Immigrant Workers Organizing Breeds Energy And Hope

Immigrant workers, documented and undocumented are on the move. They’re organizing for labor rights and infusing the workers’ movement with new energy and creativity. We need to make sure every worker, documented or undocumented is protected by our labor laws and we need immigration reform that allows immigrants to be securely part of our country from day one—able to assert their legal rights, including the right to organize. Over two hundred million people, just about all of them workers and farmers, are part of a great migrant stream, a human bond that connects the countries of the developed and developing world.

Who can see more clearly the operation of the global economy than those workers?  Who has a greater stake in changing it? Who can help us to change our unions, and stop the hemorrhaging of our workers organizations than immigrant workers? Organizing immigrant workers is so necessary for the survival of our labor movement. If we are serious in wanting to build political power, then we must organize immigrant workers, fight for their rights, and make the movement for social justice one that belongs to all of us, documented and undocumented.

Produced for Building Bridges Radio by Mimi Rosenberg and Ken Nash