A group of black workers have filed a class-action lawsuit against a temp worker service in Illinois, alleging that the company discriminated against them in favor of Hispanics, many of whom were illegal aliens.
The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois against MVP Staffing. It alleges that the company acceded to the demands of clients to send only Hispanic applicants for temp jobs and to exclude black American aspirants for those jobs, according to The New York Times.
The lawsuit also alleges that the company used “code words” to help management screen blacks from jobs offered by client companies looking to hire MVP’s temporary workers.
An attorney for the black American workers, Joe Sellers, insisted that the actions they allege are common in the temporary worker and staffing industry.
“What we have seen in this industry is that this is a more widespread phenomenon than what we have just found in this case, with this company,” Sellers said. “The staffing agencies follow the requests made by the client companies even if they happen to be ones that might exclude people based on race.”
Sellers criticized the industry, saying that the industry too often does “the bidding of the employers” who hire them to fill temporary positions. “It is a process readily susceptible to abuse,” Sellers added.
One of the spurned employees alleged that one of the jobs he did take resulted in “a lot of tension” in the work place as the employer “hovered” over the black workers, watching their every move as if suspicious. “It just seemed like a lot of tension, like they didn’t really want me to be there,” the plaintiff said.
He also noted that he repeatedly waited for jobs in the temp firm’s waiting room that were never given, but Hispanics were given jobs as he sat idle. “I’d say the whole staff was Mexican,” he said. “It was like the whole thing was built up mainly around Hispanics.”
Another employee who joined the suit said that Hispanics were all given jobs ahead of black workers. “If it was 10 Mexicans that would come at 1:30 p.m., and 25 African-Americans that were there at 4:30 a.m. and were waiting to be sent to work, they would send the Mexicans first,” she said.
The suit further alleges that Hispanic managers used Spanish words as “code” to label workers when assigning work, assumed that black workers won’t work as hard as Hispanics, and favored illegal aliens because they would not complain about working conditions.
The lawsuit highlights the struggle between illegal aliens and native-born American workers.
Statistics from the federal government prove that the clash between illegal aliens and low wage Americans isn’t getting better as President Barack Obama’s deputies reduced normal repatriations for illegal immigrants.
Earlier this year, Obama’s Immigration Department reported the lowest number of deportations since 2006, two years before Obama took office. Since his highest rate from around 2012, Obama’s rate of deporting illegal aliens has plummeted to a ten-year low. “Interior deportations fell to 46,511 to date, according to the report, putting ICE on pace to complete 63,700 this year,” CIS.org reported in July. “This is approximately one-fourth the number of interior deportations completed by ICE in 2009, the first year of the Obama administration.”
With fewer illegal immigrants being deported, our most vulnerable and under employed natural-born Americans are finding it harder to join the ranks of the employed.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.