A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford Chicago-area businesses and a national temporary worker staffing agency conspired to discriminate against Black applicants in favor of largely undocumented Hispanic workers, according to a suit filed in federal court. “It was said to be common for managers to ask MVP to only send them workers that listened to 107.9 FM, a Spanish language radio station in Chicago.”
Blacks Systematically Barred from Temporary Jobs in Chicago A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford “The Black applicants would wind up sitting in the office beginning at dawn, watching Hispanics get assigned to work all day long.”
A national temporary worker staffing agency and a number of its clients have been sued for discriminating against Black workers. It’s a class action suit, filed in federal court by the Workers Law Office, a small but dedicated team of people’s lawyers in Chicago. The offending agency, MVP Staffing, has 60 offices in 38 states and connects hundreds of businesses with tens of thousands of people seeking temporary employment. But, according to Workers Center lawyer Christopher Williams, 98 percent of the jobs in the Chicago area go to Hispanics, most of them undocumented. That’s what most of MVP Staffing’s clients want: undocumented Mexicans who are in no position to argue about working conditions or pay. Temporary work agencies and their business clients conspire to extract super-profits at the expense of both the undocumented workers, who are locked in a twilight zone of low pay and fearful silence, and Black applicants who line up for work every day, but are seldom hired.
The temporary work agencies and their clients play a cynical game, blaming each other for excluding Blacks from the workplace. The agencies say they are simply complying with their clients’ wishes. The clients say they’re not responsible, because the agencies do the hiring.
Some of MVP Staffings employees have told on their bosses . A former dispatcher said the company used a system of code words to deny Black people jobs. African Americans were sarcastically referred to as “guapos” – which means “the handsome ones” – while Hispanics were code-named “feos,” or “the ugly ones.” It’s a nasty way of saying that Blacks don’t want to get their hands dirty or work as hard as the Mexicans. Of course, Blacks showed up at the agency every morning, willing to get down and dirty on just about any job. But most often, the Black applicants would wind up sitting in the office beginning at dawn, watching Hispanics get assigned to work all day long, until nobody was left in the room but broke and bitter Black folks.
The Unwanted
It was said to be common for managers to ask MVP to only send them workers that listened to 107.9 FM, a Spanish language radio station in Chicago.
If Black applicants somehow got placed on jobs, their paperwork would often be marked “D.N.R.,” meaning “do not return” this person to that job again.
Of course, if Black people really didn’t want to work or get their hands dirty, companies like MVP wouldn’t have to deploy such elaborate -- and illegal – codes, lies and dirty tricks to keep them unemployed. And, if the Mexican workers were not in dread of deportation, they would be just as willing to stand up for decent pay and conditions as Black workers are. But, businessmen control the state, and the two political parties that take turns running the state. It’s in these businessmen’s interests for people to believe that Black unemployment in Illinois is three times that of white people and twice the rate of Hispanics because of some flaw in Black culture. The flaw is in the system of capitalism as it actually exists in a thoroughly racist United States.
For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.
What are the roots of Haiti’s prolonged crisis? Haitian-American scholar Jemima Pierre takes us through the history of how the West underdeveloped the country, from French colonial looting and debt…
This week we discuss a lawsuit that seeks to force New York City to end patterns of segregation in its public school system.
Austin Cole joins us to discuss his suspension from MIT for his activity with the Palestine Solidarity Encampment and the attacks by the state. This is the first part of a two-part…
Omari Soulfinger and Avery from IntegrateNYC join us from New York City to discuss a first-of-its-kind lawsuit asserting a right to an antiracist education under the New York State Constitution.
Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He joins us from Detroit to discuss Sudan, where a military struggle for power has created a political and humanitarian crisis.
