“Petition Alleging Violations of the Human Rights of Undocumented Workers by the United States of America.”(Nov. 1, 2006). “This Petition challenges government-sanctioned discrimination against immigrant workers in the United States. Petitioners are undocumented immigrant who make up nearly 5% of the labor force of the United States, who work in the most poorly paid and undesirable jobs in the U.S. economy, yet are denied rights and remedies under employment and labor laws because of their immigration status.” [read article]
“Undocumented Workers Bring Plea of Non-Discrimination to Human Rights Body.”ACLU. (Nov 1, 2006). “The American Civil Liberties Union, the National Employment Law Project and the Transnational Legal Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law today filed a petition urging the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to find the United States in violation of its universal human rights obligations by failing to protect millions of undocumented workers from exploitation and discrimination in the workplace.” [read article]
Fine, Janice. “Finding a Place for Immigrant Workers in Today’s Labor Movement.”AFL-CIO. (2006). “Between March and May 2006, a powerful movement for immigrants’ rights went public. More than a million low-wage immigrant workers, outraged by a House bill that would have criminalized their presence in the United States and all those who help them survive day to day, emerged from the shadows and took to the streets.” [read article]
Grieco, Elizabeth. “Immigrant Union Members: Numbers and Trends.”Migration Policy Institute. (May 2004). “Since 1990, the number of foreign-born persons living in the United States has been increasing rapidly. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, that number reached 33.7 million in 2003. Today, immigrants make up approximately 12 percent of the total population and 14 percent of the total civilian labor force.” [read article]
Capps, Randy; Fix, Michael; Passel, Jeffrey S. “Undocumented Immigrants: Facts and Figures.”Urban Institute Immigration Studies Program. (Jan 12, 2004). “The Bush administration and members of Congress have proposed granting temporary legal status to undocumented immigrant workers currently residing in the United States. Below are some basic descriptive data on the undocumented population, particularly from ‘A Profile of the Low-Wage Immigrant Workforce’ and ‘The Dispersal of Immigrants in the 1990s.’ [read article]
“Blood, Sweat and Fear: Workers’ Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants.”Human Rights Watch. (2004). “Health and safety laws and regulations fail to address critical hazards in the meat and poultry industry. Laws and agencies that are supposed to protect workers’ freedom of association are instead manipulated by employers to frustrate worker organizing. Federal laws and policies on immigrant workers are a mass of contradictions and incentives to violate their rights. In sum, the United States is failing to meet its obligations under international human rights standards to protect the human rights of meat and poultry industry workers.” [read article]
Capps, Randy; Fix, Michael; Passel, Jeffrey S.; Ost, Jason; Perez-Lopez, Dan. “Immigrant Families and Workers: A Profile of the Low-Wage Immigrant Work Force.”Urban Institute. (Nov. 2003). “During the 1990s,one out of every two new workers was an immigrant.While many immigrants speak English well and enter the United States with strong academic credentials and skills, many others do not. Like other low-skilled workers, few of these immigrants enjoy the benefits of employer-provided training programs, most of which are geared to managers or highly skilled workers. Low -wage immigrant workers have also been outside the reach of government-sponsored job training programs that concentrate on getting welfare recipients into the labor market and have often underserved persons with limited English skills.” [read article]
Smith, Rebecca; Sugimori, Amy. “Low Pay, High Risk: State Models for Advancing Immigrant Workers’ Rights.”National Employment Law Project. (Nov. 2003). “Immigrant workers, especially those who are undocumented, are under attack from many fronts; from the prospect of local police enforcing immigration laws to new systems of information sharing among federal agencies and the proliferation of Social Security Administration “no-match” letters sent out to employers. The effects of two recent Supreme Court rulings have also made it more difficult for working immigrants to enforce their rights under federal law… These decisions and changes in federal law, together with the delay in developing a legalization program for undocumented workers, mean that immigrant workers will often need to turn to state-based labor protective laws in order to enforce their rights.” [read article]
“Fact Sheet for Workers: Supreme Court Decision in Hoffman Plastic Compounds v. NLRB.”National Employment Law Project. (May 2002). “In March, 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court decided a case called Hoffman Plastic Compounds v. NLRB. In the case, a worker without immigration papers was working at a factory. His employer violated the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) by firing him for helping to organize a union. The question for the Supreme Court was whether the worker could receive the usual remedy of ‘backpay’ for the time he was not working because he had been illegally fired.” [read article]
“What Union Members Should Know About Union and Immigrant Workers.”AFL-CIO. “Throughout the history of this country, immigrants have played an important role in building our nation, our communities and our unions. We are, to a large degree, a country of immigrants with a rich and diverse culture that continues to expand and grow. And as new arrivals join the workplace, our unions must build understanding among all workers to create the change necessary for unity and solidarity." [read article]