Kentucky Unions Stand Up to Halt Deportation of Two Hundred Workers
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As new anti-trans bills are introduced in the United States, it is imperative to take up the fight for trans rights using working-class strategy and methods.. https://www.leftvoice.org/
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By Luis Feliz Leon / Labor Notes
Two hundred union workers, out of 5,700 who assemble dishwashers, refrigerators, washers, and dryers for GE Appliances-Haier at Appliance Park in Louisville, Kentucky, received notice this month that the Trump administration is revoking their work authorizations.
The immigrant workers from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Venezuela have received a mixed reaction to their imminent deportation—hostility from some co-workers and an outpouring of support from their union and the local labor movement. They’re part of the Communications Workers’ industrial division, IUE-CWA Local 83761.
They’re in the U.S. on “humanitarian parole,” a program that the government until now has used to provide visas to people fleeing war or political instability in certain countries.
“I worked with a lot of those people—they’re some of the nicest people I’ve ever dealt with,” said Halee Hadfield, who worked at the plant until last year and is now part of the United Auto Workers organizing drive at the nearby electric vehicle battery park BlueOval.
“They come from extreme poverty and neglect, the likes of which most Americans, myself included, couldn’t even fathom. These people deserve better.”
CRYPTIC THREAT
In late March the Department of Homeland Security ended the humanitarian parole program nationwide for 532,000 immigrants from four Latin American countries. Workers received letters warning them to leave the U.S. before April 24 or face “adverse immigration consequences.”
The meaning of this cryptic threat became clearer on April 8 when Reuters reported that the Trump administration plans to fine migrants under deportation orders up to $998 a day if they fail to leave, including seizing their property if they do not pay.
“What is happening to our members at Appliance Park is unfolding at workplaces and in communities all across the country,” said IUE-CWA President Carl Kennebrew. “We cannot allow those who are sowing division to win. Blaming immigrants is an age-old trick to create fear and distract us from the takeover of our economy by billionaires.”
The Internal Revenue Service reached an agreement April 7 with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities to share tax information for immigrants who don’t comply with deportation orders, including those suddenly deprived of their legal status.
The Trump administration has also floated deporting incarcerated U.S. citizens to El Salvador’s most notorious prison, despite the Constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
CBS News found that three-quarters of the hundreds of undocumented people sent to the El Salvador prison had no criminal records—including sheet metal worker Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a SMART Local 100 apprentice, who was deported there by mistake without due process in what the Trump administration described as an “administrative error.”
LOUISVILLE’S CUBAN COMMUNITY
Appliance Park, now Haier’s global headquarters, has been union since the 1950s. It’s the only unionized one of the nine GE Appliance manufacturing sites across the country.
Kentucky is right-to-work, but 97 percent of workers at the plant are dues-paying union members. Local 83761 President Dino Driskell said they speak more than 20 languages, came to the country legally, and contribute to their local communities.
“They deserve to be treated with dignity and respect,” he said, “not ripped from their families to be shipped away.”
Louisville is one of the top 10 U.S. metropolitan areas with the most Cuban immigrants. At least 30,000 Cubans call Jefferson County home. The influx has offset a population decline of 770,000, according to the New York Times .
They began arriving in 1995 after the Cuban and U.S. governments signed an accord establishing a lottery to allow 20,000 Cubans per year into the country. Those who didn’t have family to receive them in Miami went to smaller cities like Louisville.
The Cuban immigrants have transformed Louisville, from the dining and entertainment scenes to the makeup of its workforce, flocking to jobs at UPS, Amazon, Ford, and GE.
PROFITABLE MANUFACTURING PLANT
The workforce at this plant has grown from a little over 1,000 workers before 2017 to nearly 6,000 today. The surge came after the Chinese-company Haier—the world’s largest home appliance manufacturer—bought Appliance Park from GE in 2016 for $5.4 billion.
GE cut 32,000 jobs in 2004, closing 27 locations in 2009 and 2010. Now a tiny number of the jobs have returned, as the company under Chinese ownership has become profitable to the tune of $11.3 billion in 2023.
Immigrant workers from Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East account for more than 1,000 of the workers. Word of mouth gets around, as immigrants talk to other recent arrivals about where to work—and there is always work.
Like at many manufacturing plants, a high churn rate due to low wages and mandatory overtime keeps job openings plentiful. Heading into the contract fight last fall, Driskell said the average wage was $18.50, “behind any other major company in this area.” The new contract ratified in January contains raises between $1.50 and $3.75 over four years, a 60 percent drop in the health care deductible, and a third paid holiday. Wage tiers remained.
DEPORTATION DRAGNET
Trump’s deportation dragnet has ensnared even people with legal status. Yeon, a CWA member from Cuba at GE who is a U.S. citizen, also received the notice because he sponsored a family member to come to the U.S. under the humanitarian parole program. (He asked that we not use his last name to protect his family from any reprisals from the government.) His uncle works as a repair tech at a communications company called CTDI in Jeffersonville, Indiana.
“The fear Cuban workers have is that the companies they work for won’t keep them on if they lose their legal status,” said Yeon, who is bilingual but preferred to speak in Spanish. He also said Cubans who voted for Trump are feeling some trepidation. “We are watching students detained for protesting the genocide in Gaza, stripped away of their free speech rights,” he said. “They’re labeling the students terrorists!”
The Supreme Court decided April 7 to vacate temporary restraining orders issued by a federal judge in Washington, D.C., which had stopped certain deportations under the Alien Enemies Act. “Not only noncitizens but also United States citizens could be taken off the streets, forced onto planes, and confined to foreign prisons with no opportunity for redress if judicial review is denied unlawfully before removal,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned in a dissenting opinion.
Yeon has worked at the GE plant for eight years, starting at $14 an hour and earning $21 an hour now on the repair line with other Cubans as well as Haitian and Venezuelan workers. He says that company supervisors are worried about losing immigrant workers because they won’t have workers to fill production lines, already a perennial problem due to understaffing. Immigrant workers tend to stick around despite the low pay.
Yeon said that divisions over immigration haven’t broken out into the open at work, but on a union Facebook group, he explained to hostile union members the legal status of the people Trump was targeting and shared screenshots of his uncle’s work and travel authorizations, with their expiration dates of 2026.
The union says there’s a lot of misinformation, confusion, and division among workers—especially around the phrase “humanitarian parole,” which some people incorrectly interpret to imply that workers with this legal status have criminal records. Yeon says that despite his years in the country, he’s still baffled by the ignorance of the average American.
“These are human beings with families and kids who have built lives here, and they deserve dignity, compassion, and due process,” read a press statement from the Kentucky State AFL-CIO.
The labor federation also highlighted that “the way this information was delivered—through mailed notices with little to no direct assistance—has left families in distress, with no clear next steps.” Many of the targeted workers don’t speak English, which has worsened the confusion and fear.
KNITTING A COALITION
Cassie Lyles teaches civics to high schoolers in Louisville and lives near the Appliance Park. After spring break, she has been teaching remotely due to flooding. She worries about whether the workers’ children will return to school.
“Before the revocation happened, I already had kids who were scared and they didn’t know whether it was better to come to school—because they felt safe at school—but what if their family was deported while they were gone?” she said.
“So now that the shoe has dropped, I can only imagine how these kids are feeling,” she said. “I wonder if they’ll show up when we come back in person. The fears they were already worried about have come to life.”
Lyles is a member of the Jefferson County Teachers. Her students are mainly from Cuba, and their parents have legal papers to reside in the country through humanitarian parole. Many apply for U.S. citizenship after they obtain permanent residency—which they’re eligible for after a year in the country, thanks to the Cold War, unlike many other immigrants from Latin America and elsewhere.
“One of the requirements in Kentucky is that kids have to pass the naturalization test in order to graduate,” said Lyles. “So oftentimes I’ve given materials, and the kids take material home to help their parents pass the test when it’s time for them to take it.”
The National Education Association has shared resources with teachers to handle potential raids, and the local labor movement is coming together. “I think the best thing we can do is stick together, because it’s not just going to affect people at the Appliance Park,” said Lyles. “This is going to affect workers in every union. These are our neighbors. These are kids who are in my building. So we want to make sure that we stand strong.”
The Kentucky AFL-CIO is planning a rally and know-your-rights trainings for affiliated unions whose members may also be affected by deportation orders.
“The labor movement has an opportunity to strengthen our organizations and show that we fight for all members,” said Kroger driver Ryan Haney of Teamsters Local 89 in Louisville. “If the Trump administration can get away with coming after immigrants and federal workers, they’ll keep coming for more of us.”
Over the weekend, Lyles participated in the local Hands Off rally, one of 1,400 nationwide
mobilizations, signing up 600,000 to protest Trump’s various assaults on workers and the public.
“The Trump administration wants to drown us,” she said. “If there’s so many issues, we can’t possibly pay attention to them all.” But by attacking everyone from immigrant workers to the Department of Education, she said, Trump may also be knitting together a coalition.
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The Working Class Must Fight for Trans Rights - Left Voice
The following speech was given during a rally at Columbia University for International Women’s Day.
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This International Working Women’s Day, I come to you as a woman, lesbian, revolutionary Trotskyist, to implore us all to join the fight of our trans siblings and comrades in the fight for bodily autonomy and justice for people of all marginalized genders. I am a member of Left Voice, which is part of the Trotskyist Fraction in 14 countries, including Argentina and Mexico. Our tradition has been a part of the struggle in the streets for abortion rights and as part of the internationalist feminist group Pan y Rosas, or Bread and Roses. Here in the U.S., there are currently 479 active anti-trans bills, attacking basic health care, education, legal recognition, and the right for trans people to publicly exist. According to statistics from the Trevor Project, fewer than one in three trans and nonbinary youth found their homes to be affirming, and nearly one in five transgender and nonbinary youth attempted suicide in the past year.
As a former educator, and current social work intern at a school, I have seen how deeply entrenched transphobia harms our youth and prevents them from living the rich, full lives that they deserve to live. In Argentina in 2015, thousands of protesters filled the streets of Buenos Aires, angry about the shocking murder of a woman at the hands of her male partner. They were outraged at the prevalence of femicide and sexist violence, and raised the slogan “Ni una menos” — not one less, lost to patriarchal violence. The same patriarchal violence that kills cis women kills our trans sisters like Brianna Ghey and nonbinary siblings like Nex Benedict. Another slogan the movement eventually took up was “Vivas nos queremos” (We want us alive).
I want every trans child, adolescent, and adult to be alive. I want every trans child, adolescent, and adult to be free from discrimination in their schools and workplaces, to have access to free gender-affirming care, to have their material needs met, and not be subjected to some of the worst evils under capitalism.
But how do we do that? How do we actually put forward a militant fight when we are being asked to vote for Genocide Joe as the lesser evil in an attempt to preserve the right to abortion (which was decimated under Democrats) and to protect queer and trans rights, when the highest number of anti-queer and anti-trans legislation bills have been introduced under a Democratic presidency? Not to mention that seeing Biden as a lesser evil requires ignoring the genocide of Palestinians. How can we purport to protect limited queer and trans rights for people domestically while ignoring the genocide affecting queer and trans Palestinians abroad?
We do so using working-class methods and strategy. To illustrate this, I want to present the example of Madygraf, a worker-controlled factory cooperative near Buenos Aires in Argentina. The factory used to be owned by the Chicago-based Donnelley Corporation. The bosses had a sexist policy of hiring only men to work the printing presses. One worker was a trans woman, and she had gotten the job only by wearing men’s clothes to work — a sign of the economic desperation that forces trans people to choose between making enough to survive and living in the world as themselves. When she came to work in her normal clothes for the first time, the bosses objected. They tried to prevent her from using the women’s bathroom (which was reserved for white-collar workers), and they forced her to change with the men.
The workers’ council argued against this blatant transphobia in an assembly, which voted to support their colleague’s right to express her gender identity. Donnelley had no changing rooms or bathrooms for women, so the workers’ council demanded that these be constructed. They also demanded that their trans coworker be allowed to use the women’s bathroom. Spaces like assemblies, organized from below by rank-and-file members, are the kind of democracy that people like Joe Biden don’t like to talk about, because these organs of democracy and self-organization are spaces where workers, students, and community members can truly make their own decisions.
One might ask, why were workers so militant in their fight for their trans colleague to use the bathroom? Don’t workers only fight for bread-and-butter demands like fair wages or better working conditions? This speaks to the importance of having an independent working-class party that fights for revolutionary socialism. A Trotskyist party, the Party of Socialist Workers (PTS), had been working in Donnelley for many years. They built up an anti-bureaucratic, class struggle tendency in the workforce that won a majority on the workers’ council. They defended the principles of class independence, workers’ democracy, and feminism. Thanks to years of discussions with Trotskyists, many Donnelley workers understood that to defend their interests, they needed to fight every kind of oppression.
In 2011, a Women’s Commission formed. One of its key principles was solidarity: that no worker and no family should be left to shoulder their burdens alone. The commission, primarily composed of the partners of men working at the plant, helped to bridge the divisions between male workers involved in strikes or politics and their families. The Women’s Commission understood that when men choose to strike and forgo a paycheck, their partners carried the heavy burden of feeding the family, soothing hungry children, and worrying about money for rent, clothes, school supplies, and all the other budget items essential to the family’s survival. When Donnelley owned the factory, the Women’s Commission was not even allowed to enter the factory.
After the fight for the rights of the trans colleague to be able to use the women’s bathroom, the management planned to fire 123 of the plant’s 400 workers. The victory against their bosses in the fight for trans rights gave workers confidence in their own strength and cemented their understanding of the need to act collectively and decisively to win their demands. Workers launched an occupation of the factory, and on August 12, 2014, the factory workers took the plant over and since then have continued production under their own management. Today, the former boardroom for management at the factory has been turned into a center to provide free childcare. Many of the women on the commission have been hired and currently work at the factory, reversing the bosses’ sexist hiring policy. All workers at Madygraf today enjoy an eight-hour workday, higher wages, and lasting job security.
There is a public imagination that the fight for trans rights and womens’ rights is separate from the fight of the working class. However, oppression separates the working class, and the fight against oppression unites it, from fighting for women’s rights to trans rights to the rights of Black, Latine, and Indigenous people. The fight for the rights of a trans woman colleague to use the womens’ bathroom was not won through bourgeois elected officials or through the efforts of the nonprofit industrial complex, which is funded by capitalist parties. As workers, many of whom are trans, queer, women, Black, and Brown, we are the people who make things run. The way that we will fight for our liberation must not be watered down by the Democrats or Republicans or the NGO bureaucracies that offer us piecemeal reforms. And it’s not enough for us to just denounce the capitalist parties, regimes, and apparatuses, whether they are here or around the world.
In this moment when the genocide in Gaza is ongoing, affecting women, trans, nonbinary, and queer folks, etc., we must fight not only for a ceasefire but for a workers’ and socialist Palestine, using our power to shut it down, not only on the streets but in our workplaces, against the nonprofit and labor bureaucracies. We don’t have illusions in pressuring Democrats toward that end. As we saw during BLM, the Democrats just want to channel us to the ballot box to get us off the streets. We know that the root of our problems, from women’s oppression to imperialist oppression, is capitalism, so we have to overthrow this system and fight for a socialist one, not a theocracy or a supposedly more progressive capitalist regime. Against pessimism and capitalist despair, we have faith in the working class around the world to unite its struggles and use its objective power to build this socialist society.
We must fight from where we have the most power — as workers, or professors, or students, or healthcare workers, in our schools, workplaces, and on the streets. We must fight for these rights using our own organizations, not in ones co-opted by bourgeois politicians who are happy to continue to let people of marginalized genders die and restrict our bodily autonomy.
And finally, we must fight to build an independent working-class party that fights for socialism, that doesn’t give one inch to our capitalist oppressors, who oppress tenfold our marginalized comrades. With a party like this, we can organize on the scale we need to truly fight these attacks on trans rights and women’s rights, against Palestinian oppression, against capitalism and imperialism, to truly overthrow this terrible system, and fight for a socialist society, where people of all genders can not only live, but also thrive.
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