It's bad enough that Arizona is going crazy with xenophobia. Now that virus has spread to our own backyards—to our local unions.  It's all a bit perplexing, since so many immigrants, legal and illegal alike, belong to unions and are even courted by these very unions in their attempt to recruit more members. In fact, during the immigration marches several years ago unions marched in support of immigration reform and legalization. Even now, with the increasingly depressed economy, many still remain committed to a legalization program. However, there are bad apples everywhere and apparently some have dropped off of the trees in the greater Delaware Valley.

Ever since Upton Sinclair first published his book, The Jungle, which detailed the worker abuses in meat-packing factories (once you have read it you probably will never again eat sausage unless it comes directly from one of our famous butcher shops in South Philly), Americans have recognized the need for unions if otherwise powerless workers are to be protected. Unions are as American as apple pie and an absolute necessity in our society.  However, when they begin to engage in anti-immigrant actions that apple pie leaves a sour taste.

There's always been a tension between union and non-union shops. Unions want certain fixed wages for all workers in their industries, to even the playing field. Unfortunately, our system of capitalism doesn't fix these wages—the market does.  In a downturned market, non-union shops have a competitive advantage, for they can undercut bids placed by union shops and this is making (understandably so) the unions hopping mad. So mad, in fact that they are willing to go to great lengths to intimidate their non-union competitors by such actions as placing huge signs of rats on or near non-union worksites. So mad that they are going even one step further:  visiting non-union sites, targeting only Latino workers, and demanding (without legal authority to do so), proof of legal status of all workers who appear to be Latino (they haven't quite figured out that Puerto Ricans are, indeed, citizens). They ignore the Irish, Brazilian and other "white" workers on site, assuming that because of their skin color they are just fine (and legal).

It's hard to say what is most wrong—engaging in racial profiling or having the audacity to pretend to have government authorization to engage in these inquisitions, especially in factories or worksites where workers, legal and illegal alike, are so intimidated that fatal accidents could very well occur. It's time for the good unions and respectable union members to reel in these renegade bad apple members and remind them: today's non-union immigrant (legal or illegal) could be a union brother tomorrow.