Amy Traub

Beware of Falling Standards

How would you like to compete for a job with someone who isn't legally entitled to earn the minimum wage for their work--or even get paid at all? It sounds like a losing proposition for everyone (except maybe the boss).

It sounds absurd to say that in the United States of America, there's someone out there who isn't entitled to get paid for their work, but that's essentially what the Supreme Court ruled in Hoffman Plastic Compounds Inc. vs. the NLRB

In this 2002 case, the Court ruled that an undocumented immigrant who was illegally laid off from his job for trying to organize a union was not entitled to back pay "for years of work not performed, for wages that could not lawfully have been earned, and for a job obtained in the first instance by a criminal fraud."

Hoffman Plastics doesn't mean that U.S. labor laws never apply to undocumented workers. As the Department of Labor notes, the Hoffman Plastics case only addressed the National Labor Relations Act, not the nation's other labor laws.

So what about all of those other laws: The minimum wage? OSHA regulations? The right to be compensated for lost wages if you're injured on the job?

Okay, that last one might not be the first thing you think of when you consider your rights at work, but it happens to be the one the New York State Court of Appeals is considering in the case of Gorgonio Balbuena v. IDR Realty.

In this case, reports the New York Sun, the Court will consider whether Balbuena, who became unable to work after being injured on the construction site where he was a laborer, is entitled to compensation for a) the wages he would have earned had he not been injured and kept working at his job on the site, or b) the wages he would have earned had he been working in Mexico, or perhaps c) nothing at all.

If Balbuena and others like him aren't entitled to as much compensation as the rest of us when they get hurt on the job, employers will have more incentive to hire undocumented workers, and less incentive to make sure workplaces are safe. That would be bad news for anyone who works for a living--or even takes a walk past construction sites.

Amy Traub: Author Bio | Other Posts
Posted at 6:31 AM, Jan 12, 2006 in Employment | Immigration
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