From the LATIN AMERICAN WORKERS ASSOCIATION:
In recent days three cleaners, all of them members of the Transport and General Workers Union, have been detained on immigration-related charges, causing great economic and emotional distress to them, their family and friends:
JONNY ALBERTO DOMINGUEZ (1/1700/15379836), from Venezuela, was arrested on 7/3/07. He is currently held at Tindsley Removal Centre at Gatwick Airport.
Background: Jonny worked at a company where at one point over half the workers including himself had unionized, but have been on the defensive since the company changed hands.
ADRIANA SILVA BEJARANO (1/1700/15279477), from Colombia, was arrested on 8/3/07, and is currently being held on remand in Holloway Prison awaiting trial on March 30 charged with possession of a false passport; now a criminal offence. Ironically Adriana was leaving the country to join her mother in Spain when this happened, and had already resigned from her job.
Background: Adriana had previously liaised with us when she and her workmates united to pressure their employer to remove a supervisor who had a history of blackmailing cleaners in her charge, above all undocumented ones.
EMILIA AYALA BURGOA (1/1700/15279524), from Bolivia, was detained at the notorious Dungavey Removal Centre in Scotland on 10/3/07 upon reentering the country with her two children, whom she had gone to fetch due to one of them becoming pregnant. They were deported the following day.
Background: Emilia was dismissed after trying to unionize her workmates and enforce her statutory right to sick pay. She reached a pre-court settlement with our help and that of a local law centre, in the light of a union official’s refusal to assist. Despite this she continued to recruit and publicize the union with great success in her new workplace and actively supported union-backed initiatives such as the October 7 March for Migrant Rights.
WE SAY:
We reject the persecution of migrant workers and attempts to criminalize them. These workers saw unionization as one of the very few ways they could protect their working and human rights.
These brothers and sisters are not the first and certainly not the last. Therefore we also urge everyone, especially their union the T&G, to support these workers on an immediate practical level, and also to campaign and mobilize for an unconditional regularization for all undocumented workers in order to avoid this happening again and again.
Please do anything within your powers to help us get legal support for the two members detained (see below) For more information call Jake 07818 667 192 (Bejarano/Ayala) or Julio 07908 171 196 (Dominguez) or write to latin_americanworkers@hotmail.com, Latin American Workers' Association, c/o T&G, 218 Green Lanes, London N4 2BR, tel: 020 8800 4281.