Enrolling immigrants, legal or not, on the rise but rankles some

By SUSAN FERRIS
Sacramento Bee
Monday, October 01, 2007

In a small office tucked inside a Sacramento, Calif., warehouse, a journeyman with Roofers Union Local 81 told apprentices -- in English and Spanish -- to listen up.

Teaching a bilingual seminar for union members puts Victor Garrido on the front lines of his AFL-CIO-based union's push to recruit immigrants, including the undocumented, with guarantees of better pay, career development, pensions and health insurance.

It's a survival tactic for unions, whose leaders see their foreign-born membership increasing and argue that inclusiveness protects all workers. But it's one that can confound not just outsiders but some union rank and file, who fear the presence of illegal immigrants in general erodes working conditions.

It's also a philosophical shift that has unions increasingly clashing with the federal Department of Homeland Security, which regulates immigration.

The AFL-CIO challenged Homeland Security last month in a lawsuit that temporarily halted a campaign to identify illegal immigrants through Social Security information. The union joined the American Civil Liberties Union in the original filing, since joined by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Unions also have urged Congress to allow longtime, tax-paying undocumented workers to earn legal status. They've denounced the July indictment of an Iowa United Food and Commercial Workers union official charged with harboring illegal immigrants and this year's Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids at meatpacking plants.

"These raids are almost thuggish," said John Wilhelm, the New York-based president of the hospitality section of the hotel, restaurant and garment workers' union, UNITE HERE. That union, which split from the AFL-CIO in 2005, has joined the federation's suit against Homeland Security.

The AFL-CIO, the nation's biggest labor network, once supported sanctions against employers who hired illegal immigrants. But in 2000, leaders reversed course, concluding that employers could exploit with impunity because punishment was rare and fines meager.

"We had employers even calling raids on themselves," to get rid of workers involved in union drives, said the union's immigration project director, Ana Avendano.

During Garrido's class, immigration wasn't part of the curriculum. Students leafed through manuals, in English or Spanish, as Garrido quizzed them on waterproofing roofs and the hazards of combustible materials. Half a dozen students, some fresh off the job in tar-stained clothes, were immigrants.

"No se olviden de traer sus talones -- don't forget to bring your pay stubs in," Garrido reminded them. Later, he reflected on his goal, and the union's.

"We want laborers to come into the union and to set a standard," Garrido said. "Where you get abuse is where the immigrant comes in and gets paid lower."

Jesus Jasso, an undocumented union roofer, applauded the effort.

"We're all paying dues and taxes every day," he said in Spanish and fluent English. "We've got medical and dental insurance, and we perform community service through the union. ... I may have come without documents. But I have tried to do everything else right."

But the roofing union's shifting stance was a matter of debate among Garrido's apprentices.

After class, Joshua Garcia said he was not entirely comfortable sharing the workplace with undocumented workers. Employers, Garcia said, "need to get on the phone" and call the Social Security Administration to see if workers' ID cards are real. Hiring undocumented workers, he charged, "is just to justify the laziness of Americans," he said.

Another U.S.-born apprentice, Brennan Wade, 20, laughed and pointed at Garcia, who is Mexican-American, calling him a racist.

Wade said it made sense to him to bring as many roofers as possible into the union, though he conceded that he was "not too sure what we should do" about illegal immigration.

Back at Garrido's union office in Oakland, business representative Doug Ziegler, a former Marine and roofer since 1960, said he often feels torn over immigration, too.

"As an American citizen, I feel that people born here should get jobs first," Ziegler said. "By the same token, I represent young guys who come here illegally, and they're extremely hardworking."

The union's change of heart is partly a function of facing facts: Only 12 percent of the U.S. work force is unionized today, and while the number of U.S.-born union workers declined 9 percent in the last decade, the number of immigrants in unions grew 30 percent, according to a new study by the Migration Policy Institute, a pro-immigrant research group in Washington.

Robert Balgenorth, president of the California chapter of the AFL-CIO's Building and Construction Trades Department, pointed out that union strength in the housing-construction industry has waned dramatically as undocumented workers arrived not just from Latin America but also from places such as Ireland, Russia and Scotland.

Allowing workers to earn legal status, and be bolder, Balgenorth said, would help unions replenish their ranks.

(Susan Ferriss can be reached at sferriss(at)sacbee.com.)