This Tuesday, organized labor and community activists will gather to celebrate National Voter Registration Day by launching a historic partnership to ensure that immigrant workers have more rights on the job and at the ballot box.
CASA, the region’s largest immigrant rights organization with almost 60,000 members, and LiUNA! Mid-Atlantic Region, representing more than 40,000 construction craft laborers and public employees spanning Maryland, Virginia, the District of Columbia, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and North Carolina, have formed a partnership to ensure that immigrant workers throughout the region have good quality jobs at family-supporting wages.
The collaboration is particularly critical in a region where immigrant workers compose a rapidly growing share of the local workforce, and at a time when several critical elections will determine whether those workers and their families will receive the dignity and respect they deserve. This impact of success can’t be any more heavily felt than in the region’s concrete industry, which includes thousands of laborers, carpenters, and finishers in the DC/MD/VA area.
The region’s construction boom has passed these workers by and wages have not kept pace with inflation. Concrete laborers typically start at $12 per hour. Many earn less than $20,000 annually, and one out of ten will spend at least ten days out of work each year due to workplace injury. The majority currently are not unionized, and the LiUNA!-CASA partnership will be aimed at changing this dynamic.
At Tuesday’s press conference, speakers will address the specifics of the partnership and political gains for the region’s immigrant communities.
Event: Press Conference
Date: September 23, 2014
Time: 10:30 am
Location: CASA de Virginia, 901 S. Highland Street, 3rd Floor, Arlington, VA 22204
Who: CASA de Maryland and Virginia, LiUNA! Mid-Atlantic Region, Concrete Workers United LiUNA Local 202, Arlington County Board Member Walter Tejada, area concrete workers, immigrants activists
