Unions get behind illegal workers
AFL-CIO lends hand to day laborers with offers of aid, advocacy.
By Christian Zappone, CNNMoney.com staff writer
August 17 2006: 1:57 PM EDT


NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- As politicians grapple with the thorny immigration issue, unions are stepping into the debate on the side of illegal immigrant labor.

Last week, the AFL-CIO signed what it calls a "historic partnership agreement" with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, an association of 40 worker centers nationwide.



Under the agreement local AFL-CIO unions will be allowed to establish formal ties with the local worker centers. The unions then work with and defend the NDLON centers as they seek decent labor standards and working conditions for their illegal workers.

The NDLON sprung up in 2000 as a collaborative effort between community-based organizations' worker centers that support day laborers - overwhelmingly poor, illegal immigrants from Latin America - by providing meeting spaces, staff to handle workplace violations, and access to healthcare, English classes and workers' rights education.

Under the agreement, the AFL-CIO will also combat anti-immigration legislation and pursue immigration reform with a "clear path" to citizenship.

By offering the advantages of organized labor, without actually unionizing the illegals, the AFL-CIO also hopes to raise the wage floor in the local labor markets and in turn take pressure off wages paid to local union members, too.

"In many ways this is unprecedented for the modern labor movement," said labor historian Joseph A. McCartin, of Georgetown University. "The AFL-CIO was for immigration enforcement in 1999."

McCartin says the labor movement must reinvent itself in this way if it wants to continue after years of declining influence.

Day laborers represent a sliver of all illegal workers in the United States. There are an estimated 117,000 day laborers in the U.S. economy, according to a 2006 National Day Labor Study. About half are employed by homeowners, while 43 percent work as construction contractors.