Unions challenge Bush ‘no match’ plan

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.pww.org/article/view/12815/

People's Weekly World Newspaper, 04/03/08 19:30


The United Food and Commercial Workers has stepped up its fight against Bush administration use of “no match” Social Security letters against workers whose on-the-job identification doesn’t match what’s in government files. The government uses the program to pressure companies to fire employees and to force workers to prove “legal” status or face deportation.

The UFCW, joined by the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, the American Federation of Government Employees and various business and community groups, is saying it will renew the fight against the Department of Homeland Security in court on this issue. The renewed court battle is necessary, the UFCW and its allies say, because of recent DHS action.

In response to a federal court ruling last October that blocked the use of the letters, the DHS re-issued its proposed “no match” rules on March 27. The department said it is promulgating the rules “without change,” even though a federal judge halted their enforcement because of widespread problems with accuracy of government records.

Ester Lopez, the UFCW’s director of civil rights and community action, said the rules are unfair to both companies and workers because they rely on faulty records, the government’s social security rolls. “Companies that want to do the right thing, to follow the law and protect their workers, find themselves in a muddy situation,” she said.

“Workers are even worse off,” Lopez declared, “because unscrupulous employers use the no-match letters — even though the judge halted the DHS program — to thwart union organizing drives or to threaten workers who complain about safety and health.”

Companies have pulled out the no match letters just weeks before union representation elections, Lopez said, and the organizing campaigns fell apart.

FULL story at link.