‘Legal’ Workers Going to ‘Undesirable’ Jobs

Horse racing, sometimes called the “sport of kings,” used to rely heavily on poor illegal aliens to perform jobs that track officials said most U.S. citizens and others here legally just would not do. Now, however, by raising wages and improving working conditions, they are attracting domestic workers to those so-called undesirable jobs.

California tracks may now help prove to the nation that employers who are willing to make a serious effort can find domestic workers ready and able to take those jobs.

In return for a pledge to intensify their efforts to train and hire legal residents for the jobs, trainers and track officials last week won unprecedented approval from the Immigration and Naturalization Service to continue using some illegal aliens temporarily. As a means of buying more time to finish the job of attracting domestic workers to the track jobs, the government issued temporary work visas to 363 illegal aliens working in so-called backstretch jobs such as grooms and exercise riders.

Harold Ezell, regional commissioner of the INS, believes that, based on their success so far, the tracks will find enough domestic workers to fill all of the jobs still held by illegals. But he has warned the tracks that “this time, our effort will not be a ‘hit-and-run’ proposition as it was in the past. We are going to keep after them (the employers) until they stop using illegal aliens for jobs Americans can and will fill.”

Domestic workers already fill almost all of the tracks’ unionized jobs, such as program and ticket sellers, ushers, veterinarian assistants, jockey valets and starting gate operators. The backstretch track workers don’t belong to unions.

Exact figures for the number of illegal aliens at the tracks are not available. But Ezell estimates that “at least 60% of the more than 2,000 backstretch workers--mostly grooms and exercise riders--were illegals before we began a crackdown at the tracks about two years ago. That number has already been cut in half.”

Wages have been raised, and by continuing to improve living quarters for track employees, advertising available openings and setting up training programs for legal residents, “Americans and non-citizens here legally can and will be found for all those jobs,” Ezell predicted.

Domestic workers may well be attracted if and when they learn that--according to track reports to the Department of Labor--grooms, for instance, are now paid a base rate of $237.50 a week, more than $100 a week above the legal minimum wage.

They also get time-and-a-half pay after 40 hours, medical, dental and retirement programs, sleeping quarters and usually bonuses when the horses they care for win races. Riders who exercise the horses get $8.13 an hour, compared to the $3.35 hourly legal minimum, plus overtime rates and the other benefits offered to grooms.

Marge Everett, chief operating officer at Hollywood Park and a veteran in the industry, says Hollywood Park recently spent $16 million to provide better quarters for those who live at the tracks.

The usual reason employers in many fields hire illegals is that the illegals accept lower wages and complain less about poor working conditions than the domestic workers. The same logic may well have applied at the tracks.

Nevertheless, Everett insists that now “all of us (horse owners, trainers and track officials) believe as good Americans that our own citizens should have the first opportunity for the jobs. I agree with Ezell that our effort to achieve that goal will be successful, although it may not be easy.”

While the California tracks may voluntarily achieve their newly stated goal of staffing all track jobs with U.S. citizens and others here legally, most employers who rely heavily on illegal aliens will need the pressure of federal law to reduce their “dependency” on the illegals.

Chances are growing that Congress will act this session to at least slow the rising tide of illegal aliens pouring into United States by finally adopting an immigration reform law that has already passed the Senate by a substantial 69-30 margin and is now pending in the House.

It would, among other things, punish employers who knowingly hire illegals. It would also set up a system called “amnesty” that would allow illegal aliens who came to this country before Jan. 1, 1980, to apply for temporary resident status. After three years, they would be eligible to apply for permanent resident status.

And it would create a “guest worker” program allowing an additional 350,000 workers to come into the United States for up to nine months of work.

The proposed law is essential, but it could be improved. For starters, it would help to move the “amnesty” date to 1984, or even 1985, in order to reduce the number of illegal aliens who will have to be deported. Second, the “guest worker” program could be either eliminated or the number of new workers sharply reduced because current immigration law already allows employers to hire foreign workers when they can prove that those here legally aren’t available or capable enough for the jobs.

Also, as difficult and costly as it may be, Congress could help already indebted countries such as Mexico in developing more jobs. That would ease the pressure on their own often desperate workers forced by poverty to seek jobs here.

But the law is needed, even if it isn’t perfected, because, as of now, employers looking for workers who will work “cheap and scared,” as former Labor Secretary Ray Marshall put it, can still hire illegal aliens with impunity.

The law would also help employers resist the temptation to hire relatively malleable illegals instead of domestic workers not just for so-called dirty, low-paying jobs, but also for better-paying, more skilled positions, as more and more employers are doing.

The problem of millions of workers slipping into this country illegally to escape the poverty of their homelands by seeking jobs here has been been blurred in recent years by another problem: Refugees are coming here illegally to escape persecution in war-torn Central America. In fact, the moral issues have wrongly become linked in the minds of many people to the economic issues involved in foreign workers coming here illegally.

But the question of helping refugees from political persecution in their native countries should not deter Congress from, at long last, passing the sorely needed immigration reform law.

Even though illegal aliens do often take jobs and depress wages of workers here legally, “unions have a moral duty to help all workers, including those who are ‘undocumented,’ ” insists David Sickler, AFL-CIO organizing coordinator for Los Angeles and Orange counties.

And, of course, he argues that the illegals can best be helped by persuading them to become union members. Since there is currently no law prohibiting an employer from hiring illegal aliens, those workers can also legally join unions.

But the relations between unions and illegal aliens is not that simple, and union leaders themselves are sharply divided on the issue.

One problem is that, while illegal aliens may be potential union members, they are also unfair competitors for jobs because they are often willing to break strikes and almost always willing to work for wages far below those acceptable to union members who are legally in this country.

A conference sponsored by the AFL-CIO and the UCLA Institute of Industrial Relations will be held here Feb. 7 to study the issue of “new immigrants,” especially illegal aliens. It will be interesting to see if the conference considers some of the contradictions inherent in attempts to unionize the illegals.

Often, for example, illegal aliens are hired instead of U.S. citizens or others here legally because employers want cheap workers who will not complain about working conditions or wages for fear of being deported if their employers turn them over to immigration authorities for deportation.

But what will happen if the illegals do join unions whose goals are to significantly improve their wages and working conditions--and those goals are met?

Domestic workers may well apply for those upgraded jobs that employers insist now attract only illegal aliens. Thus, the possibility that unionization might then cost the illegals their jobs might deter them from joining unions.

Also, the illegals may be deterred from joining unions because at least part of their dues will go to help the AFL-CIO pursue its strongly held position that Congress must pass a law to punish employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens.

It is true that many illegals may want to help unions push for passage of the proposed law because, as adopted by the Senate, it also contains an amnesty section that would allow those who arrived here illegally before Jan. 1, 1980, to apply first for temporary--and then permanent--resident status.

But even those illegals who might qualify for amnesty may be reluctant to join a union, and thus help pass the law, because that law would hurt friends and relatives also here illegally who would not qualify for amnesty.

Also, illegal aliens are often hesitant to back unionization because it can result in a government-conducted union representation election to see if a majority of the workers want the union. Such elections result in contacts with government officials, something those here illegally don’t relish because of deportation fears.

Unions must also face the problem of employers using the threat of deportation to discourage union membership.

Nevertheless, several unions say they have already succeeded in unionizing many illegal aliens. But the number is certainly small, compared to the millions of illegals now working in this country.

The AFL-CIO’s Sickler says union organizers don’t ask workers whether they are here legally, so none of the questions that might deter unionization need to be raised.

“We cannot turn a blind eye to the fact that undocumented workers make up a significant segment of the work force in many industries these days. We must deal with realities,” he says.

But while he and others want, in effect, to make the illegals allies of unions rather than viewing them as rivals to American workers, other union leaders say, as one put it, “that is a nonsensical position.”

V. C. (Bud) Mathis, head of the Los Angeles County AFL-CIO Building Trades Council, insists that “rarely do illegal aliens join our unions.

“In all communities along the U.S.-Mexican border, illegal aliens make up a substantial percent of the growing non-union work force competing for jobs with union construction workers. They are having an increasingly disastrous effect on our members and our unions,” he said.

Mathis points out that “almost always there are many construction workers in this country legally who are out of jobs, and I’m not talking about low-paid, ‘dirty’ jobs Americans will not take.

“American citizens and others here legally urgently want the construction jobs, but more and more frequently we have to compete for good jobs with the illegals.”

Unionizing illegal aliens may help some of them, and even slightly relieve some of the downward pressure they put on wages of domestic workers.

But the economic impact of illegal workers is far too great to be significantly affected by unionization efforts. Only Congress can adequately deal with the nation’s increasing immigration problem.