AFL-CIO pamphlet on the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) passed in 1986.
The AFL-CIO published this information for unions and workers in the wake of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986. The law created a process for many undocumented residents to regularize their status, and the pamphlet highlights organized labor’s role in helping “undocumented workers attain legal status and prevent discrimination by employers.” In Los Angeles, the Labor Immigrant Assistance Project (LIAP) supported workers’ amnesty applications, and the California Immigrant Workers Association (CIWA) served as a general union for immigrant workers without collective bargaining in their workplaces. IRCA also created a new federal prohibition on hiring undocumented workers, something immigrant rights advocates and organized labor in Los Angeles had strongly opposed, but the national AFL-CIO supported. The AFL-CIO abandoned this policy in 2000. View the Document.
Activists with the 1986 Los Angeles Jobs with Peace campaign hold signs for Proposition V outside the International Ladies Garment Workers union hall on MacArthur Park. The building is now the UCLA James M. Lawson, Jr. Worker Justice Center, home of the UCLA Labor Center.
How can progressive political movements win power in geographically expansive and multiracial cities like Los Angeles? The answer, according to the Los Angeles Jobs with Peace campaign was “coalition architecture,” an intentional strategy to link the interests of organized labor with the peace movement, the women’s movement, and the African American civil rights movement through the shared goal of creating good jobs for all by redirecting money from military to domestic spending. In 1984 and 1986, the campaign backed citywide ballot initiatives and built a network of supporters at the precinct level to turnout voters. The 1984 Proposition X called on the city to research and report on pension and contract funds that flowed to military contractors. It passed by a comfortable margin. Proposition V in 1986 would have established a commission to advise the city on how to redirect funds away from military contractors. Proposition V faced a well-funded opposition campaign from business interests and lost by a wide margin. Despite the defeat, the campaign built an effective get-out-the-vote operation at the precinct level that would be the basis of future progressive victories.
ILGWU organizer Miguel Machuca (center, wearing a tie) and Somma waterbed factory workers celebrate back-pay awards ordered by the NLRB after the company illegally fired union activists.
In 1984, workers at the Somma waterbed factory in East Los Angeles began organizing fellow workers at neighborhood soccer games and decide to join the ILGWU. Most of the workers were immigrants from Mexico and Central America, many without documentation. Their employer was Angel Echevarria, a prominent figure in the Latino community and in Los Angeles politics. In January 1985, Somma workers voted 117-48 for a union. The company refused to negotiate with the workers and illegally fired more than 20 key union activists.
The ILGWU and the fired Somma workers held continuous pickets outside the factory, joined by other workers on their lunch breaks and by community supporters. They also launched a boycott of Somma waterbeds to bring their employer to the bargaining table. When the company fired another group of organizers, workers walked out on strike and won their jobs back. After a long delay, the NLRB ordered the fired workers rehired with back pay and upheld the union election over the companies objections.
A flyer publicizing a rally in support of striking workers at the Somma mattress factory in Los Angeles, 1985. En Español.
Sources: ILGWU Photographs, Box 3, Folder 9, Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives at the Cornell University Library. Rosalio Muñoz papers, Box 64, Folder 3, UCLA Library Department of Special Collections.
Los Angeles activists announce a meeting to recruit factory-based committees to defend immigrant workers against raids by immigration authorities. Courtesy of the Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries
After years of fighting deportation sweeps in Los Angeles, activists associated with the Centro de Acción Social Autónomo (CASA) formed special committee to address workplace raids by the INS and to advocate for the rights of undocumented workers generally. The Comité Obrero en Defensa de los Indocumentados en Lucha (CODIL, or in English the Workers Committee in Defense of the Undocumented in the Struggle) joined with the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) and a group of unions in an ad hoc Labor Immigration Action Center to coordinate immigrant organizing and legal defense.
On May 17, 1978 an election among over 700 workers at the Sbicca shoe factory in El Monte resulted in a narrow loss for the Retail Clerk’s union. The union filed objections contesting the result, but the next day immigration agents arrived at the plant and ordered the immediate deportation of 120 workers. CODIL charged the raid “was carried out in a selective manner looking principally for those who supported the union” and then pressuring workers to sign voluntary deportation orders even after they requested a lawyer. As the workers were aboard buses en route to the border, the union appealed for help from the Labor Immigration Action Center. Lawyers with the NLG filed suit in federal court and secured a temporary restraining order halting the deportation until the workers could have individual hearings. The legal victory energized immigrant worker advocates and encouraged progressive unionists. For a time, the number of factory raids and worker deportation dropped significantly.
Following the victory at Sbicca, CODIL activists recruited participants in workplace committees through regular meetings held at the Peoples College of Law near MacArthur Park. The committees aimed to organize nonunion workers and also to challenge existing unions to defend immigrant workers. CODIL identified their membership as those who “have been deported repeatedly because we have claimed our rights in front of the exploiting bosses.” CODIL trained workers to assert their constitutional rights during raids, and encouraged unions to write into their contracts protections against workplace raids and the right of workers to return to work after deportation.
CODIL Asemblea General, from the papers of CASA-HGT, Box 32, Folder 4. Courtesy of the Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries.
Goodman, Adam. The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Expelling Immigrants. Politics and Society in Modern America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/73241/.
In the 1970s, rank-and-file activists found common cause with progressive legal groups like the ACLU. Daniel Ruiz, an immigrant member of HERE Local 11, sued to win the right of non-citizens to hold office in the local union.
In 1978 members of HERE Local 11 launched a campaign to unseat long-time union leader Andrew “Scotty” Allan. United Workers of Local 11 ran a multiracial slate of men and women committed to greater member participation in the 20,000 member union. Their candidate for the office of secretary-treasurer was Daniel Ruiz, a resident immigrant and respected leader among the workers at the Hyatt hotel. However, the election committee of Local 11, citing the constitution of the international union, declared Ruiz ineligible for office because he was not a U.S. citizen.
“Denying non-citizens the right to run for office means, in effect, that the Spanish-speaking majority is without representation, without equality under the law, and that the minority of the membership exercises all decision making powers while the majority is left out.”
Daniel Ruiz
With the help of the ACLU of Southern California, Ruiz and his allies sued Local 11 for violating Ruiz’s right to full participation in the union and other members’ right to nominate the person of their choosing. The union’s election committee quickly backed down and allowed Ruiz’s nomination. Although United Workers of Local 11 did not win the election, members of the union continued to demand a more responsive union leadership. Following the 1978 lawsuit Local 11 began translating contracts and other key documents, but the English-speaking members who dominated union meetings routinely voted down proposals for simultaneous translation of meetings. In 1985, the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund filed a lawsuit against Local 11 on behalf of two members demanding full translation of meetings, and in 1987 a judge ruled in their favor. A year later Scotty Allan was out of office.
Download the Press Release. Download Ruiz’s statement. From the papers of the ACLU of Southern California, box 826 folder 6 and box 665 folder 3. Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles. Learn more about UNITE HERE Local 11.
