Rights On the Job

Labor Rights: Restore labor protections so that all workers, including immigrant workers, have the right to fair treatment on the job.

Immigrant workers, especially those with uncertain legal status, are especially vulnerable to abuse in their workplaces. Basic labor rights - the right to change jobs, the right to join a union, the right to take action against an abusive employer, the right to stand up for fair treatment - are effectively denied to many immigrant workers in the low-wage workforce.

This injustice creates and maintains a class of workers who can be easily exploited, and whose status deters them from standing up for their rights on the job. In such a “two-tier” workforce, standards of pay and working conditions become a race to the bottom. The result is that every worker is held back.

In fact, a recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court - Hoffman Plastic Compounds vs. the National Labor Relations Board - drew a clear line between the rights of the “undocumented” and the documented or citizen worker. The Court ruled that undocumented immigrant workers illegally fired by an employer for organizing a union are not eligible for back pay wages.

This legitimizes disparate treatment by trapping some workers permanently outside the very laws that were intended to give all workers the right to organize a union, to be protected from discriminatory and dangerous conditions, and to seek redress of grievances without fear of retaliation. We need policies that gives all workers the same rights and protections on the job.

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• NELP's Immigrant Worker Project: Workplace Rights
From the National Employment Law Project. Legal analysis, fact sheets and tools for legislative advocacy related to protecting and expanding the workplace rights of immigrant workers. Explanation of Social Security No-Match and employer work authorization verification issues.

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© 2003 Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union