National Coalition for Dignity and Amnesty for all Undocumented Immigrants

Declarations

Central Labor Council of Alameda County

AFL-CIO

DOROTHY FORTIER
President

JUDITH M.COFF
Executive Secretary Treasurer

Resolution: Defending the Rights of Immigrant Workers and the Right to Organize

WHEREAS: Our country and its labor movement wore built in large part by immigrants, including those from Africa kidnapped and forced into slavery. Our laws have also historically reflected public attitudes bout race, with bans and discriminatory limits on legal immigration from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, which have only recently been rectified. People have come here seeking economic survival, often driven from their countries of origin by hunger, political repression and the lack of economic opportunity.

AND WHEREAS: There are over 100 million people in the world today who have left their countries of origin. Only social and economic justice on a global scale will create a world where immigration is not a means of survival for the world’s poor.

AND WHEREAS: Thousands of immigrant workers, both with and without documents, have mounted large and effective campaigns to organize unions in California in the last decade. These efforts have created new unions and strengtnened and received many others, benefitting all labor, immigrant and native-born alike.

AND WHEREAS: The ability of workers to organize has been increasingly threatened by current immigration law and its enforcement. Which has been used to retaliate against workers who organize and protest against sweatshop conditions.

AND WHEREAS: The California labor Federation resolved in 1994 that employer sanctions should be repealed, passing the same resolution in each convention since than, because sanctions cause discrimination against anyone who looks or sounds foreign, because they provide a weapon employers have used repeatedly to fire and threaten immigrant workers who organize unions, and because they make immigrant workers vulnerable and cheapen their labor, violating their rights as workers and human beings.

AND WHEREAS: Labor stands for the equality of all workers. Immigration legislation and its enforcement, which divides workers, undermines that strength. All workers, regardless of immigration status, have the right to form unions file complaints against illegal and unfair treatment without fear of reprisal; receive unemployment insurance, workers compensation benefits; and enjoy the same remedies under labor law as all other workers.

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED: That the Alameda county Central Labor Council supports the call made by the California Labor Federation and many affiliated unions for the repeal of employer sanctions.

AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED: That the Alameda County Central Labor Council opposes all cooperation between the immigration and Naturalization Service and other government and public institutions, such as SSA, the Department of labor, unemployment and welfare offices, and motor vehicle departments, among others, in which information provided by immigrants is misused for immigration enforcement purposes.

AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED: That the Alameda County Central Labor Council calls for ending completely the practice of sending letters to employers with lists of workers whose names don’t match the SSA database ("no-mach letters), which are then used as a pretext to terminate them, alleging their immigration status is in question.

AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED: That the Alameda County Central Labor Council calls for a new amnesty program, allowing undocumented immigrants to regularize their status, and an inexpensive and expedited citizenship process to allow immigrants to become citizens as quickly and easily as possible.

AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED: The Alameda County Central Labor Council proposes that the budget for immigration enforcement be cut drastically, and the money used instead to increase enforcement of workers rights and fair labor standards.

AND BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED: The Alameda County Central Labor Council submits this resolution to the national convention of the AFL-CIO for adoption, and requests the California Labor Federation to forward its position to the national convention for adoption as well.

Adopted by the Central Labor Council of Alameda County, AFL-CIO, at the Delegates Meeting on Monday, June 21, 1999.

Judy Goof, Executive Secretary- Treasurer Date