Marshallese support industry
The Jones Center
in Northwest Arkansas Arkansas might seem an unlikely landing place for immigrants from the Pacific Islands. However, thousands of workers from the Marshall Islands now call the Natural State home. A new three-volume report, A Profile of Immigrants in Arkansas 2013, funded by the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, includes a volume that provides the first comprehensive look at the Marshallese population in Arkansas. The other two volumes of the report describe the demographic characteristics of the state’s immigrant population and their economic and fiscal impact. The report – produced by researchers from the Migration Policy Institute, the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise at the University of North Carolina at Cha-
pel Hill, and the University of Arkansas – is a follow-up to a similar study in 2007. “The Marshallese community in Northwest Arkansas is an important factor in a quickly diversifying population,” says Dr. Sherece West-Scantlebury, President and CEO of the Foundation. “You can’t get a complete picture of Arkansas’ foreign born residents unless you spend some time looking at the circumstances and assets of this community.” Arkansas has the largest population of Marshallese individuals on the U.S. Mainland and after Hawaii the second‐ largest Marshallese population outside the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Approximately 4,300 out of 22,400 Marshall Islanders in the United States lived in Arkansas in 2010. About 88 percent of the Marshallese in Arkansas live in Washing-
Meredith Mashburn
Arkansas has the largest population of Marshallese on the U.S. mainland.
Group educates workers on rights and other issues in the workplace.
online: nwawjc.org
Justice workers fight silent epidemic of wage theft Most American workers take for granted that they’ll get a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work, but for many others, theft of their wages by unscrupulous employers is an all-too-common occurrence. Jose-Luis Aguayo, director of the Northwest Arkansas Worker’s Justice Center, says Latinos who come to work in Northwest Arkansas are often victims
of what his organization calls a “silent epidemic” of wage theft. Vulnerability and poor English language skills among newly arrived Latinos sometimes makes employers think they can get away without paying workers’ wages. “There is a lot of exploitation,” Aguayo said. “Victims of wage theft are individuals who have been partially paid, or not paid at all, for the work they’ve done. Sometimes people aren’t paid the minimum wage or don’t receive overtime pay.” Statistics on wage theft are hard to come by because it often goes unreported by vulnerable workers. The Workers Justice Center, which receives support from the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, works to stop wage theft and to improve conditions for low-wage workers in Northwest Arkansas by educating, organizing and mobilizing workers to help themselves find workplaces that are safe and fair. “We want to make sure our members understand what is involved in making a legal claim and understand the process,” Aguayo said. “And we want them to be aware of their rights, to educate them on
what they can do to tackle not only wage theft cases, but also any other issues that they have from a labor standpoint.” The Northwest Arkansas center is one of 25 such organizations nationwide and part of the Global Workers Justice Alliance, which focuses on the same issues and on international problems such as human trafficking. “We are not a union,” Aguayo said. “We are a nonprofit organization that concentrates on labor rights. We have a network of attorneys that assists us. But we try to assist people and find solutions before they go into the legal realm.” Northwest Arkansas’ poultry industry employs thousands of low-wage Latino workers, but the center’s work goes beyond a single group in a single industry. “It’s a mixed crowd,” Aguayo said. “When we deal with wage theft, we get people from construction, cleaning services and restaurants. When we get issues of workers comp, discrimination and OSHA violations, they often come from the poultry industry.” Although the majority of the center’s members are Latino, the staff tries to
6 — A PROFILE OF IMMIGRANTS IN ARKANSAS - 2013 | a special supplement from the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation - wrfoundation.org
help everyone with a labor problem who comes in the door. “We have African-Americans, and we also have Marshallese who come in with issues of OSHA safety and health violations, injuries at work, workers compensation, unemployment assistance and any of the other issues as we see in the community,” Aguayo said. The staff doesn’t ask—and isn’t required by law to ask—about a worker’s immigration status. But regardless of legal status, undocumented workers who don’t speak English are often the most vulnerable, he said. “Because of their poor English language skills, they are also most likely to be targets for retaliation by their employers. They come to us for advice, not for legal advice, but for referrals,” he said. “We want people to step out of the shadows and go from being vulnerable workers to being more conscious ones who know they are entitled to the same rights as anyone else.”