Immanuel Ness’s book, Immigrants, Unions, and the New U.S Labor Market discusses why and how immigrants organize. In short, according to Ness, immigrants, regardless of their immigration status are able to organize because they have strong community solidarity. In reverse, non-foreign born Americans do not organize because they lack community solidarity. I wrote a paper on Ness’s (and Hum’s) papers but there is one issue I did not address there that I would like to cover more in depth. This the issue of why native born Americans lack strong community solidarity? There are several answers to this question.

One reason is that immigrants, because they are so dependent on the help they receive from friends, families, and connections in the U.S. are automatically inclined, or even forced to maintain close ties with their network. It is necessary for their acclimation to life in America. Native born Americans, on the other hand, do not require such assistance and are therefore less inclined to maintain and grow their community networks and thus have lower levels of community solidarity.

Another source of communal solidarity for immigrants is with their coworkers. Immigrants often work very long hours with the same people in small businesses. This is an optimal environment for employees to bond. Immigrant employees not only share the common immigrant experience but also share the common experience of long, hard work and the feeling of being exploited. Native born American workers, on the other hand, often work in larger retail outlets, such as Walmart and Target. These businesses which are huge both on the local and national level offer little to no opportunity for employees to bond, especially considering that such workplaces have a tendency to rely on a fluid and often changing labor force, meaning that the same people are often not working together for long.

In addition to facing a constantly changing labor force, native employees in large chains are also less inclined towards community solidarity for another reason: they feel they have more options. So, for example, if the job as a cashier at Walmart doesn’t work out they have no problem with leaving and getting a job as a waitress at Applebees. In other words, they don’t stay at one job long enough to form strong and meaningful bonds with their co-workers. Immigrant workers, on the other hand, weather due to their insecurity about murky immigration statuses or because they feel their skill set limits them to one job for one business, are more likely to stay at one job for as long as possible. When conditions at one job are poor they are much more likely to strive to improve those conditions as opposed to changing jobs. As a result, they are more likely to stay with the same group of workers longer, allowing them to form strong bonds with co-workers and thus the community solidarity that stimulates and allows immigrants t succesfully organize.

In Immigrants, Unions, and the New U.S. Labor Market, Ness explains how most immigrants that enter New York City do so illegally because of the immigration limitations that are put in place.  Most illegal immigrants come up to New York from Latin America, while immigrants from Africa, Asia, and Europe come with a business, student worker, or tourist visa.  In the decade of 1992 to 2002, about a hundred thousand Dominicans came to New York and tens of thousands people came from countries like Russia, Guyana, China, Bangledesh, and Ecuador.  These new residents of New York, illegal or not, of course provided a labor force.  They worked for a lower wage than native residents and worked longer hours because employers knew they could take advantage of their lack of knowledge of American labor markets.  Most immigrants started out in low-waged jobs, like manufacturing factories and the garment industry.  These jobs, of course, did not offer a labor union.  However, immigrants have found a way to overcome this.  As time passed by, the availability of manufacturing jobs was replaced by service jobs.  Immigrants also began starting their own businesses, both formal and informal, around their communities, which gave other immigrants an opportunity to work.  This movement towards independent  job creation gave immigrants a chance to use each other as resources.  They may not have unions to demand better working conditions or better pay to be able to afford a better quality of life, but they did have each other.  Immigrant communities could band together, professionally and socially, to make their work experiences better.  Immigrants of similar race and nationality came together at their jobs and noticed that they had shared experiences and identities and created community solidarity.  As more networks of immigrants were created, the more niches were created for immigrants of the same ethnicity and the more immigrants were able to find jobs.  Immigrants may not be able to initially find higher level jobs with decent wages, but they have found a way to make their work experiences easier for each other.

Both of these article addressed the differences between the labor patterns of native-born employees and immigrant employees in New York City. The article, “Why New Immigrants Organize,” presented a view that went against my previous understanding about immigrants organizing to fight for better working conditions. Ness presented the view that immigrants are more likely to organize than workers who were born in this country. He gave examples, such as the East Nature grocery incident. Mexican workers had organized so affectively that the store was not allowed to stay open unless it bettered the working conditions and wages. This in turn, caused a whole wave of Mexican workers to organize, as they saw the impact these other workers had. This article talked about the fact that many of the recent immigrants are illegal. Based on our past readings, I was under the impression that illegal immigrants were very weary about complaining over conditions. For example, in the article about immigrant activism and migrant civil society, migrant civil society had to step in, in order for the day laborers to have a voice. It was not the migrant workers organizing themselves because they feared being deported.

One answer the Ness piece has about the reason immigrants are more likely to organize is that they are more likely to live in concentrated ethnic enclaves. Therefore, after they return home from work, they socialize with people who are working jobs in similar conditions and they discuss their hardships, so the workers get the sense that they are not being treated right. On the other hand, people who aren’t immigrants may not be coming home to this community. Also, immigrants in general work longer hours than non-immigrants and therefore are spending more time with their fellow workers, so there is a greater chance of organizing.

I was wondering if the fact that the types of jobs differ for immigrants and native-born people affects the frequency of organizing. In the Hum, article it was established that there is clear divide between the types of jobs immigrant Latinos and Blacks and their non-immigrant counterparts work. In the private sector, a larger percentage of immigrant Latinos work construction, production, and building jobs, while native born Latinos are more likely to work office, administration, and sales jobs. Maybe the jobs the immigrants have just happen to be jobs where people are exploited more, not even due to the fact that it is immigrants working the jobs. On the other hand, maybe it is that employers are more likely to exploit immigrants due to the not true(according to Ness) conception that they will be passive. The exploitation caused by the incorrect assumption leads immigrants to organize.

Immigrants in post 9/11 America have had a rough time gaining proper treatment from their employers. According to Ness 2005, today’s incoming immigrants are more likely to organize and protest than their native-born counterparts. This remains problematic since they are viewed as “illegals” who are a threat to the nation. These workers are absolutely necessary to the profitability of U.S. businesses because immigrants work in occupations that are not attractive to native-born workers. Yet, they are being paid lower wages despite working harder and longer hours. This is the core of why they feel the need to organize against business owners. However, not all immigrants speak up when they are mistreated by their employers. Most immigrants actually don’t even know the existing wage and hour laws, and they’re afraid that speaking up would cause them their jobs or get them reported to the immigration authorities.

I believe that more needs to be done in order to prevent immigrants from being mistreated. As far as I know, immigrants are human-beings too and they deserved to be treated that way. That means being paid a decent wage that they can actually live off of, and not having to constantly live in fear of being deported. Labor Unions aren’t the solution either, because often times they have their own separate agenda. Post 9/11 America needs to learn to be more open and tolerant of immigrants regardless of where they’re from and I think the author of this reading (Ness 2005) could completely agree that there must be a better solution to all this.

In Why Immigrants Organize by Immanuel Ness, the author talks about the various strikes that immigrants organized in order to fight for their natural rights that they have been denied. Unlike non-immigrants, many immigrants must endure below minimum wages, poor working conditions and no benefits. Many of these immigrants are too afraid to immediately start fighting for their rights on an individual basis. By coming together however, these immigrants are able to organize themselves and protest in away that their voices are heard. By sharing the same race, religion or story, these immigrants feel less alienated and more inclined to band together and demand their rights.

Having relatives who have recently immigrated, I know that many times immigrants take what they can get. They tend to ignore how they are mistreated in order to make a little money and get started. While often they initially think that when they come here they will start at a lower paid job and eventually make their way up to higher paying jobs, often times we see immigrants settle. They get too comfortable in their routine and forget that if they were willing to put more effort in, they could potentially get a higher paying jobs. It is only when immigrants encounter other people with the same story as them that they realize that they deserve more than what they are receiving. When they find enough people who share their ideas, they are able to protest as one group and try to reason with business owners. While it is a good idea in theory, this protesting does not always work. But it is important that these immigrants do not settle but continue fighting for their rights.

Tarry Hum’s “Persistent Polarization in the New York Workforce: New Findings of Labor Market Segmentation” clearly articulates and quantifies the large gaps in employment in terms of race, gender, and nativity. Some of the factors mentioned are understandably contributive to success in the job market such as language proficiency and education; however, the variance in terms of race and nativity are striking. African Americans, Latinos, and Asians collectively make up approximately half of both professional and financial services and between 70 and 75% of retail, food, and medical services. Bearing in mind last week’s discussion on immigrant entrepreneurship, this isn’t terribly surprising, but this huge divide between so-called skilled and unskilled labor is alarming, to say the least, especially since New York City is supposed to be a model in rising out of the current economic crisis.

What is perhaps most interesting is within these minority groups, there is a further division between native-borns and immigrants. The most extreme example is in the case of Asians and Asian-Americans. Native-born Asians on average make over $100,000 while their immigrant counterparts are sitting at the poverty line. While language and education can account for this to an extent, there is still clearly and abuse and exploitation of these immigrant workers.

However, Immanuel Ness’s Immigrants, Unions, and the New U.S. Labor Market shows how when these immigrants try to rally together to fight for better wages or conditions, they are met with overwhelming opposition. The example opening the chapter relays an anecdote about a shop that chose to shut down rather than increase its Mexican workers pay. Ness also discussed the strange comparison of the formation of such units to a “cultural propensity” towards militancy. Frankly, that is a bit ridiculous. Unions by native born Americans were formed in response to the influx of blue collar jobs and the ensuing abuse inflicted upon these workers. Although Ness is correct in saying we have increasingly become a service economy, there is still a need for unions, especially amongst immigrant workers.

Immanuel Ness’s Immigrants, Unions, and the New U.S. Labor Market, sheds light on the relationship between immigrants in New York City and their involvement–or lack thereof–in formal unions. Ness elaborates on the backstory of the slowly declining influence of unions in NYC, honing in on NYC’s shift from a largely manufacturing economy to a service economy.

New York City, prior to the recent wave of immigrants, gleaned capital from the manufacturing sector. Manufacturing jobs were beneficial to immigrants in myriad ways; first and foremost, the manufacturing jobs created a condensed “social geography of work.” Ness defines “social geography of work” as the social networks that immigrants establish as a direct result of where they gather to work. Manufacturing occupations created specialized districts (such as the Meatpacking District) where immigrants could exchange thoughts, sympathize with each other regarding difficult labor conditions, and often, group together to form unions. Manufacturing jobs allowed immigrants to find strength in solidarity.

Ness mentions two major causes of the shift from the manufacturing industry to the service industry–the outsourcing of jobs, and the onset of new technologies that have replaced previously manual tasks, such as been the case with the previously booming printing industry. Jobs within the printing industry, for example, provided a decent income and were, most importantly, regulated by unions so that unfair labor practices were minimized. Occupations within the service industry tend to be more scattered throughout the city, derailing the immigrants prime weapon against unfair labor practices–their strength in concentrated numbers. Thus, with the emergence of a service economy, it became much more difficult for immigrants to assimilate.

Ness briefly mentions the black car limousine industry as an example of the service economy in NYC. The black car industry encompasses, in many ways, all the difficulties immigrants face in the age of the service economy. Black car drivers are essentially self-employed; they purchase the cars they drive with their own money, and pay for maintenance out of pocket, as well. Each driver functions autonomously; there often is no gathering place for drivers to be social with each other and vent frustrations regarding work–it is too easy for each driver to be encapsulated in his/her own bubble. The vast capital raised via the service industry comes at the expense of many immigrants, black car drivers representing just one example.

In the book, Immigrant Unions & The New US Labor Market, Immanuel Ness focuses on the motives that prompt immigrant workers to organize and form organizations such as labor unions in order to improve their working conditions.

The chapter “Why New Immigrants Organize” opens by describing the various labor conflicts that swept through Manhattan in the spring of 2001 between Mexicans working in green sweatshops and their employers. These workers organized various strikes in order to raise their wages, improve their workplace conditions and gain respect. This example demonstrates a pattern that is all too common now-a-days. Young men flee from their home country such as Mexico, because of a decline in living conditions and seek jobs in the United States where there are willing to work for low wages in New York City industries. The book centers on the various ways in which these immigrants organize and disproves the notion that immigrants are complacent and not likely to fight for improved conditions. In fact, according to Ness, immigrants are more likely to organize and protest than their native counterparts. They have an “improbable willingness to take inordinate risks to build worker power, raise wages and improve conditions in disparate work places” ( Ness 2 ). This surprised me, one would expect recently arrived immigrants to do their best to fit into their environment, to prevent attention from being drawn to themselves and to blend into their surroundings both at home and in their workplace. Instead this reading says the opposite. immigrants are willing to take the risks necessary in order to improve work place conditions for themselves and for other immigrants. This implies to me that immigrants manage to form some ties with other fellow immigrants, ties that give them the security and valor necessary to risk their jobs and fight for what they believe in.

Other sections of the readings proved to me that they do in fact gain a sense of unity from other immigrants in the area.  One of the main reasons for a strong presence of economic immigrants in the United States is the country’s need for people to fill in jobs and industry services, particularly those that no longer attract native born workers. The immigrants that tend to accept these jobs generally have fewer social networking  ties outside the workplace than inside. Furthermore, the long hours of work that are typical of such poorly-paid jobs enable these workers to form bonds with each other that are strengthened day by day as they work together. Because of their common experiences, they tend to manifest a common resentment towards their employer “on the basis of common exploitation”, resulting in workplace militancy, or in other words: a sense of immigrant solidarity.

I found this very interesting because by the employers mistreating their immigrant employees there are actually fueling and contributing to a stronger formation of a labor union that will try to bring down the regulations that they so desperately try to maintain. Instead of mistreating employees of common ethnicities and social status, employees should be aware that their actions can lead to future labor movements against their businesses.

Why Immigrants Organize, by Immanuel Ness explains how immigrant workers are exploited and without the “exit” plan that native-born workers have, have no choice but to fight back by establishing their own organized strikes. Ness explains how because of the U.S. economy has begun to lean more towards neoliberalism there is less government regulation therefore businesses and corporation are more inclined pay immigrant workers below minimum-wage and exploit them because of their lack of status and ignorance. The article furthers examines the relationship between established native-born unions and immigrant-formed work organizations. The author encourages unions to support these groups while leaving them enough room to remain autonomous. Ness also explains how these immigrants are more inclined to act because of the identity niches that the immigrants have worked and lived in. They may share a common ethnicity, religion, and experience the same things and are therefore more sympathetic  and willing to work for a common cause.

In Tarry Hum’s article, Persistent Polarization in the New York Workforce: New Findings of Labor Market Segmentation, the data and statistics clearly demonstrates why immigrants are discontent about their working conditions and wages. The data shows how immigrants work the most menial and insecure jobs such as construction and transportation. Many are much more qualified for other jobs yet because of the language barrier and prejudices they face, they may be forced to work in these jobs. Some of these jobs are high-risk and yet many immigrants are paid below average wages. The businesses and corporations that hire these immigrants are blatantly exploitive. Given the few options immigrants have, as Ness explains, they will attempt to change their work situation instead once they realize how they are exploited and treated so disrespectfully.

The forming of immigrant work groups should be encouraged. With numbers comes power and greater influence over these exploitive businesses. The government should step in as well and provide support for these people. Specifically, laws should be enforced and immigrants made more aware of their rights as transnational workers. Whether or not they are documented workers, they should still have basic rights as human beings.