But sanctions make finding another job harder and riskier. The period of unemployment is likely to be longer. Because sanctions also disqualify a fired worker from unemployment benefits, food stamps or other sources of income, a fired worker is forced to take whatever job is available, at whatever wage. And under National Labor Relations Board rulings, if an employer shows that a worker fired for union activity is undocumented, it is not obligated to rehire her or him. When it becomes harder and riskier for workers to make demands for social services, or to assert their rights at work or in the community, the price of their labor drops.
Immigrant wages are already depressed, and getting worse.
Some 120,000 people work in LA's garment sweatshops, almost all immigrants, mostly undocumented. Despite these obstacles, immigrant workers, including the undocumented, have been the backbone of labor's resurgence in California, in a multitude of strikes and organizing drives. Often, those union efforts have involved unique tactics to deal with the problem of immigration status. In the yearlong strike by southern California drywallers in 1992, mostly-Mexican immigrants were able to stop all home construction from the Mexican border north to Santa Barbara. They defied the police and the Border Patrol, blockading freeways when their car caravans were rousted as they traveled to construction sites.