“March for Dignity” against Pacific Steel layoffs brings out hundreds
Migrants march in protest of mass layoffs
Pacific Steel Casting of Berkeley recently fired 200 workers for their inability to provide social security numbers.
According to the Oakland Tribune, late last year Immigrations and Customs Enforcement requested an audit of the factory demanding that all undocumented workers be fired from the plant.
On Friday, hundreds of workers and supporters marched on the factory to demand justice under the banner “March for Dignity.” In addition, workers are demanding retribution of their pensions held by GMP Local 164B union that represented them prior to the layoffs.
The Pacific Steel firings are of concern to many in Berkeley as it is a sanctuary city and claims to support all people despite their legal status. In fact, the Berkeley Daily Planet reported that the Berkeley City Council recently requested, to no avail, that Pacific Steel not comply with the ICE audit.
Juan Zaragoza Vargas is a former Pacific Steel employee from Oakland who spent years working at the factory.
“We are marching today, in protest of what is happening to us and to many people across the nation,” Vargas said. “I have my wife and two children to support and we are currently suffering." In response to the ICE audit, he indignantly exclaimed, “We are only workers, not criminals.”
Ana Castaño, an organizer of the march, worked at the factory for four years before being fired this last December. She explained that many of the workers have been paying into GMP Local164B union pension fund for years, but in recent weeks, the union has apparently cut off contact with the workers. In fact, Castaño explained that when the union organizers heard of the firings, they promised to deliver beans, rice and tortillas, “but they have not even given us that” she said. Many workers have decided to drop the union permanently after its apparent lack of support. According to organizers, there were no Local164B representatives at the march.
The rally began at Berkeley City Hall and included a round of traditional dances after which the large crowd took to the streets followed by a small number of police on bicycles. The march ended with an afternoon rally at Pacific Steel Casting factory where a stage was set up and workers shared their experiences as currently employed steel workers looked on. At one point one of the worker’s daughters spoke saying “ The United States was founded on bloodshed and evictions. Here we are today still fighting to stay on the land that once belonged to us.”
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A wonderful march--dignified and lively, serious and friendly. These are courageous peope. I was proud to be with them.
No surprise to me that their union abandoned them. Many labor organizations don't understand what gives a union power (hint: solidarity). Pacific Steel could also have been the employer that denied ICE carte blanche access to their records, but that distinction will have to go to a better bunch of people someday. The way this march was organized and carried out made it obvious that these employees whom the union and the company declined to support, are the kind of people who deserve good jobs and would contribute tremendously to any business lucky and smart enough to hire them.
That's usually true of most undocumented, especially from Mexico. Think about it--how badly did they want to be here that they left their homes on a dangerous and uncertain trip, arrived, and found jobs--and kept them, some as long as 14 years? For anyone asking why they didn't make the journey with documents there is an answer--because the United States doesn't want them to.
For the "gift" of a visa, a person in Mexico must first have a job and a bank account to return to. In a country devastated by U.S. policy, there are few that meet those requirements and yet want to leave for uncertainty and very hard work in the United States--work in the fields for agrib the visa seeker must pay--yes, pay--for an interview in the U.S. Embassy to determine suitability for travel to the United States. A few years ago the charge was equivalent to about $100 U.S., and often more than one visit is needed.
Of course very few Mexicans wanting to work in the United States have those finances. The number of Mexicans below the poverty level (Mexico's poverty level) has doubled since NAFTA became effective; the maquiladoras paid low wages, took many from their homes to work in them, and then left those many unemployed when the maquiladoras' companies moved their manufacturing contracts to Asia.
Agribusiness in the U.S. is happy to employ experienced Mexican farmers as workers. They work here, instead of on their own farms in Mexico, because the ejido system has diminished the acreage of the average farm and because the corn market is close to collapse. An interesting development last year made that situation even worse, driving even more farmers and farmworkers to try the border route--U.S. corn was dumped on an already precarious Mexican market.
Not just any old corn, either. Genetically altered corn, which won't make seed. To have a crop next year (that, too, genetically altered--of which many in both countries are suspicious and hesitate to buy) already devastated farmers will have to so something they haven't done before. They will have to buy seed corn instead of using what they've grown this year.
In case, or even if, there aren't enough desperate Mexicans coming to the United States to work for less-than-survival wages in unhealthy, or dangerous, jobs, afraid to speak up for change because their employers can use deportation threats against them, the U.S. has another method to create workers for domestic agribusiness and industry. When World War II loans from the United States to Mexico were restructured because Mexico could not pay them off, a condition of that restructuring was that the United States have power to influence BancoMexico's policies. Pobrecito Mexico!
There's no doubt in my mind that the U.S. government and its many corporate sponsors depend upon and enjoy the benefits of having undocumented workers supporting their profit margin. There is blood on their hands, that of the people who die on their way to work in the United States and that of workers who make it to a job and find it dangerous, low-paying, and very like slavery.