Word that workers would be fired began to spread through Ballco Manufacturing in August. The Aurora company, which makes valve components, was staffed largely by Mexican immigrants. Eduardo Soria, who’d worked there for a decade as a machine operator, says the rumors started after Latino employees were asked to take on white trainees. A factory supervisor claimed to be adding a shift, Soria says, but some of the workers doubted it. One said he’d seen a blackboard in the office listing the names of 40 workers along with the trainees slated to replace them. Another had found a piece of paper in the tool room with workers’ names and social security numbers on it; a corresponding column listed each one’s “replacement hire.”
Since 1994 the Social Security Administration has been notifying employees and their employers when the name or social security number on the employee’s W-2 form doesn’t match the administration’s records. Mismatches are common: Some are clerical errors. Some occur when people change their names, often after getting married or divorced, but fail to update their records. And some occur when people who aren’t legally authorized to work use false social security numbers or numbers that don’t belong to them.
If DHS has its way, receipt of a no-match letter will be added to a list of things that can be considered evidence that an employer has “constructive knowledge” that an employee isn’t authorized to work in the U.S. Continuing to employ that person after receiving such knowledge is against the law.
The Illinois General Assembly has come to the same conclusion. A federal program lets employers access the SSA database to verify an applicant’s work authorization, but state legislators passed a law earlier this year prohibiting Illinois employers from doing so until the database is accurate enough to ensure that 99 percent of discrepancies can be resolved within three days. In response DHS is suing Illinois, claiming the state is infringing on the power of the federal government.
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A no-match letter informs employers that there could be several reasons for a discrepancy—and that the letter in and of itself implies nothing about a worker’s immigration status. It also tells employers they should not use it to “take any adverse action against an employee, such as laying off, suspending, firing, or discriminating against that individual.”
That won’t protect them, though, from discrimination lawsuits brought under other civil rights laws, such as Title VII or the Illinois Human Rights Act, says Christopher Williams of the Working Hands Legal Clinic, which has offices in the Loop and Little Village. Williams, a former union organizer, says he was working for the Chicago Workers’ Collaborative when he recognized the need for a nonprofit legal clinic to represent low-wage immigrant laborers. He went back to school in 2001, at the age of 40, to become a lawyer and open that clinic.
Ballco’s site suggests that it also has loyal employees, claiming a low turnover rate: “Our staff is experienced, efficient, well trained, and committed to producing a high quality product.”
