T.O. Weekly 68: Labor Notes Conference – Why Support LCIP – ICE Detainees

Posted on July 13, 2022

The ORGANIZER Weekly Newsletter

issue No. 68 – July 13, 2022

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IN THIS ISSUE:

• Report from a Participant in the Labor Notes 2022 Conference – by Bill Leumer (reprinted from http://www.lcipcommittee.org)

• Why You Should Support Labor and Community for an Independent Party (LCIP) – by Millie Phillips and Bill Leumer (reprinted from http://www.lcipcommittee.org)

• ICE Detainees Protested $1-a-Day Wage. Now They’re in Solitary Confinement (reprinted from KQED News, July 11, 2022 and circulated by the Mesa Verde Labor Strikers Collective)

• Some Recent Solidarity Statements from: SEIU Local 87, New York City Chapter of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA- AFL-CIO), Sacramento Chapter of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA- AFL-CIO), San Francisco Living Wage Coalition

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Report from a Participant in the Labor Notes 2022 Conference

By Bill Leumer

This year’s Labor Notes conference was the biggest ever: 4,000 participants, not to mention the hundreds more who followed the proceedings online.

It was a powerful gathering that expressed the deepening fightback sentiment in the labor movement. Featured at the conference were the organizing drives and contract fights at Amazon, Starbucks, Apple in Baltimore, REI, John Deere, among so many others. There is a resurgence in the labor movement, and it is growing — largely (but not exclusively) outside the structures of the AFL-CIO.

Also noteworthy was the presence of top labor officials at the conference. Nothing like this has happened before on this scale. Union presidents Sara Nelson of the Flight Attendants (CWA), Carl Rosen of United Electrical workers (UE), Sean M. O’Brien (Teamsters), and Robert J. Martinez, Jr. of the International Association of Machinists (IAM) were among the top officials at the conference. Their presentations were well received.

Absence from the conference — at least from the plenary and workshop speakers – was any reference to the U.S. role in provoking and now fueling the war in Ukraine. Tens of billions of dollars are being siphoned from social services and jobs into the pockets of the merchants of death as the U.S. increases its role, day by day, in this war. Unionists at the bargaining table are being told to tighten their belts and make concessions.

How can the issue of the war budget and the increasing danger of a new world war not be at the top of the labor movement’s agenda?

Also missing was any organized critique of the labor movement’s subordination to the Democratic Party — perhaps the most crucial issue of all. This subordination is the main obstacle facing U.S. workers and oppressed people.

Labor – the main organized expression of the working class – simply cannot champion the workers’ hard-pressed demands when it is tied at the hip to our class enemy, the capitalist class. It cannot fight to slash the war budget to meet human needs when Biden is dutifully performing his role, required by Wall Street, as Warmonger-In-Chief. The Democrats, like the Republicans, represent the interests of the capitalists.

In that sense, it was most unfortunate to see Bernie Sanders giving a keynote speech at the Labor Notes conference. Sanders has been a strong supporter of the recent organizing drives at Starbucks and Amazon. His support has been greatly appreciated. But Sanders remains a capitalist politician. I would define capitalist politicians as those who support or defend the capitalist system and oppose the collective ownership of the means of production by the working class.

Sanders does not hide his political orientation. A few years back, he stated proudly,

“[T]he next time you hear me attacked as a socialist, remember this, I don’t believe the government should own the means of production, but I do believe that the middle class and the working families who produce the wealth of America deserve a fair deal. I believe in private companies that thrive and invest and grow in America instead of shipping jobs and profits overseas.” (https://www.vox.com/2015/11/19/9762028/bernie-sanders-democratic-socialism)

Sanders’ main task, as he himself has avowed, is to steer this labor insurgency firmly into the Democratic Party. Sanders has announced publicly that he will not run for president in 2024 and that working people and all the oppressed must get behind Biden in 2024. Sanders opposes the independent political organization of the working class into its own party.

More and more workers are not buying this Democratic Party line. They are beginning to see more clearly the entire institutional framework of the two-party system that promotes the interests of the capitalists, while working people are hurting more and more.

That is why the efforts undertaken by Labor and Community for an Independent Party (LCIP) are more important than ever. There is no time to lose. [For more on LCIP, go to its website at www.lcipcommittee.org.]

(Bill Leumer is a supporter of LCIP living in San Francisco, California)

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Why You Should Support Labor and Community for an Independent Party (LCIP)

By Millie Phillips and Bill Leumer

We recognize that there are many demands on activists during these difficult times, so why do we think that supporting LCIP should be one of your priorities? Precisely because these are difficult times and the approaches most of us have been taking to deal with them aren’t working!

On June 24, the US Supreme Court overturned Roe. v. Wade. Add to that the ongoing pandemic, mass shootings and white supremacist violence, a war in Ukraine that could turn into nuclear Armageddon, the rapidly increasing climate change disaster, continuing anti-immigrant actions, toxic social media, extreme wealth inequality, rapid inflation, etc. If you are feeling stressed out, overwhelmed, depressed – we get it.

As activists you strive to make a difference. The question is how do we do that, and do it effectively?

There are no instant or easy solutions to any of the crises we face today. Every day, we hear from people calling for positive changes. But they usually leave out the most important factor: we must gain the power to make change happen. Those who have that power currently will do whatever they can to stop us from implementing ideas that benefit us and not them. In the U.S., those in power include not just corporations and billionaires, but the two-party system they control.

Remember how the Democrats told us that, as long as we supported them, they would prevent a reactionary majority from taking over the Supreme Court and ending abortion rights?

LCIP wants to lay the foundation for building our own working-class party, one that reflects the needs and desires of the majority, especially those who are most harmed and marginalized in our society. The majority – young people in particular – would like an alternative to the Democrats and Republicans, yet, in the absence of a viable party that can win elections, progressive voters fear, despite the betrayals of the Democratic Party, that not supporting Democrats will lead us past the point of no return into a globally dystopian, even fascist future. After all, third parties in the U.S. have been very ineffective. We are in an emergency, and who wants to waste time trying to organize using a strategy that has failed repeatedly?

And, yet, failing to build our own party has led to our current circumstances: a Democratic Party that reneges on all its promises to the working-class majority and, by doing so, has enabled every one of the existential crises we face, including the Republican slide into neofascism. Such a failed system cannot be tolerated indefinitely. Something has to give.

LCIP has studied the history of U.S. third parties. Our electoral laws make it very hard to organize one, and Democrats and Republicans alike will continue to do everything they can to keep it that way. Their corporate masters demand no less. That’s the biggest obstacle to building our own party, but there have been lots of mistaken strategies, too. Two of the biggest mistakes have been failing to build a large base of support before starting a party and failing to start at the local level where winning elections is realistic.

That’s why LCIP is different. We are not a party. Rather, we are about building a base throughout the country to recruit, train, endorse, and run loc independent candidates for office on platforms decided by local assemblies of people negatively impacted by current policies (which includes most of us), though we may endorse some existing independent and third-party candidates. Only when this effort is successful in several cities or regions would we advocate combining our efforts to form a national working-class party.

We also recognize the importance of leadership from the very start by activists in marginalized communities (people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ, disabled, impoverished) and labor union activists. We are encouraged by the recent rise in labor militancy, usually led by people in the most oppressed sectors, and by rapidly increasing public support for unions. We aspire to draw on this new energy.

Another LCIP objective is to promote widely in the trade union movement a committee that advocates for a Labor-Based Political Party. A resolution adopted by the October 2017 national convention of the AFL-CIO affirmed that, ‘whether the candidates are elected from the Republican or Democratic Party, the interests of Wall Street have been protected and advanced, while the interests of labor and working people have generally been set back.

A second convention resolution concluded that, “the time has passed when we can passively settle for the lesser of two evils politics.” The committee’s goal will be to promote the discussion inside the labor movement about the need to break with the “lesser of two evils politics” and to create a “Labor-Based Political Party” — a reference to the title of a forum organized by key labor officials at the October 2017 AFL-CIO convention. In order to create such a mass working-class party, we will organize to raise awareness in the unions of the need to break with the Democratic Party.

Our union leaders gave lip-service to this resolution but took no action to advance this struggle. It is up to us to get the ball rolling.

LCIP affirms that it’s time for workers to reclaim our unions for struggle against the capitalists. It’s time for workers to reclaim the instruments of power built through hard-fought battles. It’s time for the unions and oppressed working-class communities to break with the Democratic Party and build a working-class party of our own!

The political situation is fraught with dangers but also opportunities. We invite you to join us in this struggle for independent working-class political action. The time is now, Join Us

(Millie Philips and Bill Leumer are LCIP national continuations committee members living in the San Francisco Bay Area)

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ICE Detainees Protested $1-a-Day Wage. Now They’re in Solitary Confinement

IN THIS SECTION:

• Lead article: ICE Detainees Protested $1-a-Day Wage. Now They’re in Solitary Confinement (reprinted from KQED News, July 11, 2022 and circulated by the Mesa Verde Labor Strikers Collective)

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ICE Detainees Protested $1-a-Day Wage. Now They’re in Solitary Confinement

(reprinted from KQED News, July 11, 2022 and circulated by the Mesa Verde Labor Strikers Collective)

By Farida Jhabvala Romero

BACKGROUND

Dozens of immigrants who clean dormitories and bathrooms for just $1 a day while locked up at federal detention centers in California are waging a labor strike.

The detainees, who are being held at two privately run facilities in the Bakersfield area as they fight deportation, have been protesting compensation well below the state’s $15/hour minimum wage for weeks. These workers, known as “housing porters,” are also demanding the private operator of these facilities address alleged hazardous conditions, inedible food and other issues. [See the full list of their demands below.]

Both of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities facing a work stoppage — Golden State Annex in McFarland since June 6 and the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center in Bakersfield for 55 days, according to immigrant advocates — are operated by The GEO Group, one of the largest for-profit prison companies in the U.S.

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UPDATE

July 11: Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center staff moved Pedro Figueroa out of solitary confinement on July 8, shortly after KQED published this story, according to his attorney. Mohamed Mousa remains in what’s officially known as “administrative segregation,” his attorney said. Both men were found guilty of “inciting or engaging in a demonstration,” charges allegedly related to a monthlong labor strike by immigration detainees seeking higher wages.

A spokesman with The GEO Group, which operates the immigration detention center, declined to confirm the status of the men, and referred questions to ICE. The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

ORIGINAL STORY, JULY 8:

Two immigrant detainees have been held in solitary confinement for over a week for backing a labor strike seeking better wages and conditions at the privately run facility where they are held in Bakersfield, the men told KQED.

The alleged retaliation fuels fear and intimidation, according to interviews with the men, their attorneys and advocates.

Mohamed Mousa and Pedro Figueroa said they were moved to a restricted housing unit after signing a declaration on June 28 that they and 15 others were joining a months-long peaceful work stoppage by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees who are paid $1 a day to clean dormitories and bathrooms.

Employees with The GEO Group, a large private prison company that operates the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center in Bakersfield, transferred the men separately to “administrative segregation” on June 29 and June 30, according to GEO forms viewed by KQED.

“This is what they’re doing to retaliate against people who speak up. This is what they’re doing to intimidate us, which I am intimidated,” Figueroa, 33, said by phone as he sat in what he described as a small, windowless cell that detainees refer to as “the hole.”

“I chose not to work and voice my opinion respectfully, and that’s within my right,” added Figueroa, a former incarcerated firefighter who battled the massive August Complex fire in 2020. “I’m trying to understand, what did I do wrong?”

Documents show GEO staffers charged Figueroa and Mousa with “inciting or engaging in a demonstration” and “conduct that disrupts/interferes with the security or operation of the facility.” Both are labeled as high offenses under ICE guidelines for the detention center.

Figueroa and Mousa said they are kept in their cells — about 6 by 12 feet, with a sink, toilet and a cot — for 22 hours a day or longer.

“It gives you anxiety, raises your stress level. It raises your depression level,” said Mousa, a 41-year-old immigrant from Egypt and former film student in Los Angeles. “It’s a terrible place to be. It’s like they dig a grave and throw you in.”

Upon request, Mousa and Figueroa have access to a phone and an electronic tablet, which guards push through a slit in the room’s metal door. Calls and entertainment, such as music or books, may cost anywhere between $0.03 and $0.11 per minute, the detainees said.

A spokesperson for GEO, which reported total revenue of $551 million in the first quarter of 2002, rebuffed allegations that the detainees are being punished for protesting their working and living conditions.

The strikers, including more than a dozen so-called “housing porters,” are calling for California’s $15 per hour minimum wage, fair treatment by Mesa Verde’s administration and more nutritious meals, among other demands. Some detainees at the facility have refused to work since April 28, but their demands have been largely ignored by GEO and ICE, said Esperanza Cuautle, a community organizer with Pangea Legal Services.

The GEO spokesperson repeatedly denied a labor strike is taking place at Mesa Verde and Golden State Annex, a nearby detention center also operated by the multinational company, arguing that the detained workers are part of a voluntary program. But he declined to answer what demonstration or disruption the detainees were charged with engaging in.

Detainees often opt to work for $1 a day to help their families afford what they describe as costly phone calls and commissary items such as dental floss and tortillas — and to ensure clean living areas, which they say no other janitorial service maintains at Mesa Verde.

In California, immigrant detainees paid $1 a day in privately run facilities are entitled to pursue civil remedy for unpaid wages and are considered “employees” based on a ruling by a federal judge in 2018, said Christina Cano, a spokesperson with the Department of Industrial Relations, which oversees the enforcement of minimum wage laws.

Nationwide, for-profit operators of immigration detention centers commonly use the voluntary work program to do cleaning, maintenance, laundry and other tasks that keep facilities running, saving money on labor costs, according to Eunice Cho, an attorney with the ACLU National Prison Project in Washington, D.C.

“These private prison companies are profiting by millions of dollars every year by using these volunteer work programs,” Cho said. “Private prison companies have often used punishment to ask for more people to perform labor, doing things like threatening and putting people into solitary confinement, denying food.”

Courts in California, Washington and other states are currently deciding whether these labor practices constitute illegal forced labor or minimum wage law violations, and whether companies like GEO are accountable, according to Cho.

Moreover, immigrants who are detained by the federal government while they fight deportation — a civil, not criminal proceeding — have the right to freedom of speech, she added.

“It’s long settled that the First Amendment prohibits the use of solitary confinement as punishment for speaking up against conditions of confinement in prisons and detention centers,” Cho said.

It’s unclear whether ICE agrees. ICE did not return requests for comment on the rule, the labor strike or retaliation allegations.

But the reports of potentially exploitative work and retaliation at Mesa Verde are “alarming,” said a spokesperson for U.S. Senator Alex Padilla, D-Calif.

“Our office is working to gather additional information and ensure there is proper oversight,” she said in a statement.

Likewise, South Bay Congressmember Zoe Lofgren, D-San José, who chairs the Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship, said she has “long been concerned” about immigration authorities’ use of for-profit prisons and conditions for detainees.

“These new allegations are troubling, yet sadly unsurprising,” said Lofgren. “I take these allegations seriously and expect a complete and thorough investigation.”

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SOME RECENT SOLIDARITY STATEMENTS

Statement from SEIU Local 87 (San Francisco, CA)

I write this letter on behalf of SEIU Local 87 (Janitors’ Union in San Francisco, Calif.) to extend our solidarity and support for the striking detained immigrant workers at the Mesa Verde (MV) ICE Detention Facility in Bakersfield, Calif.

We understand that this is the second labor strike launched within eight months at the facility owned and operated by The GEO Group. These detained immigrant workers are enrolled in the “voluntary work program,” earning a paltry $1 per day to clean the dormitories and bathrooms. They are striking to protest the unsanitary and unsafe conditions that the private prison operator has subjected them to throughout the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

We call upon The GEO group to address these workers’ legitimate demands:

1. Treat all detained workers with respect and dignity;

2. Increase the number of volunteer workers to 12 and increase the workers’ salary to comply with the CA Labor Law minimum wage of $15 per hour;

3. Issue clean clothing as per the Performance Based National Detention Standards (PBNDS). Detainees are constantly being issued old, torn and unserviceable or indelibly stained linen and clothing.

4. Provide personal hygiene items, including razors that don’t give razor burns, irritation or cuts to skin (preferably double-blade), shaving cream, deodorant, dental flossers and better-quality toothbrushes.

5. Provide hot water during all meals. Per PBNDS, provide “better quality food, proportioned servings, food (meals) cooked properly,” more access to and properly washed fruit given at every meal.

6. Provide “safe potable water throughout the facility,” as per PNDBS.

7. Reinstate in-person visitation at the MV facility just like at GSA. In addition, allow free virtual visitation so each person at MV has an equal opportunity to see their family members, friends and loved ones.

8. Provide proper health care to all detained individuals, e.g. hire a doctor to be on site and not shared with another facility, to be referred to outside specialists promptly, and offer preventative health care

We ask the Mesa Verde Labor Strikers Collective to please forward this letter to the MV facility administrator. Also, please keep us posted on developments with your struggle.

In solidarity,

Olga Miranda

President

SEIU Local 87

San Francisco, CA

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Statement from NYC LCLAA (excerpts)

The New York City Chapter of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (NYC LCLAA) extends our solidarity and support for the striking detained immigrant workers at the Mesa Verde (MV) ICE Detention Facility in Bakersfield, Calif.

NYC LCLAA had unanimously adopted a resolution in 2016 in opposition to the private prison system, their tax loopholes, and the unjust treatment of communities of color and immigrant prison populations. This resolution was in turn, adopted unanimously at the 2016 National LCLAA convention, that was held in Orlando, Florida. The resolution stated:

“In 2013, GEO Group (GEO) and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) received Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) status, which creates a loophole for them and their investors to make billions in profit from incarcerating people of color and immigrants TAX-FREE! In the first year of their REIT status, CCA and GEO received almost $100 million in tax breaks. That $100 million should be reinvested in our communities, not sent to corporate prison CEOs and prison industry shareholders.

“The incarceration of immigrants and people of color should not be a for-profit business, and it should not be tax-free. Our criminal justice system is not a business, and people who are incarcerated should not be treated as assets on a corporate ledger. If the government is serious about reducing the federal prison population, it must end its reliance on for-profit prisons and repeal costly programs that have made immigrants the fastest growing part of the federal prison population.“

In solidarity,

Eduardo Rosario

President New York City chapter

Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, LCLAA, AFL-CIO

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Statement from San Francisco Living Wage Coalition

The San Francisco Living Wage Coalition supports the striking workers who are paid $1 per day to clean the dormitories at the me Verde ice processing center owned and operated by The GEO group. While this is called a “voluntary program,” exploiting workers with restricted freedom of movement and no labor protections is coerced labor period.

When any group of workers are forced into circumstances of having to accept lower wages, it depresses wages for all of us. The GEO group is accumulating investment capital based on a business strategy of paying 0.08% of the state minimum wage. This unbridled pursuit of extreme profit stunts the economic growth of competing industries that may want to act responsibly toward their workers, and it lowers the bar for the treatment of workers.

We support the demand of the striking workers to be paid in accordance with the California minimum wage of $15 per hour period. We call on The GEO group and facility management to open negotiations with the striking workers.

In solidarity,

Karl Kramer

Campaign Co-Director

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Sacramento Chapter of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (excerpts)

The Labor Council for Latin American Advancement – Sacramento Chapter (LCLAA-SC) extends our solidarity and support for the striking detained immigrant workers at the Mesa Verde (MV) ICE Detention Facility in Bakersfield, California. We are outraged over what we believe to be Human Rights violations by The GEO Group owned and operator of many ICE private prisons. We are also outraged over the number of representatives who take GEO Group money, like Senator Bill Dodd of Senate District 3, among others. We will reach out in our area to representatives regarding this matter. Please see cc (below).

We ask the Mesa Verde Labor Strikers Collective to please forward this letter to the MV facility administrator. Also, please keep us posted on developments with your struggle.

In solidarity,

Desirée Rojas
President
Labor Council for Latin American Advancement – Sacramento Chapter

Cc: Office of the Governor, State of California
Representative John Garamendi’s Office – Congressional District 3 Representative Doris Matsui’s Office – Congressional District 6 Representative Mike Thompson’s Office – Congressional District 5 Senator Bill Dodd – Senate District 3

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