Meatpackers Union Sues Over Plant Raids

Source: The Associated Press

By OSKAR GARCIA
The Associated Press

OMAHA, Neb. -- A union representing workers at six Swift & Co. meatpacking plants sued federal immigration authorities Wednesday, alleging agents violated the workers' rights during raids by roughly handling even those not suspected of crimes.

The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union and the eight workers named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit seek unspecified damages and an order to stop U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from conducting what the union says are illegal raids.

ICE officials investigating identity theft arrested 1,297 workers at the plants in December, but union officials have said that more than 12,000 workers were detained against their will during the raids. Swift has estimated the financial impact at up to $50 million.

Union president Joseph Hansen said workers were handcuffed and held for hours and denied access to phones, bathrooms, legal counsel and their families.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/12/AR2007091201532.html

You'll be treated like an illegal immigrant even if you're legal.

This is a government, correction, fascist state going out of control. Our forefathers are rolling in their graves and never meant for our rights to be set asside for any reason and that applied to the governing body especially as we were supposed to be able to change it if it did not fulfill its obligations to the citizenry this way. Not only that, but it specifies by force if necessary. Try that today and you will be on trial for terrorism or worse treason when it is the governing body that is guilty of these crimes. Unfortunately, it does apply to some dems too like for example Pelosi rolling over and playing dead in her responcibilities to her constituents as well as the rest of the US citizenry in eneablement to the crimes against the people this governing body is committing crimes against on a daily basis.
Even some of the republicon's own that do not just follow their party blindly are seeing the harm that has been committed by a political party that seems unanswerable to few if any. Give an example? OK. John Dean. He is being somewhat outspoken when it comes to seeing some of the true nature of what his party has become and done in his book "Broken Government".

We could skip all this if Bu$hco just enforced the existing law and fined employers who hire illegals.

If there are no jobs, they won't come.

If that is typical of these raids, that is certainly a change in tactics from before the immigration debate.

I wonder how this raids are implemented. With thousands of employees how do you check all of their papers? Most of us don't carry around anything more than a drivers license and credit card which doesn't prove anything. I stopped carrying my SSN as a security measure.

Do you profile the Hispanics and keep them separate from the others until you figure out who's legal and who's illegal? Profiling is not a tactic I recommend, but I wonder if they use it. It must take a long time to verify the legality of 12,000 employees. Even with computers, you have to verify who is at work that day and if they are who they say they are. Some probably don't cooperate, either because they are illegal or they don't like being profiled or they are mad at the government for making them jump through hoops. You have to ensure that the illegal ones don't escape while this is going on, but you can't make life too miserable for the majority of workers who are legal.

Not a job I would want.

this is why you fill out an I-9 when you get hired for a new job, that form must be produced on request of an Immigration official.

We're a lot of union plants broken years ago so that the employers could dump workers earning $20 an hour and replace them with those earning half that or less?

What am I missing here?

I worked in a factory with a union and Mexican workers and it never bothered me. They payed their dues and the playing field was level.

Why don't they go pick on a non union shop were illegal labor is actually hurting American workers. There are many egregious examples.