We Made Them Rich and They Called Us Criminals

Vernon, California - The production lines at Overhill Farms move very quickly. Every day, for 18 years, Bohemia Agustiano stood in front of the "banda" for eight or nine hours, putting pieces of frozen chicken, rice and vegetables onto plates as they passed in a blur before her. Making the same motions over and over for such a long time, her feet in one place on the concrete floor, had its price. Pains began shooting through her hands and wrists, up her arms to her shoulders.

Complaining also had a price, however. "I was reluctant to say anything because of my need," she says. "I have four children. So I preferred to stay hurt, and take pills for it, than to go out on disability." Finally, though, it got too much. She couldn't sleep without pain constantly waking her, and she was moving through a haze of exhaustion. So, she went to the company doctor.

"He said my nerves were inflamed, and sent me to therapy," she recalls. "I know I have repetitive stress syndrome, but I asked him not to put me on restricted duty, because I knew the company would just send me home. There is no easy work in production. But he put me on restrictions anyway, and that's what happened. It didn't change anything, and eventually I had to go back to my job. It still hurts to work."

It might seem hard to understand that a job like this is worth trying to keep. But being out of work is worse. So every day, Agustiano and 253 others are out in front of Overhill Farms' two plants on East Vernon Avenue, in an industrial enclave in southeast Los Angeles, trying to fight their way back onto those speeding production lines.

The company says Agustiano's Social Security number is no good. That accusation, and the mass firings based on it, has put these 254 workers, mostly women, at the epicenter of the national debate over the nation's immigration laws. Overhill Farms and the advocates of immigration enforcement in the workplace claim the workers shouldn't be at work at all. Hiring people without legal immigration status is a crime, they say, and those suspected of the lack of such status should be fired.

"But I believe we have a right to work," responds Erlinda Silerio, another fired Overhill Farms employee. "I work very hard, and I pay taxes. I came here, not to cause harm to anyone, but to feed my family."

As the immigration debate grows sharper, unions and immigrant rights advocates across the country have to choose between Agustiano, Silerio and the other workers on one hand, and the company and the government on the other. Should they defend these workers or stand to one side as they're swept out of the factory onto the unemployment lines?

Overhill Farms, with over 800 employees, was audited by the Internal Revenue Service earlier this year. According to John Grant, packinghouse division director for Local 770 of the United Food and Commercial Workers, the IRS was looking at the company's books for 2006-7. "They found discrepancies in the Social Security numbers of many workers," he says. "Overhill then sent a letter on April 6 to 254 people, giving them 30 days to reconcile their numbers with Social Security. They are all members of our union."

After the workers got the letters, they organized a protest in front of the plant on May 1. Then, instead of getting 30 more days on the job, on May 2 the company stopped the lines. "They accused four people of terrorism," Silerio says. "They said they'd hurt the product." Another worker, Isela Hernandez, recalls that "they told us there would be no work until they called us to come back." For 254 people that call never came. The company terminated their employment.

The fired employees contacted the Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana, a Los Angeles immigrant rights organization. Hermandad President Nativo Lopez helped them mount the demonstrations that have taken place in front of the factory ever since.

According to Alex Auerbach, spokesperson for Overhill Farms, "the company was required by federal law to terminate these employees because they had invalid Social Security numbers. To do otherwise would have exposed both the employees and the company to criminal and civil prosecution." Auerbach says the company had no choice in the matter. "The company did not have any role in selecting which employees were subject to IRS action - it could not add or subtract fro? the list provided by the IRS," he alleges. "Overhill Farms had no role in initiating this action, and certainly did not benefit from it."

"We asked to see the IRS letter or any other documents related to this," Grant responds. "We've never heard of the IRS demanding the termination of a worker. They never showed us any letter. The company doesn't have to terminate these people. No document we know of says they do."

In addition, a few of the workers actually had shown the company valid Social Security cards. A year ago Lucia Vasquez, who'd worked at the plant in quality control for five years, changed her name and Social Security number when she regularized her immigration status. "I went to the human resources department," she remembers. "They took the new information and said there was no problem. The company changed the number and name they had on file, gave me credit for the time I'd been working there, and began paying me in the new name and number."