April 11, 2006

A manager at a Detroit meatpacking plant said Monday that 15 immigrant women were fired last month after attending a protest for immigrant rights. He said they had been told that they would be terminated if they missed work on the day of the protest.

But the workers and an activist working on their behalf said the women were given no such assurances. If the workers knew they would have been fired for attending the March 27 rally in Detroit, they never would have skipped the morning shift, said Elena Herrada, a Detroit activist who is trying to help the women get their jobs back.

Herrada and about 20 union officials went Monday to Wolverine Packing Co. offices on Rivard to inquire about what happened. They were given a letter signed by general manager Jay Bonahoom, explaining why the workers were terminated.

Meanwhile Monday, marches were held in Washington, D.C., Atlanta and other cities to protest proposed changes in immigration rules. On Sunday, hundreds gathered at Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in Detroit.

Some of the Wolverine workers were undocumented, Herrada and one of the workers said, and wanted to march in the Detroit rally to show their support for immigrant rights.

Tens of thousands of people, mostly Latinos, protested legislation that would make it a crime to help undocumented immigrants. The next morning, when the women reported to work for their shifts as meat cutters, a supervisor told them to clean out their lockers and go home.

Bonahoom said that as far as Wolverine knows, the workers were documented, but an employment agency does the actual hiring. He said the workers had been told, "written and verbally," on the Friday before the protests that their attendance was mandatory on the day of the protest.

They were fired "for standing up for their rights," Herrada said.