Instead of seeing immigrants as a problem, as they had for decades, unions had begun seeing them as the solution. But I am also convinced that as the labor movement is the best hope for immigrants, so are immigrants the best hope of the labor movement. It's not hard to understand why Medina takes that view. Unions represent about 14 percent of U.S. workers today, down from 35 percent in the early 1950s. To maintain that percentage, given the growth of the workforce and structural changes that eliminate jobs, unions have to organize 400,000 workers a year.
Immigrant workers are at least part of the answer.
In fact, labor organizing over the last decade in California is largely the story of immigrant workers beating heavy odds. In the Bay Area alone, immigrants have been the backbone of drives at manufacturing plants and garbage recyclers, at building-renovation contractors and garment sweatshops, at home care and convalescent care providers, and among day laborers on street corners. At the AFL-CIO convention speakers emphasized that the demographics of the U.S. workplace have changed dramatically, with tens of millions of immigrant workers in industries as diverse as meatpacking, manufacturing, health care, and construction. But as unions seek to develop alliances with immigrant communities to take advantage of this change, the AFL-CIO is confronting the reality that the immigration law it supported in 1986 has made it harder for unions to organize and represent immigrants. In particular, one section of the law, so-called employer sanctions, makes it illegal for an undocumented worker to hold a job at all.