Chipotle workers quit ahead of immigration audits

[The Northerner]

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Workers have been leaving Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc in the nation's capital and Virginia since getting notice that U.S. immigration officials are auditing restaurants in the area.

A survey of help-wanted websites, including Chipotle's own, shows a higher level of hiring in those markets than in others like Ohio, where the company has twice as many units.

Chipotle co-Chief Executive Monty Moran called the departures "very limited" and said they came after he told workers that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was reviewing worker eligibility documents at the chain's roughly 60 restaurants in Virginia and Washington, D.C.

Just a few months earlier, a similar audit resulted in the firing of 450 undocumented workers at the chain's Minnesota restaurants.

"Some people in those restaurants -- although it was very, very few -- decided to sort of opt out at that point or go look for another job. I guess I would suspect that their documents were probably ones that would be suspect," Moran said on a webcast from the Raymond James Institutional Investors Conference in Orlando on Tuesday.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110308/us_nm/us_chipotle

[leftynyc]

1. Have any fines been levied

against Chipolte? Or are they just deporting the workers?

[Andy823]

2. Don't think they "are" deporting them

This happened in my area at one of the biggest fruit growers in the state. They came in and did the audit, and then told the employer which ones had questionable paper work. They told the employer to take the proper action, lay let them go, but did NOT deport anyone! Don't know about fines, but they were warned that they would be back to check up on them and see if they were still hiring illegals!

I think this is the best way to address the problem at the moment. I do think employers should be fined for hiring illegals, and if they continue, then jail time should be included in the punishment. Employers have had a free ride since Reagan signed his "immigration" bill back in 1985. Republicans don't really want to lose the illegals, they only want to "look" like they did something. Big business's all over the country use illegals to keep from paying any benefits, and to keep wages down. They abuse the illegals by paying less than minimum wage, and they usually don't complain for fear of being deported!

Deporting illegals is a waste of money since they are back in a few days to a week, and working for the same employer under a new name! It doesn't work, and it costs millions. The best way to control the problem, besides new immigration laws, is to go after the employer, which is what this administration is doing.

[leftynyc]

3. Complete agreement

Precisely why I asked about the fines. Until corporations are held responsible for the hiring of people without the proper paperwork, I'll never believe they really want to do something about the problem. And I'm talking HUGE fines - the kind that will make others take notice.

[Hannah Bell]

6. The Obama administration claims

that the I-9 audits focus on punishing employers who exploit undocumented workers. The fines imposed on noncompliant employers, however, can be reduced through cooperation with ICE and are simply one cost of doing business. While administration officials boasted that average fines exceeded $110,000 in 2010, Chipotle had a 2010 fourth-quarter net income of $46.4 million.

The audits are part of stepped up anti-immigrant policies pursued by the Obama administration. A sampling of some of these policies includes:

• Expansion of the Secure Communities Initiative, a multibillion-dollar program to check the immigration status of all people booked in local jails, even for the most minor offenses.

• Deployment of 1,200 National Guard troops to the southwestern border with Mexico last year armed with M-16s and battle gear.

• Earmarking $600 million for surveillance and police infrastructure along the US-Mexico border.

• Stepped-up use of unmanned Predator drones along the US-Mexico border—the same aircraft used to slaughter “enemy combatants” and thousands of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

• Continuation of a “zero tolerance” policy for charging and jailing undocumented immigrants crossing the US-Mexico border.

• Expansion of ICE detention facilities that house immigrant detainees.

• Resumption of removing Haitians this January despite the fact that their deportation may be the equivalent of a death sentence given the deplorable conditions in Haiti.

The Obama administration has overseen the removal of some 776,000 people from the US during the past two years. While it has claimed that a priority is the removal of “serious criminals,” it has only been able to apply the label “criminal” to 323,000 or 41.6 percent of deportees, the vast majority of whom committed low-level, nonviolent offenses.



http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/mar2011/immi-m09.shtml

[Hannah Bell]

5. The fines imposed on noncompliant employers, however, can be reduced through cooperation with ICE

and are simply one cost of doing business. While administration officials boasted that average fines exceeded $110,000 in 2010, Chipotle had a 2010 fourth-quarter net income of $46.4 million.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/mar2011/immi-m09.shtml

[Hannah Bell]

4. Chipotle Mexican Grill revealed that it fired approximately 450 workers at 50 of its restaurants in

Minnesota last year as the result of an audit by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The impact on each fired worker and his or her family is devastating. If not detained and subjected to removal by ICE, dismissed workers must find jobs in the super-exploitative clandestine economy or remain unemployed. The fate of the 450 Chipotle workers fired in Minnesota is largely unknown due to the fact that they are forced to live an underground existence for fear of being detained and removed from the country.

Homeland Security has not publicized the total number of firings the audits have caused in the last couple of years, but they have included over 1,200 workers at ABM janitorial in Minneapolis, 1,800 workers at American Apparel, 253 workers at Overhill Farms in Los Angeles, more than 100 janitors at Seattle Building Maintenance, and about 100 workers at two cattle hide processi ng companies in South Saint Paul, Minnesota.

The Obama administration has overseen the removal of some 776,000 people from the US during the past two years. While it has claimed that a priority is the removal of “serious criminals,” it has only been able to apply the label “criminal” to 323,000 or 41.6 percent of deportees, the vast majority of whom committed low-level, nonviolent offenses.


http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/mar2011/immi-m09.shtml