Homeland Security’s latest weapon against illegal immigration could cost legal workers their jobs.
By Tori Marlan
Word that workers would be fired began to spread through Ballco Manufacturing in August. The Aurora company, which makes valve components, was staffed largely by Mexican immigrants. Eduardo Soria, who’d worked there for a decade as a machine operator, says the rumors started after Latino employees were asked to take on white trainees. A factory supervisor claimed to be adding a shift, Soria says, but some of the workers doubted it. One said he’d seen a blackboard in the office listing the names of 40 workers along with the trainees slated to replace them. Another had found a piece of paper in the tool room with workers’ names and social security numbers on it; a corresponding column listed each one’s “replacement hire.”
Read more at the Chicago Reader...
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Chicago Reader: Fire 'Em All...Let God 'Em Out
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Setting Up No-Match Action Networks
When the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced in August a policy that gave employers a freer hand to punish workers with mismatched social security numbers, a committee of unions, workers’ centers, and immigrant rights groups in Chicago swung into action.
The Chicago Committee Against No Match has organized hundreds of activists throughout the Chicagoland region to respond immediately to the firing and harassment of workers whose names come up on no-match letters. The Social Security Administration has issued about 100,000 of these no-match letters to employers in recent years, despite a finding from the agency’s inspector general last December that 12.7 million of the 17.8 million discrepancies in SSA’s database belonged to native-born workers. The new DHS rule is now on hold following a federal judge’s injunction. Led by the United Electrical Workers (UE) and the Chicago Workers’ Collaborative (CWC) workers’ center, advocates in Chicago are using the reprieve to ramp up their network. The network’s goal is to put workers’ needs at the center of the immigration debate and raise the employer’s cost for abusing no-match letters, said Mark Meinster, a UE representative in Chicago.
More at Labor Notes...
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Ruling Buoys No-Match Critics
Buoyed by a federal judge's ruling yesterday blocking the use of Social Security "no-match" letters for immigration enforcement, labor and immigrant advocates will rally tomorrow to call on SSA to stop sending the letters altogether (Friday, October 12, 12:30 p.m., Federal Plaza, Adams and Dearborn).
More >>
Friday, September 28, 2007
Latest on Firings in Aurora, No-Match Letters
On September 19th, eight workers were fired from Ballco manufacturing in Aurora, after being told of apparent problems with their Social Security numbers. Co-workers joined them the next day on a picket line and 27 of them were fired for their action.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
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