Editorial
Wage Watchers
Most businesses try to compete by being efficient and smart. Some do it the nasty way. They undercut their competitors by hiring and exploiting low-wage workers. Recent years have been especially good for this repellent bottom-feeding thanks to weak and indifferent government enforcement of workers’ rights and a darkening political climate against illegal immigrants — the backbone of the cheap, disposable work force.
Bad employers confidently cut corners, steal wages and ignore overtime and workplace-safety laws because they know that governments at all levels are unable or unwilling to investigate and workers are too frightened to complain. But here is a heartening sign of change: New York State has begun a new effort to expose and prosecute abusive employers by enlisting the people who know them best: their immigrant employees.
Last weekend, the State Labor Department began a pilot partnership with six nonprofit workers’ organizations, whose members will be the government’s eyes and ears in the abuse-prone immigrant workplace.
In New York City and on Long Island, workers at day-labor corners, laundries, restaurants, nail salons, supermarkets and department stores will be trained to know and defend their rights and be given contacts in the Division of Labor Standards to report violations.
All sides of the immigration debate should be able to agree that this sort of program, one of the first in the nation, is wise and overdue. For too long, at too many levels of government, efforts to help immigrant workers have been thwarted by the poison politics of immigration.
Blame the tag “illegal” for clouding people’s understanding of immigrants’ rights. Attacking illegal immigration through enforcement alone — piling hopelessness onto fear — will never make 12 million people disappear. It will make them silent partners in a system that forces honest Americans and businesses to suffer with them.
You don’t need a bleeding heart to apprehend the tragedy of worker exploitation. A cold eye will do, calculating the cost to honest businesses and workers when bad employers pocket the wages of fear and desperation.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company |
