On Immigrant Workers and Missed Opportunities

It was probably the most significant labor action in this country in 50 years. And the most underappreciated.

On May Day 2006 as many as 10 million people engaged in a one-day general strike, demanding basic democratic rights for immigrant workers.

Despite a lot of weasel-wording, this was a general strike. That is, it involved workers from different employers, all withholding their labor, to achieve political goals. Class against class. A fundamental recognition that laws are made and enforced by the employing class and that workers’ power comes from our ability to withhold our labor at the point of production. And on International Workers Day, no less.

Immigrants have an advantage of sorts over their U.S.-born counterparts. They usually come from places where workers are more class conscious and the logic of a general strike more obvious. They haven’t endured generations of class collaboration and lesser-evilist politics that has dumbed down their U.S. brothers and sisters—ironically, here in the land where May Day was born in a general strike.

The fact that this and subsequent immigrant worker rights events were organized almost entirely outside of the structure of the AFL-CIO/CtW tells the story. Sure, labor officials were asked to speak to the crowd (usually in English) and here in Madison the rally of maybe 20,000 included a handful of unionists. But they were mostly paid staffers, a few retirees and a host of radicals. No one from an AFL-CIO/CtW union in Madison was expected to give up a day’s pay.

Now, consider the potential.

What if the AFL-CIO/CtW had seized this opportunity to unionize this active mass of “unorganized” immigrant workers? Drop everything and hire and train 10,000 bilingual organizers?

Each side has much to bring to such a campaign. The unions could put up resources and provide political cover for the immigrant workers. A huge influx of immigrant workers could reverse the 54-year decline in private sector unionism in this country and bring a fresh sense of consciousness and militancy to the largely moribund U.S. unions.

Here was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

But it didn’t happen. And there are no visible signs that it will happen anytime soon.

Essay Question: What can be done, nationally and locally, to unite the U.S. labor and immigrant workers movements?

Extra Credit: Would this even be a good idea?

PS, there are links to articles about union support for immigrant workers in the Links to Recent Labor Stories section below.