It's not hard to understand why he and others take 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 many jobs, unions have to organize 400,000 workers a year. Last year, unions organized 475,000 workers recording positive growth for the first time in decades, although not by much. To increase union presence in the workforce by just one percent, they have to organize 800,000 people.
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, building renovation contractors, garment sweatshops, home care and convalescent care providers, and among day laborers on the 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, healthcare, and construction. One section of the law in particular, employer sanctions, makes it illegal for an undocumented worker to hold a job at all. That is the section cited by employers using no-match letters, and by the INS itself in its document checks, as the justification for massive firings.