Dennis Grabowski

Hold the Sizzle: Chipotle, Immigrant Employees Get ICE’d

by Dennis Grabowski on February 14, 2011 · 4 comments

in International, Labor, Mobility, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Regulation

Chipotle boasts that it offers “food with integrity,” but the popular restaurant chain may want to consider an addendum in light of its recent actions: “so long as the federal government doesn’t get involved.”

The chain was forced to fire over 600 employees from its 50 Minnesota restaurants last month — about half of its employees in the state — in light of an audit conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Says one Minnesota paper,

The investigation of Chipotle began several months ago, [Chipotle communications director Chris Arnold] said, when ICE asked to see work eligibility documents. The company was not told why it was singled out for review. ICE then provided Chipotle with a list of employees whose documents might be invalid, he said.

Chipotle tries to screen new employees, but some provide false documents showing they are eligible workers, Arnold said. In cases where employees insist they have the proper documents, Chipotle has sought to give them extra time to produce the identification, he said.

“We have asked ICE whether they would allow a 90-day period to resolve discrepancies, and they have told us that they absolutely would not,” Arnold said.

Not only is ICE denying Chipotle the 90-day period to clear up documentation issues with its employees — an allowance that is “standard practice,” according to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) — but it is actively increasing the size and scope of its investigation of the restaurant chain. Earlier this month, ICE announced that it would also be auditing the 60 Chipotle locations in Virginia and Washington, D.C.

Robert McGoey, a co-coordinator of the rights-based organization Denver Fair Food, suspects that Chipotle will eventually be audited in every state due to its 80 percent Latino employment. Similarly, a February 11 article in The Nation reveals that John Morton, the head of ICE, says it “plans many more mass firings.” This tactic fails to meet the organization’s goals, made explicit in the same article:

The ICE website says it targets employers “who are using illegal workers to drive down wages … [those] likely to pay illegal workers substandard wages or force them to endure intolerable working conditions.”

At Chipotle, however, as in every other sanctions target, ICE never improved conditions. Wages remain the same. In fact, although Morton boasts ICE collected $7 million in employer fines during 2,740 audits, those who cooperated in firing workers were given immunity. The only people penalized were workers.

It seems that Chipotle is being targeted on the basis of its largely Latino demographics, rather than any abuse of undocumented workers in the workplace. While wages are unlikely to improve in a market in which “there are nearly five unemployed workers competing for each available job,” ICE’s failure to leave improvements in its wake was virtually guaranteed when it targeted a fast-food chain with above-minimum wages across the board. According to a report from the Immigration Policy Center published on February 9,

[Concerning] Chipotle, labor leaders who criticized the firm for the way it handled layoffs in the wake of the ICE audit say the company is “definitely above the bottom tier” in its overall treatment of workers. Even though the chain is non-union, the SEIU’s Nammacher said Chipotle pays above the minimum wage and offers some basic benefits. “They’re an above-board corporate player,” he stated.

Not only is Chipotle a poor target for an organization seeking to root out “intolerable working conditions” (Chipotle is even known for its practice of paying higher food costs in order to better the compensation of supply-chain employees), but ICE’s impacts harm the very individuals whose interests the organization purports to be acting in. According to a 2009-2010 report from the Human Rights Immigrant Community Action Network,

ICE’s new workplace enforcement strategy of auditing employment files, allowing employers to fire undocumented workers en masse – also dubbed “silent raids” – has deepened the economic and humanitarian crisis in many communities across the country, making workers further vulnerable to labor rights violations and other forms of abuse.

The study details several cases in 2009 and 2010 in which ICE audits — intended to publish “bad apple” employers — did anything but.  ”In each of these cases, rather than hold the employer accountable for existing labor law violations and abuses, ICE’s I-9 audits triggered massive layoffs leaving thousands of families in crisis and more vulnerable to abuse.”

SEIU president Javier Morillo described the effects of this practice on undocumented workers, stating that “They are pushed out of jobs where they are being paid above the table.” He added, “They pay taxes, Social Security taxes, etc. They are being moved, many of them, to precisely the bad employers that pay cash, that pay less than minimum wage.”

The deeper that one delves into ICE’s actions, the more that the government organization’s actions seem inconsistent. According to the organization’s website, “ICE’s primary mission is to promote homeland security and public safety through the criminal and civil enforcement of federal laws governing border control, customs, trade, and immigration.”

It’s unclear, however, how the organization’s recent moves against the employees of Chipotle are in any way consistent with its stated ends of promoting security and safety. It is similarly unclear that Chipotle was abusive  in its dealings with the undocumented workers that it unknowingly employed.

What is clear, however, is that ICE’s actions threaten the very employees whose working conditions it claims to defend.

Congress Considering “Kill Switch” for Capitalism

by Dennis Grabowski on January 25, 2011 · 12 comments

in Economy, Property Rights, Regulation, Tech & Telecom

Introduced last summer, a bill affording President Obama executive power over private Internet companies in the event of a “national cyberemergency” is returning this year, albeit with a few tweaks. The CBS News article, “Renewed Push to Give Obama an Internet ‘Kill Switch,‘” insists that the bill should not cause Internet companies any alarm, citing government promises to limit the bill’s use to “crucial components of national infrastructure.” We must question, then, why it is the case that these promises aren’t built into the bill.

The revised version includes new language saying that the federal government’s designation of vital Internet or other computer systems “shall not be subject to judicial review.” Another addition expanded the definition of critical infrastructure to include “provider of information technology,” and a third authorized the submission of “classified” reports on security vulnerabilities.

For the layperson, information technology is “the use of technologies from computing, electronics, and telecommunications to process and distribute information in digital and other forms.” If it seems as though “provider of information technology” is applicable to literally any website you’ve ever been on, that’s because it is. And if the comprehensiveness of the list of those sites potentially subject to government intervention wasn’t enough, the legislation also includes clauses for government secrecy and unaccountability; that judicial review has gone by the wayside serves as a clear indication that this legislation is intended to envelop the private sector.

But last month’s rewrite that bans courts from reviewing executive branch decrees has given companies new reason to worry. “Judicial review is our main concern,” said Steve DelBianco, director of the NetChoice coalition, which includes eBay, Oracle, Verisign, and Yahoo as members. “A designation of critical information infrastructure brings with it huge obligations for upgrades and compliance.”

In some cases, DelBianco said, a company may have a “good-faith disagreement” with the government’s ruling and would want to seek court review. “The country we’re seeking to protect is a country that respects the right of any individual to have their day in court,” he said. “Yet this bill would deny that day in court to the owner of infrastructure.”

The government practice of ignoring private-sector rights is certainly common enough; it’s when one branch of government is liberated of any checks whatsoever, including those of other branches of government, that Americans have an even greater cause for concern. This is especially true when our patronizing representatives are considerably less-qualified, good intentions and all, to understand the ins-and-outs of Internet security than are major Internet corporations.

Other industry representatives say it’s not clear that lawyers and policy analysts who will inhabit Homeland Security’s 4.5 million square-foot headquarters in the southeast corner of the District of Columbia have the expertise to improve the security of servers and networks operated by companies like AT&T, Verizon, Microsoft, and Google. American companies already spend billions of dollars on computer security a year.

The article highlights the following restrictions, strapped across an otherwise a limitless pool of sites subject to executive overhaul:

Under the revised legislation, the definition of critical infrastructure has been tightened. DHS is only supposed to place a computer system (including a server, Web site, router, and so on) on the list if it meets three requirements. First, the disruption of the system could cause “severe economic consequences” or worse. Second, that the system “is a component of the national information infrastructure.” Third, that the “national information infrastructure is essential to the reliable operation of the system.”

That the definition has been meaningfully “tightened,” however, remains to be seen. A closer look at these requirements reveals as much:

1) The first requirement only stipulates that the disruption of the site might impact the economy (the word “severe” is open to unchecked executive interpretation, so we ought to disregard it altogether). Ironically, government intervention to a given website in a time of crisis is likely to involve shutting the site down (leading critics of the legislation to label it a government “kill switch”) — this most certainly qualifies as a “disruption.”

2) The Department of Defense defines the national information infrastructure (NII) as:

The nationwide interconnection of communications networks, computers, databases, and consumer electronics that make vast amounts of information available to users. The national information infrastructure encompasses a wide range of equipment, including cameras, scanners, keyboards, facsimile machines, computers, switches, compact disks, video and audio tape, cable, wire, satellites, fiber-optic transmission lines, networks of all types, televisions, monitors, printers, and much more. …

A good rule of thumb: when your personal keyboard qualifies for the NII, then so does the technology being used to generate a website.

3) Combined with (2), the final requirement only necessitates that the website be in some way dependant on technology within the United States to operate (it doesn’t even require that the site be based in the U.S.).

How wide a net does this legislation cast? A website should be concerned if it meets the following criteria: it’s big, and it utilizes some technology in the U.S. (one or two websites come to mind). The article does, however, leave us with these words of comfort:

For their part, [bill sponsors] Lieberman and Collins say the president already has “nearly unchecked authority” to control Internet companies.

It’s unclear why the author bothered to qualify his statement with “nearly,” though the message itself is as clear as crystal: private Internet companies exist under the government’s thumb, and they can’t do anything about it.