Alex Foods Invites INS to Check Worker Files

Alex Foods, Inc., responding to charges by striking workers that the company illegally hired undocumented aliens to fill their jobs, has asked immigration officials to examine its employment files, a company spokesman said Thursday.

“We feel we’ve done everything we’re supposed to do under the new law,” said chief operating officer Arthur W. Johnson Jr. “I called the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) this morning and asked them to come out and review our files.”

INS did not give the company a firm date on when an investigator would visit the plant in Anaheim, but Johnson said, “I believe someone will be out.”

INS Confirms Call

INS associate regional commissioner Robert Moschorak confirmed that Johnson called, but he would not say what action INS might take.

“We will be pursuing the investigation,” he said.

The privately held company manufactures and packages potato chips and corn chips and markets them under its own label as well as store labels.

An attorney for the strikers, who are members of United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 551, wrote last week to Harold Ezell, INS Western regional commissioner, accusing the company of hiring illegal aliens.

Fifty of the 77 striking workers, who are members of United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 551, signed an accompanying letter saying the company knows that most of the new employees it is hiring are illegal aliens.

‘False Statement’

“I consider it (the strikers’ allegation) as a completely false statement,” Johnson said.

But Jesus Castro, a nine-year employee of the company and a spokesman for the strikers, said he has worked alongside some of the strikebreakers previously, and he knows they don’t have papers.

Under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens could face substantial fines and prison terms if they blatantly and repeatedly violate the law.

Nearly all the striking workers are Latinos, some of whom are illegal aliens and intend to apply for legal resident status under the new law’s amnesty provision.

The labor dispute began May 7, after the company slashed wages and eliminated health benefits for most of its workers. Some workers, who after 20-30 years with the company were earning about $7 an hour, saw their wage cut to $4.25 an hour.

Loss of $500,000

Johnson said the company had considered cutting wages for years but finally decided to do it after losing about $500,000 in the last three years.

“You have to look at a particular job and ask, ‘What is it worth?’ ” Johnson said.

“Our pay scale had just built up over the years . . . and it makes no sense for the company to pay more than the competition.”

About 40 new workers have been hired to replace the strikers, Johnson said.

If negotiators eventually reach a settlement, striking workers will be rehired, he said, “depending on the availability of jobs. . . . We’re trying to hire permanent replacements.”