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The Bureau of Land Management updates a proposed Western Solar Plan to the delight of wildlife advocates, grant funding helps New York schools take part in National Farm to School Month, and children's advocates observe "TEN-4 Day" to raise awareness of child abuse.

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The war between Israel and Hamas started a year ago, and VP Harris is being pressed on her position. Trump returns to campaign where he was shot at and voter registration deadlines take effect, with less than a month until Election Day.

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Cheap milk comes at a cost for residents of Washington's Lower Yakima Valley, Indigenous language learning is promoted in Wisconsin as experts warn half the world's languages face extinction, and Montana's public lands are going to the dogs!

Union workers cry foul over layoffs at immigration service centers

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Tuesday, August 27, 2024   

Unionized workers with the federal agency responsible for processing immigration and asylum paperwork claim they are being forced to turn their jobs over to non-union labor, in violation of federal law.

United Electrical, Radio, & Machine Workers of America members say the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Nebraska Service Center is laying off union workers in Nebraska and other states, and moving the jobs to non-union operations.

UE Local 808 President Dawn Meyer calls the center's move "union busting."

"What they are doing is, they're taking good union jobs," said Meyer. "They're outsourcing them to places that are paying less money, are less efficient, are far less vigilant in accuracy. They're risking people's ability to get immigration benefits."

Meyer said UE workers are a skilled, experienced workforce that performs clerical and pre-adjudication tasks.

They serve the immigration pipeline for asylum seekers, refugees, and victims of human trafficking and domestic violence.

The U.S. CIS did not respond to a request for comment.

Meyer said the U.S. CIS is playing a "shell game," laying off union workers and moving their jobs to the non-union Lockbox location in Dallas.

The work there principally involves the processing of fee-bearing petitions. She said the decision to relocate this work has resulted in predictable delays in processing.

"All these contracts are supposed to be open to the public because SCA is supposed to be a transparent process," said Meyer. "So it makes it very difficult for the common person to go looking for, 'Hey, what's my government doing?'"

UE locals in Lincoln, Essex, Vermont, and Laguna Niguel, California have recently held protests of the layoff policies - calling for the government to stop so-called "rolling layoffs," aimed at reducing the unionized workforce at all three locations by about two thirds between 2023 and 2025.


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