UPS using E-Verify to fire immigrants

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A 70-page pamphlet, $4. Order from Socialist Action Books, P.O. Box 10328, CHICAGO—The package delivery giant UPS is on the verge of firing hundreds of workers in the Chicago land area as a result of the company’s participation in the government’s EVerify program. These workers, some with more than 20 years seniority, are facing the prospect of losing a good union job with benefits and pensions and being forced into the mass of the unemployed due to the Obama administration’s anti-immigrant policies.

E-Verify is a federal program that supposedly checks the employees’ names and Social Security numbers against a national database to verify their work status. The Obama administration is mandating all companies with federal contracts to take part in E-Verify. Thousands of employers are participating in the program, putting tens of thousands of workers on the chopping block.

UPS began rolling out the program in Chicago in January. UPS will soon expand the process to its facilities across the country. Supervisors told workers they must fill out the government’s I-9 authorization form and show documentation to HR of employment eligibility.

The company has set a deadline for Chicago workers of March 31 to submit documentation, or else workers will be immediately terminated. Supervisors have harassed workers who have not done so, even singling out workers in pre-work meetings and posting lists of workers who haven’t submitted documentation.

Management has targeted the suburban Addison facility in particular, where there is a large concentration of Latino workers. Workers there must often endure racist remarks from supervisors.

Teamsters Local 705 has stood behind their UPS members, working to save their jobs. The local’s officers and staff participated in an open meeting called by the suburban-based immigrant-rights coalition, Immigrant Solidarity DuPage, and held a meeting at the union hall to educate the affected workers on their rights.

Local 705 has also sent extra union representatives to the Addison plant to stop the abuse of Latino workers, and has filed harassment grievances against supervisors. Recently, a group of workers in Addison who had not yet filled out the I-9 form were told by management when they came to work that they were laid off. The union filed a grievance in response, and a few days later the workers were called back to work. The local has requested negotiations with UPS, but so far the company has refused. The union and affected workers have met with Congressman Luis Gutierrez, who has agreed to help urge UPS to meet with the union.

Local immigrant-rights activists have also taken on the workers’ cause. A delegation of activists, church leaders, and community members will attempt to meet with UPS management on March 4 to demand a stop to all firings. UPS workers will participate in a march and rally called by local activists on March 10 in downtown Chicago to commemorate the mass march of hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers held on that day in 2006 and demand just immigration reform and an end to the E-Verify firings.

Many of the UPS workers and other local activists are mobilizing for the national March 21 Washington, D.C., rally to demand immigration reform. Local 705 is planning on chartering a bus for the UPS workers to attend the action.

The E-Verify program was first introduced in the Clinton administration and then expanded under the Bush administration, which in 2007 mandated its use by all employers for newly hired workers. The Obama administration has adopted this reactionary tool as part of its so-called immigration-reform agenda, and implemented the federal contractor rule in September 2009. Many cases have been documented of U.S. citizens and other work-authorized employees being fired due to errors in the E-Verify system.

As a candidate, Obama promised (at least in front of Latino crowds) a just reform of the immigration process. Instead, Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano have increased the attacks on immigrant workers through a series of administrative directives. These have included the no-match-letter policy and the expansion of the 287(g) program, often called “polimigra,” which authorizes designated local police to enforce immigration law. Polimigra has been granted to many ultra-right sheriffs and police departments that have used it to engage in mass round-ups of Latino workers. There have been more deportations of immigrant workers under Obama than under Bush.

Many activists have rallied around the immigration reform bill proposed by Rep. Gutierrez. While this bill contains provisions that will allow many undocumented workers to apply for legal status, removes barriers for others, and proposes to end the 287(g) program, it also increases border militarization and enforcement, including expanding the EVerify program!

The bill also calls for the creation of a new federal agency to establish “employment-based immigration policies that promote economic growth and competitiveness while minimizing job displacement, wage depression and unauthorized employment.” Such an agency could be used as a back-door method to create a guest-worker program—establishing a For further reading: ‘What’s at Stake in the Fight for Immigrant Rights?’

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... Obama leads U.S. deeper into Afghanistan morass (continued from page 1: “Obama leads U.S. deeper into Afghanistan morass”)

observed over eight days … suggest that the day when the Afghan army will be well led and able to perform complex operations independently … remains far off.

“The effort to train the Afghan army has long been troubled, with soldiers and officers repeatedly falling short. And yet after nearly a decade of American and European mentorship and many billions of dollars of American taxpayer investment, American and Afghan officials have portrayed the Afghan army as the force out front in this important offensive against the Taliban.

“Statements from Kabul have said the Afghan military is planning the missions and leading both the fight and the effort to engage with Afghan civilians caught between the Taliban and the newly arrived troops. But that assertion conflicts with what is visible in the field. In every engagement between the Taliban and one front-line American Marine unit, the operation has been led in almost every significant sense by American officers and troops. They organized the forces for battle, transported them in American vehicles and helicopters from Western-run bases into Taliban-held ground, and have been the primary fighting force each day.”

In his article in the Feb. 22 Salon.com, Juan Cole summed up such accounts: “The answer to the question about Afghan military preparedness—after nearly a decade of training and an investment of $1 billion —[is] that Afghan troops are not ready for prime time. In the Marjah campaign, they showed no initiative, no ability to fight independently. They are poorly served by their junior field officers, and they are 90% illiterate. (The Times’ reporter expected to see them with maps out planning approaches!)”

One account gave an example of a relationship between Afghan officers and soldiers typical of corrupt neocolonial armies. The soldier had gotten a can of Red Bull from a U.S. soldier. The officer just took it from him and drank it himself and gave what he did not want to another officer. Given that sort of relationship, obviously, loyalty is not going to be very strong among the rank and file soldiers.

The situation with the Afghan police, who are supposed to play the key role in maintaining Afghan government control of the area retaken from the Taliban is apparently even worse. On the eve of the Marjah offensive, 25 Afghan police defected to the Taliban.

The New York Times reported Feb. 19: “’They [the policemen] left with all their weapons, two trucks and machine guns and heavy weapons,’ said Maj. Abdul Khalil, the police chief in the Jalrez district, just north of Chak. ... Major Khalil said there had been a dispute about pay. ‘We don’t know if they have gone over to the Taliban, or they just ran away, or what has happened,’ he said.”

The article continued: “About the same time Major Khalil was speaking, a Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said in a telephone interview that 24 police officers in Chak had surrendered to the Taliban, with their weapons and two trucks. ‘They are safe now and will not be harmed and will be treated well, under our code of conduct,’ Mr. Mujahid said.”

4 Socialist Action march 2010 Finbarr O’Reilly / Reuters The police commander said that the men had left over a “pay dispute.” The article went to explain that there was a general pattern of police officers stealing the funds they received to pay the policemen. Thus, it is likely that it was this sort of corruption that led to the defection of the police, and it is therefore also likely that this is not going to be an isolated instance.

The British Guardian reported in its Nov. 6, 2009, issue: “Between 10,000 and 15,000 Afghan police have been killed in the past five years; four times more likely to be killed than their military counterparts, who benefit from better training and equipment. Not surprisingly, recruitment is at an all-time low. Corruption is rife, with senior officers commonly paying a fee to secure promotions. The fee is regarded as an investment because each time a junior officer takes a bribe or steals from the public, the boss gets a cut. The more senior the post, the higher the upfront fee. A regional commander paying $100,000 can expect to pay back his investment in two years.”

The Taliban at least, although they aroused a lot of resentment and hatred by their brutality and ruthlessness, have gained a reputation for being less corrupt than the Karzai government and the warlords of the Northern Alliance, who were the essential allies of the U.S.-led conquest of Afghanistan.

Furthermore, it is not only the Afghan officers who have been stealing from the police. At least one incident of major theft from the police by U.S. military contractors has come to light, and again it is not likely a unique incident. The Guardian reported Feb. 24: “Employees of American defence contractor Blackwater took more than 500 assault rifles that were intended for the Afghan police force and routinely carried weapons without permission, it emerged in a hearing of the Senate armed services committee today.”

Actually, Blackwater had created a dummy corporation called Paravant to conceal its role, since it has already been so discredited. The Feb. 24 Guardian noted: “In May two Afghan civilians were killed in a shooting involving Paravant employees. Investigators later determined that the Americans had ‘violated alcohol policies’, were not authorised to have weapons and had violated other policies.”

Not only has the Karzai government been unable to clear itself of corruption (in fact, it lost the last pretense of legitimacy when it renewed itself by fraudulent elections and recently took over all the election monitoring institutions). But it has been incapable of delivering its basic selling point for the U.S.—that is, Karzai’s alleged authority as a Pushtun tribal chief.

The Taliban continues to be based on the Pushtun and to dominate most of the Pushtun areas. Karzai’s “victory” in the presidential elections, in fact, was based on an impossible vote in Pushtun areas, where few potential voters defied the Taliban boycott. But he is not trusted by non-Pushtuns either. He has been unable to overcome the national divisions in the country or to be seen as a representative of national unity.

The Afghan army is disproportionately made up of the nationalities on which the Northern Alliance was based—the Hazaras, the Uzbeks, the Tajiks—who live in the north of the country. Juan Cole pointed out in the article quoted above: “Almost no ANA troops hail (Left) Afghan National Army soldier on patrol through a Taliban stronghold in Kandahar province, October 2007. Over two years later, allied soldiers are still trying to roust the Taliban from the area.

from Helmand Province, and Tajiks (native speakers of Dari Persian, often from towns and cities) are vastly over-represented in the army.”

The national divisions in Afghanistan have loomed as an obstacle to the attempts of Karzai and the U.S. to make a deal with sections of the Taliban, a tactic that became an ultimate hope of the U.S. for achieving a favorable outcome to the conflict without incurring unsustainable costs.

The Feb. 21 issue of the British Telegraph reported:

“Hamid Karzai’s internationally funded scheme to lure Taliban fighters with land and jobs will undermine democracy in Afghanistan and alienate the peaceful population, his presidential rival Abdullah Abdullah has claimed.” Abdullah’s main base is among the northern peoples, who suffered under the Taliban when the latter ruled Afghanistan.

The maneuvering of the U.S. and the Karzai government toward the Taliban has also caused complications in their relations with the Pakistani military, which has had links to the Taliban, and now fears that the U.S. may be negotiating with the Taliban behind its back. The recent arrests of Taliban leaders in Pakistan have led to speculation that the Pakistani military finally decided to arrest these figures, most notably Mullah Baradar, because they were the conduits for the U.S. negotiations with the Taliban.

The Feb. 17 New York Times reported remarks by a “senior Pakistani intelligence official” that suggested that the arrest of the Taliban leaders were really aimed at the U.S. “‘We are after Mullah Baradar,’ the Pakistani intelligence official said in an interview three weeks ago. ‘We strongly believe that the Americans are in touch with him, or people who are close to him.”

“The official said the American action of excluding Pakistan from talks with the Afghan Taliban was making things ‘difficult.’ ‘You cannot say that we are important allies and then you are negotiating with people whom we are hunting and you don’t include us,’ he said.”

The Pakistani military would have good reason to resent the U.S. negotiating with the Taliban behind their backs when they have taken big risks to ally themselves with the U.S. against the Taliban forces in Pakistan—tolerating U.S. drone bombings that have killed a lot of Pakistani civilians, pushing their repression of the Taliban and its allies to the point of civil war, and displacing millions of their citizens.

The brutality and ruthlessness of the Pakistani Taliban and their allies have, by all accounts, given the military a certain political cover for their assault on Taliban bases in some areas, but this political support, also by all accounts, is pretty thin.

The U.S. government is hated by the overwhelming majority of the Pakistani people, and the complicity of the Pakistan military and government with U.S. forces in Afghanistan and U.S. covert forces within their own country is seriously eroding the control of a military and government discredited by corruption and their defense of brutal exploitation of the Pakistani people.

Inadvertently, one presumes, The New York Times evoked the longing of the Pakistani people for the overthrow of their oppressors and for an anti-imperialist revolution in an article in its Feb. 25 issue. It was an article devoted to a current of opinion opposed to Islamist fundamentalism: “’Worse than the violence, Mr. Rizvi said, was the weakness of the government, which seemed unable to accomplish much of anything. Nor was a military takeover the answer. The only solution, he said, was a revolution by the people, like the one in Iran in 1979.’”

The author of the article tried to reassure his audience (and his editors and their sponsors) that such a revolution was a “distant” prospect in Pakistan, because none of the political leaders had any “vision.” That is certainly true of the political leaders to which big press journalists pay attention. But under the pressure of civil war and U.S. intervention, Pakistan is a cauldron of political ferment out of which leaders of a very different sort can arise. Processes can develop that would be a far greater threat to U.S. imperialism than Islamist radicalism.

The U.S. military chiefs claim that their offensive in Marjah is a success, but that the Taliban resistance has been much more than they expected. Of course, there was no doubt that the U.S. military would prevail in the field. They qualitatively outnumber the Taliban fighters in the area, and their material superiority is overwhelming. That makes their acknowledged surprise more significant. It is an indication that more surprises are in store for them.

In fact, the successes that the U.S. officials have claimed in recent weeks, both in the Marjah offensive and the arrest of Taliban leaders in Pakistan, do not point the way out of the morass they have gotten themselves into Afghanistan and Pakistan but only deeper into it. n