Elisa Ringholm - Latino Union of Chicago
Posted by sbenet in Leaders and Organisations on June 24th, 2009 | no responses
by
Rebecca Harris

“We define a leader as someone who develops the leadership of others.”

Over the past ten years, the Latino Union of Chicago has empowered day laborers to confront instances of wage theft and abusive employers, and win systemic changes to improve workers’ rights.

Elisa Ringholm, who works in development for the organization, shared some of its current campaigns, as well as its strategies for developing worker leadership.

PlaceForPeople: How did the Latino Union of Chicago start? What are your goals?

Elisa Ringholm: We were founded in 2000 by immigrant women who wanted to confront abuses at temporary hiring agencies, such as theft of wages and sexual assault. They founded the organization as a vehicle for their own empowerment.

Our mission is to collaborate with low income immigrant workers to develop the tools necessary to collectively improve social and economic conditions. The street corner day laborers we directly work with (today) are people who seek employment at public hiring sites, usually in the construction or landscaping industry.

There are lots of abuses in this industry. Wage theft. Health and safety abuses. Workplace safety hazards. There is also police abuse. And abuse from owners of neighboring businesses — harassment and displacement from gentrification. Our goals are to collaborate with these workers and develop feasible solutions to end these abuses that they are facing.

PlaceForPeople: What projects are you currently working on?

Elisa Ringholm: A couple campaigns are keeping us busy. One of the corners that we organize is in the Avondale neighborhood, the corner of Belmont and Milwaukee. The population is made up of Eastern European immigrants, immigrants from Mexico, Central America, South America, and some Euro-Americans and African-Americans. (There are) 60 to 200 workers at that corner (each day).

Over the years we’ve been able to reduce the incidence of arrests by collaborating with police officials, beat cops, certain municipal politicians, and other community organizations. However, there is still a risk of police harassment at this corner.

We’ve developed the Chalecos project. In Spanish, “chaleco” means “vest.” The workers will wear orange vests that say “Avondale Day Laborer.” Those who use the vests have created a worker code of conduct. It includes things like enforcing a $10 (an hour) minimum wage, respecting women and community members, not littering, working together in a team. The workers who wear those vests will have a visible presence in the community, united and organized. That’s the ultimate goal of our campaign. (It will also reduce) the racist, xenophobic and classist stereotypes about large groups of immigrant workers.

The campaign defends the workers’ right to seek employment in public by creating a formal day labor protocol. (We are) meeting with stakeholders and sitting down with business owners to try to develop solutions to arrest and harassment.

(Our other) campaign is Enforcement in the New Economy. (We are) focused on aggressively recovering workers’ stolen wages, and reforming the Illinois Department of Labor to be more responsive to wage theft.

A contractor will come to a corner, (and ask for) five workers for five hours. They will get in the car, maybe they will get to a suburb way out. Maybe the workers don’t speak English and they don’t get the plates (on the car). They are abandoned, they don’t know where they are, and they don’t get paid.

We’ve really increased our outreach to workers. (We give them) a booklet to record information about the contractor, the hours worked, (and) the wage negotiated. If there is a case of wage theft, (with this information), we could easily file a complaint.

We’re hosting wage theft nights every week in the neighborhoods where there are corners. (The goal is) to support workers as they go through the legal process of recovering those wages. It starts with a phone call to their contractor, followed by a letter, followed by a trip to the small claims courts. Just last week we recovered almost $700 in wages for one of the workers, (for) two weeks of full-time work.

Workers who have successfully gone through that process then take a leadership role, helping others (recover stolen wages).

(We’re also) trying to make systematic change, (and) institutionalize what we’re doing on the ground. We’re sitting down with the Illinois Attorney General to inform her about these issues. We’ve had our workers give her presentations about their experiences. Things are going really well.

PlaceForPeople: What specific responses do you want from the Department of Labor and the Attorney General?

Elisa Ringholm: The Illinois Department of Labor (sometimes has) a seven-month case backlog. It’s just understaffed, underfunded. We want better inter-agency collaboration, increased response time, decreased backlog, and increased support for these workers.

A lot of them are pretty isolated from government resources, and may fear taking action because of their documentation status.

PlaceForPeople: How does the Latino Union encourage leadership among workers?

Elisa Ringholm: We have our own leadership model that consists of five phases of being a leader. The fifth phase would be seeing the situation of workers as within a system that is racist, classist, basically seeing it as systemic. Not (thinking) it’s their fault they have to work at the corner. Seeing that police abuse is not because (people are) doing something wrong.

We define a leader as someone who develops the leadership of others. We don’t see it as someone who can do everything for themselves, on their own. Which is the way we traditionally think of leaders in wartime, or political figures. (Instead), a leader is someone who collaborates with others to develop their analysis, their skill, and their available resources. So that together we are a stronger movement, a stronger community, and we raise each other up.

We develop worker leadership by trying to get them involved in campaigns. Crafting campaign strategies, participating in worker meetings, giving presentations at community events. Leading a workplace skills training class. If you’re really confident at plumbing, you can work with other workers to develop their skills.

PlaceForPeople: What role does popular education play in this model?

Elisa Ringholm: Popular education is a model of education where the teacher learns and the learner teaches. It’s the belief that education is about a shared experience and an exchange. It’s more about facilitating than presenting.

So a lot of our exchanges — for example when we would have membership nights — we would have giant posters about the work that we do. (With a poster of) police putting a day laborer into a car, we would talk about how we work against police harassment. (With a poster) of a day laborer falling off a roof, we would talk about health and safety. It’s supposed to accommodate different levels of learning and literacy.

And it’s pretty awesome because it’s not really focused on a more institutionalized educational environment but when you’re doing work with communities who come from different languages, different backgrounds, different experiences, it’s really the most effective and the only way that allows for participation of all, an exchange of all with all.

PlaceForPeople: The Latino Union began as a very small, volunteer-based organization. Do you find that being a nonprofit and getting 501(c)(3) status has hampered you in any way?

Elisaa Ringholm: The conundrum of being part of a social movement working for radical change (and a nonprofit) is that the majority of our funding comes from foundations. For example, a successful construction business which then turns into a family foundation probably got a lot of their money from exploiting workers. Those are our workers who are falling off roofs, who are not getting paid their wages, who are being paid under minimum wage.

You have that political contradiction, but at the same time, it allows you to increase your capacity. You are able to have organizers, (and) office space. We’re really glad to be at the capacity (and have the resources we do) right now. A big part of that is because of our 501(c)(3) status.

PlaceForPeople: What is your main challenge as an organization?

Elisa Ringholm: The day labor population is increasing. As formal employment opportunities decline, with the economic recession, more people are seeking employment on street corners. That leads to increased competition. It’s easier for contractors to take advantage of workers.

The work on the ground is doubling, and the resources available have significantly decreased.

PlaceForPeople: What challenges do you face in attracting volunteers?

Elisa Ringholm: Volunteers are essential to what we do. The challenge is communication, coordination, and commitment. Everybody’s at different places. Some may have more of a short-term interest. Others may want more of a long-term, goal-oriented position. We’re trying to develop our communication with volunteers by sending out volunteer opportunities on a weekly basis to the volunteer list.

In volunteer trainings, we show part of a movie about day labor in New York. We talk about the campaign and try to get a sense of their goals and interests and skills. It’s being aware of where volunteers are at.

We work with a unique community, and the issues that we work with are really serious and heavy. If we have volunteers that come in off the Internet and don’t know about our work… it’s great, but it’s really important for us to communicate the type of work we do. And the importance of (volunteers) bringing intention, thoughtfulness, open-mindedness, collaboration and solidarity.