An ongoing strike in a southern Wisconsin city dubbed by some the “Cheese Capital of the USA” has made one dairy production facility the locus for a complex labor dispute amid a sweeping federal crackdown on immigrants.
Dozens of workers at W&W Dairy in Monroe have been on strike for more than a week after new owners said they’ll use E-Verify to process each employee. That’s an online federal system that checks, among other things, whether a person is legally authorized to work in the United States.
The 43 workers aren’t protesting the policy. Instead, they’re arguing that, because it effectively forces some workers out, they’re entitled to severance pay commensurate with their years of employment.
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At a rally at the facility on Tuesday, members of unions held signs arguing that the striking workers, who are not unionized, are entitled to just compensation.
WPR has not independently verified the immigration status of the striking employees, although community organizers supporting the workers say all are “affected” by the new policy.
Jacob Hamburger teaches immigration law at Marquette Law School, focusing on the relationship between state and federal law. He said the situation “highlights some of the discrepancy between federal and state workplace protections.”
He said that, nationwide, even people who are working without legal authorization have rights to employment protections, although there are some exceptions for agricultural workers.
“Even though federal immigration law does prohibit employers from hiring someone as an employee who doesn’t have work authorization, that doesn’t mean that other federal or state level labor and employment protections don’t apply,” he said.
Those include things like access to collective bargaining and unemployment insurance, and protections against wage theft and discrimination, but there is no federal requirement to provide severance.
Dairy Farmers of America, a Kansas-based cooperative, acquired the facility on Aug. 1, and take full ownership beginning Sept. 1. In a statement, the company said its policy of requiring E-Verify is nothing new, and that it could not hire workers who couldn’t complete that process.
“DFA will not be terminating any employees at the facility, and so any severance obligations would need to be addressed by the current employer,” the statement reads.
Many of the striking workers would not speak or be named out of fear of retribution. One, who spoke to WPR anonymously and through an interpreter, said he believed it was the employees who had made the facility so successful.
“I’m sure that we made this company so large. It is because of our work,” he said. “We are looking for a just compensation for a severance package for working so many years in this company.”
He said that the workers are prepared to strike for “no matter how long it takes” for the good of workers at other companies, too.
E-Verify requirements differ by state, required for federal contractors
The striking workers in Monroe are demanding compensation to make up for what they will lose if they can no longer maintain employment under the new policy.
In its statement, Dairy Farmers of America said that, if workers don’t pass the E-Verify process or don’t submit required documentation, “our ability to employ them will be impacted.”
E-Verify checks workers’ I-9 forms against other federal records as a kind of double check of employment eligibility. Some states require all employers to use it, and some states require only public employees to be verified.
Other states, including Wisconsin, do not require any employers to use E-Verify. There have been some attempts to change that. In May, Sen. Eric Wimberger, R-Oconto, introduced a bill to require the state to use it for contracts worth more than $50,000.
In a statement, Wimberger argued that not using the system opens the door for “bad actors” to “plausibly deny their exploitation of illegally-hired cheap immigrant labor, since the law does not compel them to do anything beyond the bare minimum to confirm the employment status of their workers.”
E-Verify is also required for workers that are fulfilling federal contracts. The Dairy Farmers of America statement said this was one reason it implemented the system, beginning in July.
Hamburger, the immigration law expert, said those requirements don’t extend to a company’s whole workforce — only to those who are fulfilling the federal contract.
“There is a degree of choice that employers have whether to extend that E-Verify requirement to their entire workforce,” he said.
Dairy Farmers of America did not respond to questions about whether the Monroe facility is involved in their federal contracts.
Fewer than 100 people are employed at W&W, according to federal records. Asked whether the company would be able to replace the employees lost after the policy change, a spokesperson said W&W Dairy is “confident in the continued success and future of the Monroe facility.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with a new statement from Dairy Farmers of America.
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