High Court Denies Rights to Undocumented Workers Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit source - Luis Martin This was going on in Washington while Vicente Fox was cuddling up to Bush in Monterrey. -- Luis Martin They remain unprotected and facing abuses by employers The U.S. court denied labor rights to undocumented workers Unions: Their status will be "almost like slavery" JIM CASON AND DAVID BROOKS CORRESPONDENTS La Jornada - Washington, 27 of March. The United States supreme Court ruled today that undocumented workers do not have the right of free association in unions nor protection against employers who violate their labor rights, a decision that generated protests from labor organizations. The ruling sets the precedent that if a business fires a worker for union activities or to protect its interests as an employer, the worker does not enjoy the legal protection established by the laws in the matter, due to his "illegal" migratory condition. With it, all undocumented workers in the fields, factories, restaurants and hotels of this country from now on can not count on the right to sue over low wages nor restitution from businesses that violate the law by firing them as punishment for exercising their basic rights. The Court issued a divided decision of five against four of the judges, settling the case of a Mexican undocumented worker, José Castro, who was fired together with three other companions by Hoffman Plastic Compound in Paramount California in 1989 for supporting efforts to unionize the plant. The National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency responsible for resolving violations of the labor law and that supposedly protects workers from employer reprisals for union activities or protests against employment conditions, found that the rights of Castro were violated and ordered that he be paid lost wages as restitution and be rehired. The appeals courts upheld the order of the NLRB, but the Supreme Court reversed the decisions today. The AFL-CIO said to be disappointed with the ruling of the Supreme Court. "By permitting the employers to illegally victimize undocumented workers, without economic consequences, the ruling of the Court undermines the way of life and job conditions of every U.S. citizen and non-citizen", declared John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO. "Devastating" Decision Arturo Rodríguez, president of the United Farmworkers of America (a labor union founded by César Chávez), expressed that this decision is "devastating" for the undocumented worker, since it leaves them "without rights, without legal protection, without equal treatment under the law". In a telephone interview with La Jornada, Rodríguez indicated that the bosses will now seek to hire more undocumented workers knowing that they lack legal protection for their labor rights. "For the workers, this eliminates their right to confront the bosses... (it) places them almost in a condition of slavery, since they do not have resources for their defense. "For the community immigrant", he affirmed, "this decision represents a threat as serious as proposition 187." Eliseo Medina, executive vice president of the National Union of Services (SEIU), declared that "it is a bad day for justice in United States when the Supreme Court takes away from immigrants the basic protections of his work place". He emphasized that the unions will continue to defend every immigrant worker, whether legal or undocumented, in spite of this ruling. With it, and in spite of the fact that the supreme Court has maintained in the past that the undocumented are protected by the federal labor laws, today's decision removes the protections to organize and defend labor rights. CBIACS Press Review ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytlab-03.30.02-12:36:59-9931