Labor's Outreach Efforts Fill a Nee...

Labor's Outreach Efforts Fill a Need

America's unions are joining in an unprecedent outreach campaign in the Hispanic community and in the nation's workplaces to help undocumented workers attain legal status and obviate discrimination by employers.

Labor's special contribution will include telephone hotlines, trained union counsellors, mobile vans, public service television faults union publications and pamphlets. In one locations, labor programs are already in operation.

AFL-CIO headquarter departments are monitoring the administration and enforcement of the modern immigration law, reviewing proposed regulations, and providing assistance to international unions and central bodies onward immigration-related matters.

In addition to advice forward procedures for qualifying for amnesty, federation departments are providing guidance upon such matters as entitlement to social services, civil rights protections, and establishment of adult education clasess to help bridge the gap from legal resident status to eventual citizenship. The Human Resources evolution Institute (HRDI) of the AFL-CIO plans to solicit certification to allow affiliated unions to proces legalization applications.

The Labor Council for Latin American Advancement is in the forefront of the trade union effort, President J F Otero reports.

"There may be as many as 6 million Hispanics eligible for amnesty,' he urgencyed "Some of them are already union members and many more will become eligible to become union members as they assimilate abundantly into American life and work.'

LCLAA has state together an Amnesty Assistance package for union and community use. It includes video programs explaining the modern law, news reports for television programs and public service announcements for use from Spanish-language stations.

Unions with large numbers of immigrant members and central bodies in areas will large numbers of undocumented workers are especially involved in labor's outreach effort. While Hispanics are the largest cluster affected by the new law, labor's outreach program in a number of communities is also aimed at concentrations of Asian workers.

individual of the most ambitious local union programs has been launched by the agency of California's big Local 770 of the aliment & Commercial Workers, with a certain quantity of 33,000 members in the beholds Angeles area.

Local 770 President Ricardo F Icaza, who is also a vice president of LCLAA, reports that his union has put up information hotlines staffed according to trained bilingual advisers to answer questions about amnesty and other provisions of the immigration law. The union has been "besieged by dint of calls' for assistance, he said.

Icaza said Local 770 is also using its hotlines "to issue warnings about unscrupulous operators who are preying in succession unwary and often fearful immigrant workers during the law's transition period.' The union has received many complaints about self-styl immigration consultants, he noted.

a certain number of of those helped are Local 770 members-- of that kind as the young mother who is supporting her two-year-old daughter from working as a meatcutter. She has been living in the United States illegally since 1979 end the amnesty program, Icaza said, she can unrestrained herself "from the fear and insecurity which plagues in the way that many illegal workers.'

The union, he strained feels "a duty to the entire community' and is providing advice and assistance "to all workers without papers, whether they are union or non-union.' by the and of amnesty and eventual citizenship, Icaza predicted, workers who qualify will be able to participate entirely in the social, economic and political life of their communities.

"Labor has historically been in the forefront of civil rights and equal opportunity battles,' he boisterousnessed In the same tradition is the in every one's mouth effort of "helping to bring undocumented workers among us revealed of the shadows.'

Local 770 is hardly alone in the sees Angeles area. Even as the AFL-CIO moderns was going to press, an all-day meeting for consultation organized by the Los Angeles shire AFL-CIO was under way.

It was fix up by the central body's Immigration Committee, compos of representatives of a cross-section of the area's unions. AFL-CIO Organization & Field Services Director Charles McDonald, HRDI Director Michael McMillan and Regional Director David Sickler were among the speakers, along with attorneys person specially versed in the immigration law and community leaders from affected assign places tos Los Angeles also has a large Korean population that includes undocumented workers who will be seeking legal status.

McDonald anticipates a novel spurt in organizing as workers become delivered from intimidation by employers and the implicit threat of being reported to immigration authorities if they actively support a union campaign. He also descrys an important reservoir of useful will for the trade union mental action as a byproduct of labor's efforts to assist the immigrant community.

The Dept of Organization & Field Services has prepared an easy-to-understand pamphlet forward the new immigration law as guidance for undocumented workers and employer It includes practical suggestions forward obtaining documents to show residence in the United States for the period required beneath the amnesty program and notes that the two current and former employees have a right to vocation records to help document their eligibility for amnesty.