ICE raid in Los Angeles. It combined racist repression of immigrants with union busting.

The ICE raids in Los Angeles combined racist anti-immigrant raids with union busting raids. This fact has been hidden by all the media. Also hidden is the failure of the union leadership combined with the NGO’s (nonprofiteers).

Let’s start with the first point:

The Angeles Daily News reported “There were reports of raids being carried out in the downtown LA Fashion District and other areas, including Pico-Union and Cypress Park. Angelica Salas of the Coalition of Humane Immigrant Rights said there were at least seven immigration raids held across the region Friday, many of them at workplaces, including a doughnut shop.”

“Garment Workers Center”
For the last few years, the Garment Worker Center (GWC) has been conducting an organizing campaign in the Los Angeles garment/“fashion” district. This is a low wage industry that employs undocumented workers among others. Anybody who does not believe that these employers collaborated with ICE in order to intimidate their work force is living in an alternate reality.

But how about the Garment Worker Center? Who are they and what are they doing?

The board of directors is composed of veterans of various NGOs, such as Victor Narro along with SEIU International Vice President Maria Rivera. They also have sucked some working class youth into this nonprofiteer/union bureaucracy world.

After pretending that labor law will protect these workers, the GWC is silent about the raids.

The orientation of the GWC is clear from their web site. It focuses on a national law called the Fabric Act, which “ would protect nearly 100,000 American garment workers and revitalize the garment industry…” And notice how it claims a common interest between the workers and the industry. We can just imagine what their organizers have been telling workers: “Organizing a union is ‘protected activity” and the law prohibits the employer from firing you for it.” As if labor law protects any workers today… even before Trump took office.

Their criminal failure goes even further. Take a look at the web site of the GWC.

SEIU 721, which apparently has been central to the organizing drive, has been silent too.

Next, look at the web site of SEIU Local 721 (Los Angeles). Not a word about these raids. This makes complete sense since neither of them has done a thing to mobilize against those raids.  In other words, they led these workers into the tiger’s den and then abandoned them. (Update: Since this was written, we have found out that SEIU 721 president was at the protests. See comment below. That does not change the fact that the union itself has mobilized neither its members nor the wider L.A. working class. Not only that, but the unions in general have remained mum on the fact that these raids are union busting.)

Trump has called up a few National Guard members. This is intended as a provocation, and some of the protesters will possibly respond. Instead, they should be directing themselves at the union leadership, SEIU 721 first and foremost. They should be going directly to the SEIU membership and urge them to demand that their leadership mobilize. In addition, they should demand that the unions organize the real center of immigrant worker power – agriculture workers – to shut down food production in the U.S. That’s what Oaklandsocialist has advocated for some time. See this article: Stopping Trump: general strike, or…? 

Other union members across the country can and should be doing the same. Anybody who thinks that these raids and the callup of the National Guard won’t be used against all workers is living in a dream world – the same dream world inhabited by the union leadership and the nonprofiteers.

ICE raid in Los Angeles. It combined racist repression of immigrants with union busting.