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Date: November 22, 2024 Fri
Time: 11:31 am
Time: 11:31 am
Results for immigrant labor
4 results foundAuthor: Smith, Rebecca Title: Workers’ Rights on ICE: How Immigration Reform Can Stop Retaliation and Advance Labor Rights Workers’ Rights on ICE Summary: This report outlines how employers across the country are gaming today’s broken immigration system to exploit immigrant workers and evade both labor and immigration laws. The report by the National Employment Law Project (NELP) uses two dozen case studies—including the recent action at Palermo’s Pizza—as examples of employers’ use of immigration enforcement or the threat of it to retaliate against workers who seek their basic workplace rights. One of the key principles of the AFL-CIO’s comprehensive immigration reform’s blueprint is the coverage and enforcement of workplace rights for undocumented workers. At Palermo's Pizza, Workers’ Rights on ICE: How Immigration Reform Can Stop Retaliation and Advance Labor Rights report relates that when workers there began to form a union, management used the threat of a reverification of their immigration status by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to intimidate the workers. Even though ICE told Palermo's it was not conducting an investigation. One day after receiving notice that ICE was not pursuing enforcement action against it, Palermo's fired some 75 striking workers. Palermo's claimed that the firings were not motivated by anti-union animus but to comply with immigration law, a dubious claim in light of ICE’s retraction. Palermo's Pizza workers, who have been on strike since June 1, are protesting unfair labor practices and demanding safe working conditions, recognition for their union and the reinstatement of 90 workers who were, according to a recent Worker Rights Consortium report, illegally fired for trying to organize a union. Other examples of employer abuse in the report include: •A California employer falsely accuses a day laborer of robbery to avoid paying him wages owed. Police turn him over to immigration enforcement agents anyway. •An Ohio company, on the eve of an National Labor Relations Board decision finding it guilty of unfair labor practices, carries out its threat to “take out” union leadership by reverifying union leaders’ immigration status and work eligibility. •A Seattle employer threatens workers seeking to recover unpaid wages with deportation, and an immigration arrest follows. Details: New York: National Employment Law Project, 2013. 38p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 18, 2013 at: http://www.nelp.org/page/-/Justice/2013/Workers-Rights-on-ICE-Retaliation-Report.pdf?nocdn=1 Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: http://www.nelp.org/page/-/Justice/2013/Workers-Rights-on-ICE-Retaliation-Report.pdf?nocdn=1 Shelf Number: 127967 Keywords: Illegal ImmigrantsImmigrant LaborImmigrants (U.S.)Immigration ReformUndocumented Workers |
Author: Owens, Colleen Title: Understanding the Organization, Operation, and Victimization Process of Labor Trafficking in the United States Summary: This study examines the organization, operation, and victimization process of labor trafficking across multiple industries in the United States. It examines labor trafficking victim abuse and exploitation along a continuum, from victims' recruitment for work in the United States; through their migration experiences (if any), employment victimization experiences, and efforts to seek help; to their ultimate escape and receipt of services. Data for this study came from a sample of 122 closed labor trafficking victim service records from service providers in four US cities. In addition, interviews were conducted with labor trafficking survivors, local and federal law enforcement officials, legal advocates, and service providers in each site to better understand the labor trafficking victimization experience, the networks involved in labor trafficking and the escape and removal process, and the barriers to investigation and prosecution of labor trafficking cases. All the victims in this study sample were immigrants working in the United States. The vast majority of our sample (71 percent) entered the United States on a temporary visa. The most common temporary visas were H-2A visas for work in agriculture and H-2B visas for jobs in hospitality, construction, and restaurants. Our study also identified female domestic servitude victims who had arrived in the United States on diplomatic, business, or tourist visas. Individuals who entered the United States without authorization were most commonly trafficked in agriculture and domestic work. Labor trafficking victims' cases were coded to collect information on their labor trafficking experience, as well as any forms of civil labor violations victims encountered. All victims in our sample experienced elements of force, fraud and coercion necessary to substantiate labor trafficking. Elements of force, fraud and coercion included document fraud; withholding documents; extortion; sexual abuse and rape; discrimination; psychological manipulation and coercion; torture; attempted murder; and violence and threats against themselves and their family members. In addition to criminal forms of abuse, we also found that labor trafficking victims faced high rates of civil labor exploitation. These forms of civil labor exploitation included, but were not limited to, being paid less than minimum wage; being paid less than promised; wage theft; and illegal deductions. While legal under some visa programs and labor law, employers/traffickers also controlled the housing, food, and transportation of a significant proportion of our sample. Immigration status was a powerful mechanism of control - with employers threatening both workers with visas and unauthorized workers with arrest as a means of keeping them in forced labor. Despite 71 percent of our sample arriving in the United States for work on a visa, by the time victims escaped and were connected to service providers, 69 percent were unauthorized. By and large, labor trafficking investigations were not prioritized by local or federal law enforcement agencies. This lack of prioritization was consistent across all study sites and across all industries in which labor trafficking occurred. The US Department of Labor was rarely involved. Survivors mostly escaped on their own and lived for several months or years before being connected to a specialized service provider. A lack of awareness and outreach, coupled with the victims' fear of being unauthorized, inhibited the identification of survivors. Policy and practice recommendations are provided to improve identification and response to labor trafficking and guide future research on labor trafficking victimization. Details: Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2014. 307p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 22, 2014 at: http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/413249-Labor-Trafficking-in-the-United-States.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/413249-Labor-Trafficking-in-the-United-States.pdf Shelf Number: 133798 Keywords: Forced Labor (U.S.)Human TraffickingImmigrant LaborImmigrantsLabor TraffickingVictimization |
Author: Verite Title: Labor and Human Rights Risk Analysis of Ecuador's Palm Oil Sector Summary: This report is another important contribution to the literature on human and labor rights risks in palm oil production globally. Thus far, there has been very little research on conditions in palm oil production in Ecuador, Latin America's largest producer. Research carried out by Verite and REACH (Research-Education-Action-Change) found a number of risks including indicators of forced labor, unethical recruitment and hiring practices, wage and hour violations, child labor, discrimination against women and minorities, environmental damage, and displacement. Verite found that several factors heightened workers' vulnerability, including competition for a limited number of jobs, the involvement of labor brokers in the recruitment and management of workers, and the displacement of Colombian refugees who are forced to migrate to Ecuador, where the palm oil sector constitutes one of the only sources of employment available to them outside of illegal activities. Verite found that Colombian immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, are extremely vulnerable to labor and human rights abuses, especially in Esmeraldas, the province with by far the highest number of Colombian immigrants and the highest rate of African palm cultivation. Approximately 1,000 Colombians flee each month from violence in Colombia, which had the second highest rate of displacement in the world after Syria, to Ecuador, which is by far the country with the largest number of Colombian refugees. These immigrants faced discrimination and threats of deportation, constraining their ability to protest unfair labor conditions and making them especially vulnerable to exploitation. Verite research detected a large number of indicators of forced labor, including indicators of unfree recruitment, work and life under duress, and impossibility of leaving employers, especially among Colombian immigrants. Verite's research also uncovered additional problems faced by palm workers. These risks included wage, benefit, and working hour violations; child labor; discrimination against women, indigenous people, and people of African descent; health and safety risks; poor housing; environmental damage; harm to indigenous communities; and inadequate grievance mechanisms. For more information, along with recommendations for action, please see our in-depth report on Labor and Human Rights Risks in Ecuador's Palm Oil Sector. Details: Amherst, MA: Verite, 2016. 81p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed June 1, 2016 at: http://www.verite.org/sites/default/files/Risk%20Analysis%20of%20Ecuador%20Palm%20Oil%20Sector-final%20draft.pdf Year: 2016 Country: Ecuador URL: http://www.verite.org/sites/default/files/Risk%20Analysis%20of%20Ecuador%20Palm%20Oil%20Sector-final%20draft.pdf Shelf Number: 139262 Keywords: Child LaborForced LaborHuman RightsImmigrant laborLabor Exploitation |
Author: Raghunath, Raja Title: Freedmen and Day Laborers: Why Enforcement Matters Summary: As the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Emancipation approaches, there are cautionary lessons for modern workers to be found in Reconstruction, the period that followed the abolition of chattel slavery. It was mostly due to vehement opposition that the promise of universal liberty at work was squelched after the Civil War, but the federal government also bears responsibility for not defending the rights it had granted to the freed slaves, or freedmen, when those rights were contested and eventually nullified in the working fields and cities of the South. In this sense, workers' rights were the original civil rights, and the Freedmens Bureau, the original federal labor rights agency, was a founding failure of enforcement. This article argues that the lesson of this failure is that modern enforcement agencies must pay increased attention to labor standards enforcement for foreign born workers, in particular unauthorized immigrants, and that such a focus will benefit all workers in the national economy. The modern American underclass has expanded to substantially include unauthorized immigrants, and their presence in an industry or labor market, such as day labor, is a reliable marker that the most vulnerable workers may be found there. By focusing on these most vulnerable workers, enforcement efforts can help overcome the collective action problem that is created by any system of minimum labor standards. What primarily stands in the way of such an enforcement focus is the misplaced reliance on moral culpability that drives so much of the debate about unauthorized workers. This article argues that the exploitation of vulnerable workers is a behavior that has persisted through the centuries, and that this persistence matters as much as, or more than, the motivations for such behavior, like racism or hostility to foreigners. Finally, it offers some potential responses to what would be an expected backlash to this argument. Details: Denver: University of Denver Sturm College of Law, 2013. 48p. Source: U Denver Legal Studies Research Paper No. 13-40: Accessed August 2, 2017 at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2320047 Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2320047 Shelf Number: 130019 Keywords: Day Laborers Immigrant LaborUnauthorized Immigrants |