The Labor Department has unveiled guidance on how immigrant workers who are involved in workplace disputes—and may be particularly vulnerable to intimidation due to that immigration status—can seek protection from retaliatory employers.
“For the first time, the agency outlined steps workers can take to get support from government officials when seeking deportation relief—such as deferred action, parole, or stay of removal—during investigations of unlawful conduct by employers,” Nevada Current reported. That report noted that workers in the state have been among the voices pushing for policy.
“For over two year, we have fought to win these protections for workers in Las Vegas,” Rosario Ortiz told Nevada Current. Ortiz is a former employee of a painting company probed by the Labor Department over wage theft. “As a result of this fight we are making changes for immigrant workers like me.”
RELATED STORY: Retaliatory company that sicced ICE on injured construction worker is ordered to pay $650,000
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“For the Department of Labor to carry out the laws its enforces, workers must feel free to participate in its investigations and proceedings without fear of retaliation or consequences related to their immigration status,” the department said in a release. “The department has long supported DHS’ use of prosecutorial discretion—on a case-by-case basis—or certain workers subjected to abusive and exploitative labor practices.”
This has included deportation threats, which some abusive employers have tried to wield against immigrant workers. Just last month, an injured construction worker was awarded $650,000 in compensatory and punitive damages by a federal jury after an abusive employer turned him over to deportation agents. The Department of Labor had sued the employer following an Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigation.
Immigrant rights advocates applauded the Labor Department’s announcement this month, saying that these workers “face rampant workplace and civil rights violations.”
“We welcome the DOL's support for immigration-related prosecutorial discretion for workers involved in labor disputes,” said Victoria Mesa-Estrada, senior staff attorney for the Immigrant Justice Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center. “This is an important first step for immigrant workers to participate in the Department’s investigations and proceedings without fear of retaliation or immigration-related consequences.”
”In the Deep South, in particular, workplace and labor abuses against immigrant workers are pervasive and often happen with impunity,” Mesa-Estrada continued. In 2019, more than 230 Mississippi workers were deported in what became one of the largest workplace raids in U.S. history. These were blatantly retaliatory raids, coming just after Koch Foods had settled a multimillion-dollar racial discrimination and sexual harassment lawsuit.
“As labor reporter Mike Elk notes at Payday Report, it may not be a coincidence that the Morton plant was raided,” Think Progress reported in 2019. “There have been at least two other plants, one in Salem, Ohio, and another in Morristown, Tennessee, where ICE raids have followed complaints of worker conditions.”
“If there is progress today it is because immigrant workers across the country have been ringing the alarm, and demanding respect and protection for their labor,” said the Blue Ribbon Commission on Immigrant Work in a statement received by Daily Kos. “Today, our work has only just begun to turn the tide on the crisis of exploitation in the US.” Workers and advocates are expected to join the commission for a press conference on Wednesday to “identify pending actions by the Biden Administration and US Department of Homeland Security to protect immigrant workers.”
“This policy will only be effective if workers are aware that it exists and if they are able to understand and engage in the process that it lays out,” the commission continued. “We expect President Biden and his administration know this, and we welcome DHS Secretary Mayorkas and Labor Secretary Walsh to meet directly with workers to help advance this worker's rights policy.”
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