Marién Casillas Pabellón is executive director of New Labor, an alternative worker’s organization that advocates for low-wage immigrants. 
— Kathleen Ogle photo

The Catholic Campaign for Human Development is the anti-poverty effort of the
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. CCHD’s mission is to address
the root causes of poverty in America through promotion and support of
community-controlled self-help organizations and through transformative
education. Many of these groups do their work through community
organizing and economic development efforts. This week’s
installment is about New Labor, an organization of and for low-wage
immigrant workers. Next week’s article will explore the origins
of the CCHD and how the campaign is supported in the Diocese of Metuchen.

 

By Kathleen Ogle
Managing Editor

Last January, when a young Mexican forklift operator was denied his wages for three days of work through a temporary employment agency, he turned to New Labor for help. When the worker, along with 45 New Labor members showed up at the temp agency to demand the man’s pay, the agency’s manager called the police claiming her life had been threatened. When five police arrived cars on the scene, the men and women were singing a song.

“Estamos aqui y no nos vamos / No nos vamos, no nos vamos / y si nos hechan nos regresamos,” they sang, which translates to “We are here and we are not leaving / and if you kick us out / we’ll come back.”

The police told the crowd to leave and that they would have to pursue the matter of unpaid wages in small claims court. Marién Cassillas Pabellón, New Labor’s executive director, told the police they would not leave until the man’s wages were paid. The police were threatening to arrest her when an officer noticed the manager had the man’s check.

“She had the check in her hands and she wouldn’t give it to him,” Casillas Pabellón said. “That’s when everything shifted. The police took our side and the man got his check.”

Like many young immigrants, the young forklift operator relied on temp agencies for employment. Too often, such workers are denied wages or forced to work in unsafe conditions.

About 10 years ago, a Rutgers University student named Rich Cunningham was studying labor management and relations, and he saw firsthand how temp agencies were exploiting low-wage Latino workers in New Brunswick. He began to envision a worker organization — a new kind of unionism — that would advocate for low-wage workers who did not have a union or voice in the workplace.

With Lou Kimmel and Carmen Martino, Cunningham founded New Labor in 2000. Cunningham and Martino were working for the New Jersey Industrial Council. Kimmel, a sociology student at Drew University, was seeking an internship and Martino offered him a stipend to go undercover as a temporary worker to check out the conditions facing day laborers.

Kimmel, director of field mobilization, described the factors that have led to a need for such an organization.

“In the 1990s, even in the 1980s, work had begun to change, to become more mobile. Traditional unions are constructed based on a particular industry or company, and the union has a contract with the company or industry. When you are moving from job to job or industry to industry you cannot be represented by a traditional union. Because of that you don’t have all the benefits of a union, job security, wage increases, all the things we used to take for granted as part of the American dream,” he said, noting that union membership has dropped to less than 10 percent of the workforce despite research that shows 50 percent of workers say they would join a union if given a chance.

Today, New Labor has nearly 2,000 dues-paying members, offices in Lakewood and Newark, and a long list of accomplishments, but the organization is grieving the death of its founder and former executive director. Last September, Cunningham died at the age 32 following a long battle with cancer.

“He was brilliant, he was one of the smartest guys I ever met,” said Marién Cassillas Pabellón. Cunningham had recommended to New Labor’s board of directors that Pabellon take his place as executive director.

“It’s not going to be easy. It’s hard to have lost Rich, you feel angry and sad, but those are the right ingredients to fight back. What he started is going to keep going. There’s no way we’re going to stop doing what we’re doing. He told us that we are going to do this poca a poca, little by little.”

 

New leadership
Casillas Pabellón grew up in Puerto Rico, where her father was a Baptist minister. It was in church that she learned her politics, which are based on the principle of loving others as you love yourself.

“It has to be equal for everybody. I learned that in church. I learned that we are connected by that love and seeking justice for each other. The story of the Bible is the story of these big huge organizers that worked to facilitate the struggle of the people. Jesus was a community organizer,” she said.

At the University of Puerto Rico, Pabellón studied labor relations and worked for a union as a business agent. She decided to get a master’s degree and enrolled in Rutgers University’s School of Labor and Management. She began working with Rutgers University Occupational Training and Education Consortium, which has partnered with New Labor to offer training in health and safety and to improve working conditions for day laborers.

With OTEC, she entered research data and translated survey results. Her passion was ignited when she began translating interviews with day laborers for the researchers.

“That’s how I started knowing better the person behind the survey, the experience of the person, the hardships they had to go through,” Casillas Pabillón recalled. “They were trying to learn how to fight for better conditions for their co-workers. That was very exciting for me.”

Casillas Pabellón’s sympathies were always with the workers, but it was not until she came to the United States that she found herself identifying with immigrant workers.

“In Puerto Rico, I knew that there was injustice, I knew that there were problems, but we do not have corners with workers waiting for jobs. Here the discrimination is really in your face, how people assume who you are,” she said. “I may have papers but my accent is really thick.”

After finishing her degree she worked briefly with the Teamsters before joining New Labor as an organizer. New Labor is “totally different” from traditional labor unions, she said.

“The workers are shaping the curriculum, the workers are leading the organization, the members are saying these are the priorities of the organization for the next calendar year,” she said.

“The workers actually play the most important role in the organization. We just act as facilitators of the process,” she continued. “We are just giving the tools the members and the workers need to fight the struggle.”

As much as she is able to relate to the members of New Labor, she never forgets that their experience is different from her own and that her job is to empower them.

“Who am I to tell a person who did cross the border how to face their issues if I am not even in their shoes? How is that person going to be able to fight in the future if they never learn how to do it in the first place? Here we say we have a voice and we have to use it. It’s their voice we need. I cannot keep telling their story. That’s not going to effect change,” she said.

For Casillas Pabellón, who left her family in Puerto Rico, New Labor is more than a job.

“When I first got to this country I felt really alone. New Labor has done so much for me. New Labor has given me a family in America,” she said. “You don’t want to fail to your family.”

 

CCHD support
One of New Labor’s first sources of support was the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.

In 2003-2004, the organization received a local grant as well as a national grant. Each year since, New Labor has received $25,000 to $30,000 from the national office.

Father Joseph J. Kerrigan, diocesan director of CCHD and pastor of Sacred Heart Parish, New Brunswick, said his first experience with New Labor was visiting a train-the-trainers class in 2002.

During the five-day course, New Labor members learn how to utilize participatory problem-based training methods. At the end of the course, member-trainers are able to train their peers on a variety of topics. They are taught that their job is not to be the expert, but rather to provide every participant with the opportunity to share their knowledge and experience with the rest of the class. The educational program’s “expertise” is in the curriculum and the experience of the participants.

The classes epitomize the community-controlled self-help organization and transformative education that is CCHD’s goal to support.

Father Kerrigan recalled looking for Cunningham during the visit.

“I asked a young man with his arms folded and back against the wall if he knew where Rich was, and, of course, it was Rich. I was very impressed because here was all this great teaching and group dynamic going on, and here’s the co-founder just being a spectator. I knew then that he grasped the idea of empowerment,” Father Kerrigan said.

Cunningham’s understanding of Catholic social teaching played an important role in the establishment of New Labor as well as its structure.

Kimmel said Cunningham was most influenced by his parents — his father was a mechanic and his mother works for the Communication Workers of America — and the Catholic Church.

In particular, a priest in his home parish in Irvington was instrumental.

“He showed Rich that churches are willing to take chances and do things that the rest of society might not think are correct at the time, like helping AIDS victims,” Kimmel said.

New Labor is structured as a self-governing advocacy organization that enables mobile workers to represent and leverage their interests in the workplace and community. Its leadership structure reflects a desire to give everyone a voice and to offer leadership opportunities to as many members as possible.

Casillas Pabellón said CCHD funds have been particularly helpful with leadership development. “Our members, especially from the base of New Brunswick, have been able to use skills they have developed here in the real scenario – the workplace, the community and in Washington, D.C., at an immigration conference,” she said.

Reynalda Cruz is an example of such a New Labor member who has evolved. Cruz came to the United States from Mexico 18 years ago and had worked for many years for a hotel as a housekeeper. She came to New Labor two years ago to learn English. The skills she learned in New Labor’s train-the-trainer classes helped her get promoted to supervisor of housekeeping and address poor working conditions.

“New Labor helped me to see the bad things that are in the workplace. I have been able to help my co-workers in the way that we are treated at work. We are able to tell [our employer] that they have to be different, they have to change,” Cruz said.

“A lot of workers do not know the rights they have in this country as workers. I didn’t know them either,” she continued. “New Labor taught them to me.”

Cruz became involved in other projects as well and is now a New Labor spokesperson for immigration reform traveling to Washington, D.C., and New York to speak with legislators.

“I am happy because the training is important for my life. I have been able to develop as a person and as a member of the organization. I’m no longer afraid of speaking to people or being with a lot of people,” she said.

Next week: How CCHD operates in the Diocese of Metuchen
 

 

This painting, which adorns the walls of New Labor’s New Brunswick headquarters, depicts the membership organization’s activities. 
— Kathleen Ogle photo