[Marxism] Immigrant Workers Take Direct Action Against No-Match Firings

[Greg McDonald <sabocat59@xxxxxxx>]

Immigrant Workers Take Direct Action Against “No-Match” Firings
Submitted by intexile on Sat, 04/12/2008 - 2:59pm.

A group of Latino workers, at the Twin Cities-based D’Amico’s & Sons  
restaurant chain have organized and taken direct action to resist  
being fired for receiving “No-Match” letters from the Social Security  
Administration. The workers  many who have well over a decade of  
service for the company  have been joined by family members, some co- 
workers, the Workers Interfaith Network (WIN), Students for a  
Democratic Society (SDS) and the Twin Cities General Membership  
Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.) and others.

D’Amico’s announced that Monday, March 31, 2008 would be the last day  
of work for 17 employees who had received the “no-match” letters.  
This appears to be illegal as the Social Security’s “no-match”  
notices explicitly state that employers should take no “adverse  
action” against employees based on these letters. “No-match” means a  
problem has been identified with a worker’s name and social security  
number not matching. Sometimes this can be due to immigration status,  
other times a simple typo can trigger the letter. In any case, the  
legal precedent has been that it was up to employees to correct the  
issue and not employers. A California Federal Court halted attempts  
by the Bush administration to penalize employers for having workers  
with “no-match” letters.

The D’Amico’s workers were determined to fight these unjust firings.  
On the morning of the 31st, seven kitchen workers at the Uptown store  
stopped working, approached their manager with a petition signed by  
their fellow workers demanding their jobs be protected. The workers  
then sat down together in the dining area refusing to work until the  
bosses negotiate. A Sit-Down strike! A lively picket rallied in  
support of the workers outside. Co-workers, including some who had  
also received “no-match” letters, and others who hadn’t, joined with  
WIN, SDS and Wobblies chanting, banging on pots and pans, and  
marching right outside the window where the sit-down strikers sat.  
Later that day one non-Latino waiter also refused to work and sat  
with his co-workers in solidarity.

An IWW organized effort to flood the store’s phone lines during lunch  
hour to inquire on behalf of the workers frazzled management. One  
caller, who works with Wobblies at a large telecom call center, was  
threatened by a manager with arrest for asking questions about the  
“no-match” workers!

When D’Amico’s owners refused to budge from their illegal, unjust and  
heartless position, the workers responded appropriately. Starting at  
6:00 am the next morning a spirited picket managed to turn away three  
large delivery trucks from the Uptown store, including meat, produce,  
and general food supplies. This was a significant victory as the  
trucks were from both union and non-union companies, and the  
D’Amico’s Uptown restaurant also does the food prep for all their  
metro outlet stores. Towards the end of the picket a private  
contractor in his own vehicle crashed the picket line at the back  
entrance hitting a student supporter.

Since then the workers and their supporters have thrown up pickets at  
different D’Amico’s locations, and promise to continue their campaign  
on many fronts.

The IWW, whose participation has been praised by the D’Amico’s  
workers and WIN, will continue to advocate an industrial based direct  
action strategy, including outreach to other workers in the company  
and industry, tactics aimed at hitting the bosses where it hurts, and  
for democratic control of the struggle by the workers themselves.

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