Exploited Underclass of Immigrant Workers Is Fertile Ground for Union Organizing

James Flanigan, in his Aug. 23 column (“Why Cheers for a Polish Union, Scorn for Ours?”), claims that today’s unions are becoming a victim of their own success. The relatively high wages and good benefits unionization has brought make it tougher to organize new workers, he argues; employees don’t believe unions can produce anything for them today.

Most of my union’s 32,000 members are employed in the Los Angeles food industry. They offered views contrary to Flanigan’s in recent confidential in-depth surveys conducted by the respected Washington, D.C.-based Wilson Center for Public Research. By roughly a 15-to-1 ratio, food workers indicated they would be worse off without union representation.

Behind this union loyalty were insights not covered in the column. Fear of arbitrary treatment by management and lack of job security without union protections were only two of the points workers cited.

Flanigan argues that union-won reforms since the 1930s and a work force shifting from an industrial to a service economy have diminished labor’s clout. But he ignores the impact of an underclass of immigrant laborers who dominate key sectors of the work force in many parts of Los Angeles. They still experience the exploitation and poverty that plagued Depression-era workers. And they are fertile ground for unionization. My union has scored gains in organizing and winning contract gains for mostly Hispanic workers in area meatpacking plants. Other unions are also targeting companies made up of low-paid Spanish-speaking employees.

Labor does face severe challenges. A critical problem--one ignored entirely by Flanigan--is the utter failure of the nation’s labor laws to protect workers from illegal union-busting tactics. But the labor movement has a future so long as it protects union members--as only it can--from the caprice of management, and embraces workers who are still disadvantaged.

RICK ICAZA

Los Angeles

The writer is president of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and of the United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 770