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   Vol.66/No.15            April 15, 2002 
 
 
Court bars back pay for immigrants,
aids employers' antiunion drive
(front page)
 
BY BRIAN WILLIAMS  
In a blow to workers' rights, the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision March 27 ruled that employers who violate federal labor law in their treatment of undocumented workers are not required to pay back wages to them.

The case stems from a 1989 suit filed against a California company, Hoffman Plastics Compounds Inc., that fired several workers who were involved in a union organizing drive. The labor relations board ordered reinstatement and back pay for the workers, including Jose Castro, an undocumented worker originally from Mexico. A federal appeals court upheld the ruling--a decision now overturned by the Supreme Court.

This antilabor decision by the high court comes at a time when immigrant workers, both with and without papers, are part of spearheading struggles in industry after industry to win union recognition and to push back assaults by the bosses.

A statement released by United Farm Workers (UFW) president Arturo Rodríguez called the court's ruling "a devastating attack on undocumented workers in America and all Latinos across the nation" that will in effect create "a permanent underclass of easy-to-exploit semi-slave laborers."

In "denying undocumented workers protections under a host of state and federal laws--from minimum wage and hour protections and overtime pay to workers' compensation coverage," the ruling has other far-reaching implications, noted the UFW leader.

A good percentage of California's agricultural industries are composed of undocumented workers, said UFW spokesman Marc Grossman in a phone interview. This decision means that these workers "will have no remedy and no recourse." When growers violate labor laws, "the worst that they will have to do now is just post a notice saying they won't do it again," he said.

"The message is clear: work but don't create any commotion. Don't organize, don't complain. Don't ask for your rights, just do what 'we' bosses say," Tiberio Chávez, a union mechanic fired from ConAgra's Northern States Beef plant in Omaha, Nebraska, told a Militant correspondent. Workers at the plant are involved in a fight for union recognition, and Chávez has been a leader of that struggle. "This will be a big deal for workers at our plant. It's like the company is saying we make the rules, you have no rights," he said. Another worker involved in the union organizing drive said he doesn't agree with the ruling either. "The U.S. Constitution says everyone is equal under the law, that we have the same rights. It's not correct to discriminate based on a worker's immigration status. It's a violation of civil rights."  
 
 
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