Letters to the Editor

By David Bacon

Frozen-food processor Overhill Farms recently fired 254 of its 800 works at a plant in Vernon, just south of Downtown. Overhill Farms representatives said the workers were dismissed because they had unauthorized Social Security numbers.

This mass termination is the largest in many years, the first of its scale under the Obama Administration. The move apparently followed an audit by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) earlier this year.

According to John Grant, who serves as a packinghouse director for Local 770 of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, representatives of Overhill Farms gave the 254 workers 30 days to reconcile their Social Security numbers with federal authorities.

“They told us there would be no work until they called us to come back,” says Isela Hernandez, a worker at the plant.

That call never came for 254 of the workers, all members of the union. The fired employees called Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana, a local immigrant-rights organization. Hermandad president Nativo Lopez helped them mount demonstrations that have taken place at the factory ever since.

Overhill Farms spokesperson Alex Auerbach says that the company “was required by federal law to terminate these employees because they had invalid Social Security numbers,” adding that it “had no role in initiating this action, and certainly did not benefit from it.”

Grant differs.

“The company doesn’t have to terminate these people,” he says. “No document we know of says they do.”

Workers say the company is replacing those who were fired—some of whom have worked as many as 20 years in the plant—with lower-paid, non-union employees. The company denies this charge, although one recently hired worker, who asked not to be identified because he still works there, says otherwise.

“I have no benefits—no vacation, medical plan or anything,” says the new hire.

Whether or not immigration status is a pretext for terminations motivated by economic gain, the firings highlight a larger question of immigration policy.

“An immigration policy that says these workers have no right to work and feed their families is wrong and should be changed,” says Lopez (see related story, “Panel Foes Agree,” home page; Dot Dot Dish item, “Slow Start for Census,” home page).

However, the Immigration Reform and Control Act, passed in 1986, says that employers may not hire people who are “not authorized” to work in the U.S.

Unions and immigrant rights groups around the country now have to choose whether or not to defend undocumented workers who are targeted by this policy.

And if existing unions don’t defend those workers, will they try to form or find unions that will? Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana last year took the initial steps to form such a union.

“When I look around Vernon,” Lopez says, “all I see are other factories like Overhill, filled with immigrant workers in the same abysmal conditions. If they start firing people and we fight to defend them, we can organize them.”

Anger over the firings could help.

“The company treats us like criminals,” says Bohemia Agustiano. “I worked there for 18 years. Was I a criminal when I was working all those years?”

Editor:

Regarding the recent front-page photo and caption about the 3rd graders at the Para Los Niños Charter Elementary School and their efforts to raise money to help the homeless (“Para Los Homeless,” issue of June 12):

What a great article!

What a great thing for those children to do.

I would like to contact the teacher of that class—I would like to do something for them.

Please give me an address or other means of contact.

Joyce Hawkins

Los Angeles

Editor’s Note: Administrators at Para Los Niños say that the best way to make contact is by calling Norma Silva, the principal of the school, at (213) 239-6605, extension 232.

Editor:

Every day I commute about an hour and a half, each way, to Downtown and back. For the past couple of years I have noticed a developing epidemic of drivers who change lanes without using their turn signals. This is one of the major causes of accidents on the freeways.

Recently, a motorcyclist speeding between lanes struck a car as it was changing lanes without signaling. The motorcyclist went down, and God knows what happened.

It would be a simple business for police in unmarked cars to take my route and cite at least a hundred 100 scofflaws on any morning.

The state does need the revenue, does it not?

Gary Brownstein

Fashion District