them
that production would be back to normal by the end of the week,
and noting that the company has not been charged.
Spokesperson
Barbara Gonzalez claimed ICE waited two years after receiving a
call from a “union member” before conducting the raid, because “we
took the time needed for our investigation.” She
declined to say how that investigation was conducted, or what led
ICE to believe their tip had come from a union member. The picture
of a plant in which union members were hostile to immigrants was
reinforced after the raid by media accounts of an incident in which
workers “applauded” as their coworkers were taken away.
“It's
hard to believe that a two-year old phone call to ICE led to this
raid, but whether or not the call ever took place, that possibility
is a product of the poisonous atmosphere fostered by politicians
of both parties in Mississippi,” says MIRA director Chandler. “In
the last election, Barbour and Republicans campaigned against immigrants
to get elected, but so did all the Democratic statewide candidates
except Attorney General Jim Hood. The raid will make the climate
even worse.”
(Note:
This article was originally published in New American Media –
NAM)
BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator, David Bacon, Associate Editor
of New American Media, is the author of “ Illegal
People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants.”
Click here
to contact Mr. Bacon. |