Community Fights Boss-Gov’t Anti-Immigrant Gang-up

OAKLAND, CA ,October 16 — The coalition that organized the May Day March in the Bay Area is now mobilizing to support workers at the Mi Pueblo supermarket. PLP members are participating and joining the community boycott and picketing here on October 20.

Mi Pueblo has 21 stores and 3,200 employees, the majority of whom speak Spanish or are bi-lingual. The owner, Juvenal Chavez, expanded and got rich by selling traditional products from Latin America at high prices in immigrant neighborhoods while paying workers substandard wages. Many, both women and men, fought these conditions and have been fired. Meanwhile, Local 5 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union is trying to unionize this workforce as part of a state-wide campaign, the Mercado Workers Coalition, aimed at non-union, immigrant supermarket workers. 

In August, Mi Pueblo announced the voluntary implementation of the Federal E-Verify program to check the immigration status of new employees. Recently Mi Pueblo revealed that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division of the Department of Homeland Security is carrying out I-9 audits, called “silent raids.”

E-Verify, I-9 and ICE are all part of the fascist federal apparatus which is destroying the jobs, wages and living conditions of ALL workers in the U.S. It may appear to be aimed only at immigrants. Some politicians have argued that these “reforms” will open up more jobs for citizens. However, the experiences at Pacific Steel (over 200 fired; see CHALLENGE, 3/12), at Able Building Maintenance (450 fired) and at American Apparel (2,000 fired) show how “legal” citizen workers are hurt. Bosses like Juvenal Chavez can cooperate with ICE to fire long-time, “illegal” workers and then turn around and hire new “legal” citizen workers, currently unemployed and desperate for work, at an even lower wage. 

If we accept divisions among workers based on ethnicity, gender, national origin or migration status, we lose. However, when we recognize ourselves as one international working class and develop multi-ethnic unity and internationalism among all workers, we gain! Workers’ struggles have no borders! An attack on one worker is an attack on the whole working class. 

PLP believes that the boycott and pickets can mobilize and help organize this struggle.  The boycott might force Juvenal Chavez to make concessions and a union contract might give some immediate relief to arbitrary firings.

However, both are not sufficient to get at the root of the problem, the capitalist system, of which Juveal is a willing, profitable part. Underlying this struggle is capitalism’s creation of massive racist unemployment, massive migration around the globe, repressive laws, discrimination of all kinds and institutional racism. In the long run, we must organize to destroy capitalism, even as we fight for relief from today’s oppression. 

Join with us to build a new society, led by and for the international working class. 

Communist revolution opens the door to abolishing racism, sexism and national borders if we make international working-class unity part of today’s battles. In a truly communist society there’s no money, no production for sale and profit and no wages to create differences among workers. This is a world that finally realizes the potential for all to participate according to their ability and receive according to their needs, sharing the value the working class collectively produces.