NDLON is an umbrella group of some 40 worker centers across the country. The centers assist day laborers, who look for all kinds of work—from landscaping to house cleaning and repairs—in organizing to confront superexploitation and abuse by the employers and fight for livable wages.

A day after the deal with the AFL-CIO was announced, the Laborers’ International Union said it will begin next year recruiting day laborers as full-fledged union members for construction jobs, the Associated Press reported. The union, which left the AFL-CIO last year to join the Change to Win federation, represents some 700,000 construction workers nationwide.

“We see unionizing in construction as a vehicle of growth,” said Terence O’Sullivan, president of the Laborers’ International Union. “We are looking to organize and give immigrant workers power.”

The union said it intends to recruit day laborers from worker centers in Arizona, California, and Texas, according to AP.

Prompted by repeated abuses by the bosses, including being cheated out of pay, being forced to work with no breaks, or even being abandoned at a work site, thousands of day laborers have organized themselves through hiring halls. They use these centers to screen out bosses, get work assignments, and negotiate wages—reducing individual competition and setting a minimum wage. Some day laborer centers have been organizing to enforce a $10 to $12 minimum hourly wage.

The July 16 Chicago Sun-Times published an article showing how immigrant workers are using such collaboration in some cases much like a de facto union.

“The driver of a black Honda thought he would quickly enlist some guys to load furniture and boxes onto a truck—until he heard the men wanted $15 an hour,” began the article, reporting from Agoura Hills, California. “‘What? You don’t even have papers,’ the driver told a clutch of Latino day laborers clustered around his car last week. But they stood firm.

“‘We do hard jobs other people won’t do,’ Luis Cap, a Guatemalan, told the man behind the wheel. ‘If you want to save money, that’s OK. You will have to find other workers.’ The Honda drove off, the odd jobs unfilled.

“Three months ago, about 120 immigrants who solicit work along a sun-drenched road in this town outside Los Angeles decided among themselves to only accept work for a minimum hourly wage of $15—about $2.50 higher than the previous, informal rate. ‘What they have here is the essence of a union,’ said Pablo Alvarado, national coordinator of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, who supervised the workers’ roadside vote.”

According to a study by the University of California in Los Angeles, 117,000 day laborers seek work each day at more than 500 hiring sites in cities across the country. In the last decade the number of workers centers has grown from four to more than 140 in 31 states. Such centers have opened up in rural areas as well as big cities, according to a statement by the AFL-CIO.

The new partnership will strengthen the labor movement’s “ability to promote and enforce the workplace rights for all workers—union and nonunion, immigrant and non-immigrant alike,” said AFL-CIO president John Sweeney, in a statement released by the two organizations, after the AFL-CIO executive board voted to formalize relations with NDLON.

Under the new partnership, day laborer centers will be allowed to have nonvoting representatives in AFL-CIO central labor councils, even though the day laborers are not yet union members.

Day laborers have been the target of rightist groups and capitalist politicians, in what often become sharply polarized conflicts around “immigration reform.” Rightist groups such as the Minutemen and local capitalist politicians have waged campaigns demanding the deportation of “illegal aliens,” blaming immigrant workers for crime, overcrowded housing, unemployment, and other social ills. Some of them say they will now directly target the labor movement for its growing support for immigrant rights. “We will come out swinging at unions now,” said Jim Gilchrist, a founder of the Minutemen Project civilian militia, according to AP. “They are going to pay seriously for this in the public eye,” he said in response to the latest announcements.

The AFL-CIO’s decision to establish the new partnership, and the announcement by the Laborers’ International Union it will begin to recruit undocumented immigrants as members, reflect the growing presence of immigrant workers in the U.S. labor force and the impact on the labor movement of the huge working-class mobilizations this spring demanding legalization of immigrants.

“When we improve wages and working conditions and living conditions for the most vulnerable, we are automatically improving the lives and working conditions of all workers in this country,” Alvarado, of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, told the press.

“We don’t bring money, we’re not bringing members,” he said, referring to NDLON’s new partnership with the AFL-CIO. “But we are bringing something that is extremely important: very humble, very vulnerable workers who say, ‘I need to get paid more for what I do.’”
 
 
Related articles:
Chicago conference calls actions for immigrant rights
September rallies to demand legalization, end to deportations
Build actions for immigrant rights!
Elvira Arellano, former cleaner at Chicago airport, fights government order for her deportation  
 
 
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