Labor Unions Now Recruiting Immigrant Workers

For years, labor unions did not court immigrant workers, they have changed their thoughts on this and are now recruiting them. DP

By Jennifer Ludden, NPR Radio

All Things Considered · Times are changing when it comes to labor unions and immigrant workers.

For more than a century, organized labor has had a wary attitude toward immigrant workers. The reasoning was that the more foreign workers in the labor market, the less bargaining power for unions — especially if those workers were undocumented and easily exploited.

But in recent years, some labor unions have made a dramatic shift: They're now recruiting immigrants, no matter their legal status.

In the mid-1990s, Gig Rittenauer was a roofer in Ohio and a loyal member of the United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers and Allied Workers. He was frustrated by the increasing number of immigrants he'd see staffing construction jobs. So Rittenauer and some colleagues started keeping cameras in their cars and paying random visits to work sites.

"We'd take pictures," says Rittenauer. "It really drives 'em off, because they know that they're illegal. And that was a ploy just to scare 'em really."

The ploy made Rittenauer feel like he was having an effect protecting his union job. But eventually he realized the immigrant workers weren't going away for good — and the federal government wasn't going to make them.

That's when Rittenauer decided that if an immigrant is here working anyway, it is best if he joins the union.

"If he doesn't, he's going to continue to do our work for much less wage and benefits, probably no benefits," he says. "And it's just the nature of the beast. You either rise people up, or you let 'em pull you down."

These days, Rittenauer travels the country recruiting for the roofers union.
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