Illegal But Fighting For Rights

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ore often, employer threats to call in the INS have a chilling effect on organizing. The Smithfield Packing Co. in Tar Heel, N.C., the world's largest pork-processing plant, fought off a 1997 union drive by firing labor activists and calling in sheriff's deputies to patrol the parking lot on election day--an intimidating sight to undocumented employees. Last month, in a case brought by the union to the National Labor Relations Board, a judge found that Smithfield managers had committed "egregious and pervasive" labor-law violations by claiming that the union would turn employees in to the INS. The judge ordered a new election, but the company says it will appeal.

Other companies have tried various countermeasures. In California's strawberry fields, where illegals form an estimated 60% of the work force, growers backed a company-friendly union in order to fend off the more militant United Farm Workers. The U.F.W., which had hoped to organize 20,000 pickers, has managed to enroll only 850 in five years. In Baltimore, Md., a laundry company sent a message to its largely undocumented work force by trucking in manure and dumping it at the feet of union leafleteers.

But despite such bullying, undocumented workers in a growing number of cases are taking their grievances public and finding powerful allies in the process. During their first campaign in 1994, striking Los Angeles janitors, a majority of whom are undocumented Latinos, blocked traffic and were attacked by baton-wielding police officers. Last spring they marched with impunity, and after Roger Cardinal Mahony and Mayor Richard Riordan cajoled building contractors during the three-week strike, they won hefty raises. When you have church and state on your side, it's clear you're getting somewhere.