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Midwest

“They’re Trying to Starve Us”: BP Opposes Unemployment Benefits for Locked Out Workers

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WHITING, IND.—Six and a half months after being locked out of his job as a British Petroleum (BP) operator, Jon is still showing up to picket shifts. I met him on the side of a road, the refinery spewing smoke behind him. For a while, unemployment benefits of around $335 a week helped ease the financial burden, he tells me, but those went away at the end of September when he hit the six-month mark. And now, BP is appealing the locked-out workers’ unemployment with the state of Indiana. It’s a move that could result in workers like Jon having to pay back the assistance they’ve already received.

Midwest

Chicago Day Laborer, in ICE Detention, Says He’s Facing Retaliation Because Supporters Are Protesting His Abduction

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This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and In These Times. Willian Giménez González, a known advocate for the rights of day laborers who was abducted by federal agents on September 12, is speaking out from ICE detention. 

He says that federal authorities transferred him from the Broadview, Ill., ICE facility, to a detention center in Michigan, to move him away from his supporters. “I believe I was moved to Michigan at the last minute because I had the support of the community, and because my lawyer and politicians were protesting outside the jail,” he said, referring to the Broadview ICE facility. 

“I believe that because I had people fighting for me, I was targeted for transfer to prevent my supporters from helping me.” The statement was passed to me by his lawyer, Kevin Herrera, who is also the legal director of Raise the Floor Alliance, a legal clinic and worker advocacy organization. 

Willian Giménez González, who is in his late 30s and originally hails from Venezuela, is one of five day laborers who filed a federal lawsuit in August 2024 against the city of Chicago, Home Depot, and off-duty police officers moonlighting as private security guards for the alleged harassment and beating of day laborers. His supporters say there is reason to be concerned that his role in the lawsuit made him a target of federal agents, and for 35 days they have been fighting to secure his release. “This sets a really dangerous precedent where we are seeing that if people speak up about their rights, they could be targeted for that,” says Miguel Alvelo Rivera, executive director of the Latino Union of Chicago, where Giménez González is a member. ​“What feels dangerous about all of this is the silencing of folks who advocate for their community.”

The lawsuit says the workers ​“have endured physical violence at the hands of off-duty Chicago Police Department officers as they have been targeted based on their race, ethnicity, and national origin and thrown to the ground, aggressively handcuffed, and beaten by officers in displays of excessive force.”

According to the lawsuit from 2024, on October 23, 2023, when Giménez González sought work outside of a Home Depot, he was pushed to the ground, repeatedly slapped, then instructed to sign a paper written in English that he ​“did not understand.” That paper turned out to be his agreement that he had been trespassing.

Midwest

How ICE Terror Campaigns Are Used to Discipline Labor

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This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and The American Prospect. CHICAGO – The last time Regina heard from her mother, Laura Murillo, she was calling from inside the ICE detention center in Broadview, Illinois, last Friday. “She just told us that she loved us. She seemed shocked, and she said she’s wanting to fight the case,” Regina says. Regina, 19, is standing at the street vendor booth in the Back of the Yards neighborhood of Chicago, where Murillo was detained.

Midwest

Construction Bosses Are Using Elaborate Schemes to Harm Workers

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This article is a joint publication of Workday Magazine and The American Prospect. In 2020, Alejandro was working a construction job in the Madison, Wisconsin, metro area, doing texture, painting, and drywall on residential homes, when his boss asked him to do something strange. The boss gave Alejandro a check, and told him to go to a local bakery to cash it. He was then instructed to use that cash to pay himself and his co-worker for their labor. Alejandro, who arrived in the U.S. from Mexico in 2019 and is now 29, was unfamiliar with employment practices in this country and did as he was told, paying himself $800 every two weeks.