Statement from IUPAT General President Jimmy Williams Jr. on Supreme Court Decision on Temporary Protected Status
Press Releases
Hanover, MD — International Union of Painters and Allied Trades General President Jimmy Williams Jr. released the following statement in response to today’s Supreme Court ruling on Temporary Protected Status for Haitians and Syrians:
“Today’s Supreme Court decision regarding Temporary Protected Status will undoubtedly harm individual workers, their families and their communities, and the construction industry as a whole by pushing workers back into the shadows. When workers are too afraid to show up on the job – or worse, deported to war-torn countries to face certain violence – there will be no one here to build the infrastructure that we all rely on.
Our union was founded by immigrant workers more than 130 years ago and today the construction industry still relies on a largely immigrant workforce. Programs like Temporary Protected Status are essential because of the stability they provide both to workers and to the industry as a whole. These workers currently have legal standing and followed a lengthy and expensive process to remain compliant with both their employers and our government.
In a dangerous industry like construction, workers must feel free to speak up about working conditions and safety without fear of retaliation. When workers feel that the risks are too high to speak up – particularly because of threats to their immigration status – it creates what we see on too many job sites across the country right now, where wage theft, worker misclassification, and poor safety standards are the norm.
At the IUPAT, we have a simple mission: to be the strongest, most powerful voice in the industries we represent. We can only achieve that mission by ensuring that every worker in our crafts can speak up against wage theft, misclassification, and dangerous working conditions. For these reasons, we have long supported bolstering rights, including a path to citizenship, for TPS recipients. TPS recipients and other immigrant workers have built up our American economy, and it is wrong to pull the rug out from underneath them.”
General President Williams is not afraid to ask tough questions or to say what he truly believes, no matter who is in the White House. For interest in interviewing or booking General President Williams on your program today or this week, please contact Mindy Isser at misser@iupat.org or Alejandra Buonovino at abuonovino@iupat.org.
####
The International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) represents a growing community of over 140,000 active and retired craftspeople in the United States and Canada. The IUPAT membership extends far beyond the workplace. Recognized as one of the most active unions in the labor movement, IUPAT members help shape their communities in many ways: through an abiding commitment to service, by fighting passionately for workers’ rights that benefit all working families, and through effective worker education and mobilization.
Contact: Mindy Isser | 267-234-2929 | misser@iupat.org