A precariedade do trabalho temporário de imigrantes: como a lei inibe reclamações destes trabalhadores
| Autor | Prof. Dr. Kati L.Griffith e Prof. Dr. Shannon M. Gleeson |
| Cargo | Associate Professor at Cornell's ILR School/Associate Professor at Cornell's ILR School |
| Páginas | 59-92 |
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THE PRECARITY OF TEMPORALITY:
HOW
LAW INHIBITS
IMMIGRANT
WORKER CLAIMS
1
A PRECARIEDADE DA TEMPORALIDADE: COMO A LEI INIBE
RECLAMAÇÕES DE TRABALHADORES IMIGRANTES
Kati L. Griffith
2
Shannon M.
Gleeson
3
ABSTRACT: This article presents a systematic comparison of each group of immigrant workers in the United
States, drawing on a review of the existing literature and a new pilot study, to examine the challenges facing each set
of immigrants. We conclude that particular differences in U.S. immigration l aw categories may shape how
immigrants on the ground interact with broader legal regimes, such as criminal, employment, and administrative law.
These affect h ow immigrants weigh the prospect of coming forward with a workplace law claim against their
employers and each immigration category is likely to pose its own distinctive barriers to employee claimsmaking.
KEYWORDS: Claimsmaking process; Crimmigration and i mmployment regimes; Temporary immigrant workers;
Unauthorized workers; H-2 guest workers.
SUMMARY: 1. Introduction. 2. Workplace law claimsmaking process. 3. Crimmigration and immployment regimes
as inhibitors. 3.1. Unauthorized workers. 3.1.1. Crimmigration. 3.1.2. Immployment. 3.2. H-2 guest workers. 3.2.1.
Immployment. 4. Adminigration regime as inhibitor: the case of TPS workers. 4.1. Administrative immigration
processes. 4.2. Crimmigration. 4.3. Immployment. 5. Law-induced inhibitors: some caveats. 6. Discussion and
conclusion.
RESUMO: Este artigo apresenta uma comparação sistemática de cada grupo de trabalhadores imigrantes nos
Estados Unidos, baseando-se em uma revisão da literatura existente e em um novo estudo, para examinar os desafios
enfrentados por cada conjunto de imigrantes. Concluímos que diferenças específicas nas categorias de leis de
imigração dos EUA podem moldar a maneira como os imigrantes interagem com regimes legais mais amplos, como
direito penal, trabalhista e administrativo. Elas afetam a forma como os imigrantes avaliam a perspectiva de
1
Artigo enviado em 01//07/2019.
Artigo aprovado em 18/02/2020 e 01/10/2020.
This article was originally published by the Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal (Vol. 39:1, Fall 2017).
2
Associate Professor at Cornell’s ILR School.
3
Associate Professor at Cornell’s ILR School. We would like to thank Cornell’s Institute for the Social Sciences for
funding this research and Anneliese Truame and Lori Sonken for their assistance with project administration. This
article would not have happened with out the following research assistants; Jessica Santos, Kennys Lawson, Darlene
Dubuisson, Lynne Turner, Alicia Canas, Vivian Vázquez, and Jennifer O’Brien. We appreciate Caro Achar,
Charlotte Alexander, Darlene Dubuisson, Andrew Elmore, Matthew Finkin, Judy Fudge, Leslie Gates, Vivian
Vázquez, and the editors of the Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal for their feedback on previous drafts. Our
thinking also benefitted from conversations with Steven Alvarado, Matthew Hall, Jordan Matsudaira, Leticia
Saucedo, Joshua Stehlik, Shoba Wadhia and Stephen Yale-Loehr. All errors and omissions are the responsibility of
the authors. RDRST, Brasília, Volume V, n. 3, 2019, p 59-92, Set-Dez/2019
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apresentar uma reivindicação de lei no local de trabalho contra seus empregadores e é provável que cada categoria de
imigração represente suas próprias barreiras distintas a realizer reclamações trabalhistas.
PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Processo de reclamação trabalhista; Regimes de criminalização da imigração
(“crimmigration”) e de emprego de i mgrantes (“immployment”); Trabalhadores imigrantes temporários;
Trabalhadores não autorizados; Trabalhadores convidados H-2.
SUMÁRIO: 1. Introdução. 2. Processo de reclamação trabalhista. 3. Regimes de “crimmigration” e “immployment”
como inibidores das reclamações trabalhistas. 3.1 Tra balhadores não autorizados. 3.1.1 “Crimmigration”. 3.1.2
“Immployment”. 3.2 Trabalhadores convidados H-2. 3.2.1 “Immployment.” 4. Regime administrativo como inibidor:
o caso dos trabalhadores TPS (status de proteção temporária). 4.1 Processos administrativos de imigração. 4.2
“Crimmigration”. 4.3 “Immployment”. 5. Inibidores previstos pela lei: algumas advertências. 6. Discussão e
conclusão.
1
I
NTRODUCTION
U.S. workplace law provides a wide range of rights for the subset of workers who fall
within the legal definitions of “employee.” It provides employees with the right to minimum
wages for the hours they work. It promises employees a modicum of health and safety in the
workplace. It promotes collective activity among employees to improve wages and working
conditions, and it prohibits many forms of employment discrimination against employees.
The primary enforcers of U.S. workplace law are the employees themselves, typically
through employee-initiated claims against their employers to executive agencies and/or judicial
forums
4
. While some government-initiated enforcement initiatives do exist
5
, the vast majority of
claims still originate from individual claims by
employees.
Given employees’ central enforcement
role in ensuring employer compliance, some scholars refer to employees as “private attorneys
general,” who simultaneously enforce workplace law on behalf of themselves and the broader
public interest
6
. Others refer to the employee claims-driven rationale of U.S. workplace law as
4
See Kati L. Griffith, Discovering “Immployment” Law: The Constitutionality of Subfederal Immigration
Regulation at Work, 29 YALE L. & POL’Y REV. 389, 431 (2011) (“An in -depth examination of the legislative
history, language, and case law involving [FLSA and Title VII] demonstrates that Congress intended to . . .
encourage employee-initiated complaints and to discourage employee fear of coming forward. The statutes’ r eliance
on employee-initiated complaints is manifest.”).
5
The U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division under David Weil, for instance, extended government-
initiated enforcement initiatives. See David Weil, Strategic Enforcement in the Fissured Workplace, in N.Y.U. 68th
A NN. CONFERENCE LAB., WHO IS AN EMPLOYEE AND WHO IS THE EMPLOYER? (Kati L. Griffith &
Sam Estreicher eds., 2015).
6
Llezlie Green Coleman, Exploited at the Intersection: A Critical Race Feminist Analysis of Undocumented Latina
Workers and the Role of the Private Attorney General, 22 VA. J. SOC. POL’Y & L. 397, 400, 421 (2015) (referring
to employees as “private attorney generals”); Kati L. Griffith, U.S. Migrant Worker Law: The Interstices of
61
“bottom-up enforcement,” in contrast to top-down government-initiated enforcement
7
.
In recent decades, law and society scholars have revealed that non- citizen workers in the
United States face unique challenges to workplace law claimsmaking against their employers. The
bulk of this literature focuses on the ways that the more than eight million workers who lack
immigration
authorization
to be present in the United States
(“unauthorized
workers”)
8
are
inhibited from claimsmaking. Gleeson’s work on immigration status as “a precarity multiplier,”
for instance, has identified the pervasive fear of deportation as an inhibitor to employee
claimsmaking against employers
9
. This body of work has highlighted the combined force of the
criminal justice and immigration enforcement systems (the crimmigration regime) as the primary
legal institutional space for understanding inhibitors to “unauthorized” employee claimsmaking.
When scholars have considered claimsmaking inhibitors for low-wage “authorized”
immigrant workers they have tended to spotlight temporary migrant worker programs, which are
employment-based migration management systems designed to fill alleged labor shortages.
Scholars studying the United States have concentrated extensively on low-wage employer-
sponsored guest workers, such as H-2A agricultural workers and H-2B workers in seasonal
industries
10
. Because these workers’ immigration authorization is explicitly tied to an
employer’s sponsorship, this body of work has zeroed in on the ways immigration law deters
employee claimsmaking by delegating enhanced power to employers. The filtering of
immigration regulation through employers and the employment arena—what Griffith calls
Immigration Law and Labor and Employment Law, 31 COMP. LAB. L.& POL’Y J. 125, 160 (2009) (same);
Kathleen Kim, The Trafficked Worker as Private Attorney General: A Model of Enforcing the Civil Rights of
Undocumented Workers, 2009 U. CHI. LEGAL F. 247, 308 (2009) (same).
7
See Charlotte S. Alexander & Arthi Prasad, Bottom-Up Workplace Law Enforcement: An Empirical Analysis,
89 IND. L.J. 1069, 1070–74 (2014).
8
See, D’Vera Cohn & Jeffrey S. Passel, Size of U.S. Unauthorized Immigrant Workforce Stable After the Great
Recession, PEW RES. CTR. 2 (Nov. 3, 2016), http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-
content/uploads/sites/7/2016/11/02160338/LaborForce2016_FINAL_11.2.16-1.pdf.
9
See SHANNON GLEESON, PRECARIOUS CLAIMS: THE PROMISE AND FAILURE OF WORKPLACE
PROTECTIONS IN THE UNITED STATES 7 (2016).
10
See generally Griffith, supra note 3. See also discussion and citations in Section III.B. infra. Besides H-2 guest
workers, there has been growing attention on workplace problems in the J-1 cultural exchange program. See, e.g.,
Catherine Bowman & Jennifer Bair, From Cultural Sojourner to Guestworker? The Historical Transformation and
Contemporary Significance of the J-1 visa Summer Work Travel Program, 58 LAB. HIS. 1, 16 (2017); Nicole
Durkin, A ll Work and Not Enough Pay: Proposing a New Statutory and Regulatory Framework to Curb Employer
Abuse of the Summer Work Travel Program, 81 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 1294, 1297–99 (2013); Patricia Medige &
Catherine Bowman, U.S. Anti-Trafficking Policy and the J-1 Visa Program: The State Department’s Challenge from
Within,
7 INTERCULTURAL HUM. RTS. L. REV. 103, 125–26 (2012).
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