At the end of January, the Department of Labor released its annual Union Members Summary, which revealed that union membership in the United States has held at about 12% over the last few years. This population is considerably smaller than the roughly 20% of American workers who were unionized in 1983 when the Department of Labor began tracking such statistics.
While the overall decrease is more than enough cause for concern for labor rights advocates, what strikes me as even more alarming is that certain types of workers, namely private industry workers, who are incredibly likely to be taken advantage of, are unionizing at an abysmally lower rate than their public-sector counterparts.
According to the Union Members Summary, the union membership rate for private sector employees is around 7.5% but is almost 36% for those working in the public sector. What has contributed to this reduction? Working Life, a publication by the Labor Research Association, has attributed this drop in part to ”ongoing layoffs” and the “anti-union posture of the Bush administration.”
Illegal immigration has been a controversial subject in America for awhile now, so it’s nothing new to hear about towns and cities that are struggling to find solutions to this ever growing problem. And I have to admit that when I hear calls for immigration reform, I’m more likely to imagine that the outcry is coming from parched, windswept towns seared by scorching sun located somewhere in the Rio Grande Valley or the desolate and lonesome Arizona border than I am to think of sleepy, rural Hazleton, Pennsylvania. But that community of roughly 25,000 residents in Luzerne County has been a hotbed of contention since 2006 when the city passed the Illegal Immigration Reform Act.
The provisions of the act imposed a $1,000 fine on landlords who rented to illegal immigrants. It also required that businesses would have had to ensure that all their customers were in fact legal residents. Additionally, business owners could have had their licenses revoked if it was discovered that they were knowingly or unknowlingly employing illegal immigrants.
Though the ordinance was eventually ruled by federal judge James Munley to be unconstitutional, the city of Valley Park, Missouri recently enacted a similar statute that called for the revokation of business permits for those enterprises which employ illegal immigrants. Like Hazleton’s Illegal Immigration Reform Act, Valley Park’s legislation was challenged in court.
Interestingly enough, the parallels between the two cases don’t end there. The lead defense attorney in the Hazleton case also signed on to represent Valley Park. However, in this instance, the court ruled in favor of Valley Park in the verdict that was delivered last Friday. It remains to be seen if this case or another similar case in Arizona will actually make it to the Supreme Court or not.
How does all of this pertain to labor? Well, in essence the Hazleton and Valley Park legislation is merely a manifestation of labor tensions that have been threatening to boil over for years now. So, are illegal immigrants economically beneficial or detrimental? During the Hazleton case, two divergent ways of thinking emerged. There were those who posited that the influx of illegal immigrants had revitalized and stimulated the economic development of the formerly booming coal town and there were those who felt that deserving American citizens were being deprived of rightful job opportunities in favor of the inevitably cheaper labor offered by the immigrants.
It is worth noting that even though Hazleton’s law was struck down, over 5,000 members of the Hispanic population have left the town and numerous Hispanic owned shops have closed down or are struggling to stay open for business. But this is my dilemma: as a pro-labor and pro-working class American, what should my stance on this issue be?
Does my loyalty go to my fellow Americans or does my loyalty go to a group of people who in addition to facing the barriers often resulting from being a laborer must deal with the hindrance of discrimination but who are violating the law by offering their services here illegally? Ultimately, all laborers share the common ground of trying to provide for themselves and their families, trying to make ends meet, and trying to secure a better future for their heirs. So who gets to be the winners and who ends up as the losers? Is there some compromise we can reach that doesn’t assume that power is a zero sum good and can satisfy several competing needs at once?
I don’t think there’s an easy answer and I hope you all will post your feelings on this subject.
Just for fun, I have posted Mayor Barletta’s response to the Hazleton verdict below.
The Fair Labor Weblog is intended to serve as a space where current issues in labor and the workforce are explored, especially with respect to legal labor requirements, living wages, benefits, and equitable treatment for all workers.
