Worker
exploitation at its worst. September 30, 2013 |
In
the annals of degrading, infuriating labor practices, this one may
take a prize: Meet the cleaning workers who received … zero-dollar
paychecks.
Now,
defying alleged deportation threats and protesting those empty
paychecks, a handful of striking guest workers from Jamaica are
demanding accountability from the boss who hired them, the companies
whose buildings they were cleaning, and the Florida politicians like
Marco Rubio who took those companies’ cash.
“The
promises made by our employer, Mister Clean, they were so enticing
that we borrowed money to get here, over $2,000,” striker Dwight
Allen told Salon in a recent interview. But “when we got here …
we realized that all of the promises were all false.
“We
had to sleep on the floor in overcrowded apartments,” said Allen,
while paying their boss rent that sometimes exceeded the low wages
and limited hours he provided them. “After getting a paycheck of
zero dollars and zero cents” due to rent being deducted, said
Allen, “we would still be getting texts from his wife saying that
we still have balance of x amount” in remaining rent unpaid. When
workers began organizing, he said, “we were threatened in writing
from our boss.”
Allen
and other guest workers employed by Mister Clean Laundry and Cleaning
Services filed a federal complaint and went on strike Aug. 19. “We
were scared,” said striker Shellion Parris, but “we knew in the
back of our heads that we need to do this, we have to do this.”
Photos
provided to Salon by the National Guestworker Alliance, the group
behind the work stoppage, show checks reading “No Dollars and No
Cents,” and a page dated June 25 warning guest workers on H-2B
visas that, “Any worker who does not show up for your assignment
will be immediately removed from Mister Clean Housing and will be
reported as AWOL (Absent Without Leave) to ICE (Immigration Custom
Enforcement).” The statement, which was in all-caps, continued,
“You will then be escorted to pick up your plane ticket and go back
to Jamaica. You will have an ICE and Okaloosa County Sheriff
Department Escort.” Workers say that warning arrived stapled to
their checks. Mister Clean did not respond to a request for comment.
Those
are some incendiary allegations. But NGA legal director Jennifer
Rosenbaum says they reflect a “pretty standard set of problems that
guest workers face.” “If you come forward to confront your boss
about illegal workplace conditions,” said Rosenbaum, “there’s
going to be egregious threats of immigration enforcement against
you.”
Rosenbaum,
an adjunct at Tulane Law School, argued that the risk of future such
abuse could be mitigated by some worker protections included in the
immigration bill passed by the Senate, including allowing guest
workers “who are facing serious labor abuse to separate their visa
from their abusive employer.” (As I’ve reported, the Senate bill
is a mixed bag for guest worker advocates, expanding programs that
have seen abuses while also creating a more labor-friendly
alternative.) Since starting their strike, the Jamaican guest workers
have framed the alleged abuses they experienced as an object lesson
in the need for reform; they’ve pressed their case to politicians
including GOP congressman Steve Southerland, a potential swing vote
on reform who represents a district where the strikers had worked.
The
strikers have also been calling on members of Congress to return
donations from condo companies whose buildings they were cleaning
under contracts with Mister Clean. According to NGA and the nonprofit
Public Campaign, those four companies together donated 25 times as
much to Republicans as to Democrats, a disparity NGA ties to
Republican resistance to reforms. The offices of Rep. Southerland and
Sena. Rubio did not respond to Wednesday inquiries.
As
I’ve reported, employers’ credible threats to get guest workers
deported and “blacklisted” from working in the United States
offer additional opportunities to drive their working standards below
legal limits. Faced with this challenge, NGA has pulled off audacious
strikes by Hershey’s, McDonald’s and (Wal-Mart-supplying) seafood
workers, aimed at squeezing politicians and corporate decision-makers
– not just their legal employers, but actors across the supply
chains they’re part of. In an August statement, NGA director Saket
Soni charged that while it was Mister Clean that legally employed the
Jamaican guest workers, the four Florida condo companies whose
buildings they cleaned all “profit from the abuse of immigrant
workers.”
But
Paul Wohlford, vice president of the Resort Collection of Panama City
Beach, told Salon, “we as a company renounce their allegations”
that “we were involved in” alleged abuses of workers cleaning
their buildings. “We had zero knowledge of how these workers were
treated,” said Wohlford, adding that having contracted with Mister
Clean to clean Resort Collection condos, “I’m a victim in this
too, because I’ve paid money that may or may not have been paid
appropriately.” Wohlford said that his company’s relationship to
Mister Clean was “like if I go buy a hamburger from McDonald’s,”
in that it’s not a fast food customer’s responsibility to monitor
the store’s working conditions. “If they’re working for our
company, they’re going to be treated fairly and equally,” said
Wohlford. “But these people didn’t work for me.”
The
Resort Collection was the only one of the four companies whose
buildings the strikers had cleaned that provided comment on their
allegations; Silver Shells declined, Five Star Beach Properties did
not respond to a Wednesday inquiry, and Oaseas Resorts has reportedly
gone out of business.
From
a young age, said Dwight Allen, “people daydream, wonder what I’d
be doing in America right now.” But “getting here and coming [to]
this kind treatment, and learning that it’s a global thing – it’s
like a bombshell is dropped on you … Asking yourself, am I really
in America?”
While
the fate of immigration reform remains uncertain, workers and NGA say
they’ve achieved a potentially precedent-setting step forward on
disarming deportation-happy employers: a letter from a Miami ICE
official addressing “the possibility of ICE enforcement actions
against the guest workers” on strike against Mister Clean, and
stating that “ICE does not undertake enforcement efforts” that
are “designed to frustrate the enforcement of labor and employment
laws.”
ICE
has previously called off enforcement actions in apparent deference
to a memorandum of understanding designed to prevent it from being
used as a weapon in labor disputes. But Rosenbaum argued this letter
represents the first time an ICE office has preemptivelyagreed, based
on pressure from local activists, not to initiate any enforcement
actions against a group of workers engaged in collective action.
“What ICE nationally should be doing is making sure that each
regional field office is in compliance” with commitments not to
disrupt organizing, Rosenbaum told Salon, but “we have found that’s
been very difficult, and that hasn’t been a responsibility that ICE
at the national level has taken seriously. So we are trying to move
real accountability at the regional level.” Meanwhile, seven
undocumented immigrants were arrested last week in a White House
civil disobedience action protesting record-high deportations under
the Obama administration.
Shellion
Parris challenged policymakers to “take off that jacket” and
“experience what we are going through” as low-wage guest workers.
“Your family call you and say, ‘Mommy, I don’t have any shoes
to go to school.’ And you work for two weeks and you cannot send
back home 50 American dollars to buy a pair of shoes for your
daughter, your son,” said Parris. “Put them in that situation,
and then the decision-making, it will be different.”
Josh
Eidelson (josheidelson.com) is a Nation contributor and was a union
organizer for five years. He covers labor as a contributing writer at
Salon and In These Times. Check out his blog or follow him on
Twitter.
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