ILRLR 3068

Organizing for Immigrant Worker Rights

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2017-2018.

This class examines the institutional processes of enforcing immigrant worker rights. We begin by reviewing the legal foundations of immigrant labor, including the current immigration enforcement regime, and the role of legal status in labor standards enforcement protections.  We examine how organized labor has evolved with regards to immigrant workers, shifting from supporting employer sanctions in 1986, to repudiating them as a tool for employer control in 2001.  We then evaluate the role that immigrant workers have played in the revitalization of the labor movement, and the challenges that remain for unions.  Beyond unions, we examine the emergence of new forms of worker representation, including the varying types of worker centers.  We focus on the proliferation of day labor centers, and more recently, non-union efforts to organize workers in the restaurant industry.  We even consider the role of undocumented workers in the public sector, made possible through the increased use of subcontracting. We look at how public entities have turned to worker organizations to help hold employers accountable, and how workers have turned to local governments to strengthen worker protections (such as higher minimum wages and strengthened penalties for wage theft), as well as how states have become new targets for policy change  (such as recent victories for domestic workers).  We also discuss binational efforts to advance immigrant worker rights.  We end by considering prospects for federal immigration reform, and the implications these proposals may have for immigrant worker rights.

When Offered Spring.

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