Jailed Workers We Should All Be in Solidarity With

H ey, what’s with you guys? Can’t you follow a simple script?

Let’s go over this one more time: Look, you hang drywall. You bust your hump all week and make peanuts. Most of you come from Mexico. Some are in this country legally, some not. In any case, don’t cause trouble.

Then there are home builders who hire you. They’re the ones with the boats and the martinis. They live in the houses you build. They have the friends in high places.

As you can see, there are only two roles in this drama: Them That Got and Them That Ain’t.

Guess which ones you are?

Well, a funny thing happened last week when these guys were supposed to take it in the neck one more time--this time they said: “We’re not taking it, we’re standing our ground.”

That’s come as quite a shock, what with the police, Sheriff’s Department and district attorney’s office seemingly all arrayed against them.

The story line is this: 149 non-unionized drywall workers, striking for the past several weeks for higher pay and for benefits, were arrested Thursday for allegedly storming a Mission Viejo construction site and harassing some non-striking workers.

All 149 initially were held on $50,000 bail each while prosecutors supposedly considered kidnaping charges against them. While the men remained in jail over the Fourth of July weekend, the kidnap charade was dropped, and each was given a chance to be released in exchange for pleading guilty to trespassing.

That offer came after a visit from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, carrying the ultimate threat of a deportation trip back to Mexico for those without their documentation.

Sufficiently apprised of the powers aligned against them, the strikers were expected to follow the script and slink away.

Instead, they all rejected the plea, deciding instead to rally around their demand for better wages and benefits.

I repeat, what’s with these guys? Don’t they know the dangers of helping expose the hypocrisy that surrounds their situation?

Oh, you didn’t know there were illegal immigrants working in the reputable industries?

I see.

Well, don’t let me burst your bubble. Perhaps you also think this would be a grand chance for the INS, if it’s truly concerned about illegal immigrants in the work force, to question the arrestees about who their employers are and how many other undocumented workers they employ.

Yeah, right.

Then, there’s the expose of “Pedro” and what a drain he is on society, as certain politicians got mileage out of discussing when they needed a cheap vote before the June primary.

Well, whaddya know? Turns out Pedro is breaking his back with 150-pound hunks of drywall, working seven-day weeks at wages less than paid 10 years ago so people can live comfortably in Mission Viejo. If Pedro and his brothers are living two and three families to a housing unit in your town, his wages may have something to do with it.

Or, rather than buying into what a drain he is, consider that Pedro follows a long line of immigrant workers trying to make a decent living. “You don’t have quote unquote illegal immigrants dominating any industry that doesn’t want them to,” says Mike Potts, head of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Orange County. “These guys are merely the effects of what the industry does to itself.”

These arrested men are incarnations of what used to be considered the emerging middle class, the group whose vanishing presence red-blooded Americans claim they regret. Those lower-class workers (yep, your granddaddy) of yesteryear became middle class because they demanded, and eventually got, decent wages and living conditions from employers.

In America’s frontier days, Chinese coolies and European immigrants helped lay the track that let the railroad companies get rich. Just dub in home builders for railroad companies, and you get the idea.

Potts says the arrested men will continue the fight until they’ve unionized.

“These guys are right back to the very roots of the thing, where there was no union and guys got together and decided to form one, “ says Potts. “This isn’t a union-organizing drive, like in a factory where it’s professionally run. These guys are starting right from the bottom.”

If you had to bet on either a group of Mexican and Central American drywallers or the Orange County housing industry, you know where the smart money should go.

But if you decry the striking workers, ask yourself who’s paying for their health care if the employers aren’t and who’s paying the social price when a worker can’t afford housing for his family.

Then ask yourself what a better wage would do for them and out of whose pocket it would, and should, come.

I’d say the people with the boats and the martinis.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.