Former employees of Eastern Fisheries protested the loss of their jobs on Monday, 3 April, outside the company’s seafood-processing facility in New Bedford, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
Of the 110 employees affected by Eastern Fisheries’ shift to bring its employees in-house – original media reports incorrectly put the total at around 200 – just five have reapplied and been hired by the company, despite its offer to rehire all the former staffing agency employees who had worked in its plant prior to the move. Forty-five of the workers left “voluntarily over the course of the past sixty days since being notified of the situation,” and the remaining 60 have requested to be allowed return to their jobs but cannot, according to a company spokesperson.
This is because the company is using the U.S. federal government’s E-Verify system to confirm the employment eligibility of applicants, according to a former employee interviewed by The New Bedford Light.
That employee, Ruth Castro, filed a complaint with the U.S. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in 2022 that resulted in the NLRB determining Eastern Fisheries was a joint employer of the workers, despite hiring them through B.J.’s Service Company, a staffing agency.
“Eastern [Fisheries] absolutely denies any improper motive in seeking to hire the workers as regular Eastern employees. This is not retaliation of any sort,” the company spokesperson said. “As a result of the earlier NLRB charge, Eastern learned that it could be considered a joint employer with B.J.’s, with no legal separation or protection from B.J.’s status as the actual employer. Eastern therefore decided to accept full responsibility for all aspects of employment and hire the employees as regular Eastern employees.”
A letter delivered to the company by the affected employees on 3 April asked that Eastern Fisheries not use e-verify.gov to confirm the employment eligibility of applicants. But the company said through its spokesperson its use of E-Verify “is standard company procedure for all direct hires at Eastern Fisheries, which has been an E-Verify.com employer since 2012.”
E-Verify, created and authorized through the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, is a web-based system through which employers can electronically confirm the employment eligibility of their employees. It is currently used by more than 998,000 U.S. companies.
“Eastern does not know what kind of review or checking B.J.s did when it hired these workers. Eastern simply wants to hire them the way it hires all employees, to eliminate the uncertainty and potential problems of joint employment,” the spokesperson said.
Around 50 of the affected workers protested outside Eastern Fisheries’ plant in New Bedford on 3 April, led by Adrian Ventura, the director of Centro Comunitario de Trabajadores, a pro-labor group, and by Castro, with support from Justice at Work, a local nonprofit labor group.
“All of these workers are going to lose their jobs because the company has just decided it wants to verify our documentation,” Castro said at the protest.
But Eastern Fisheries “absolutely denies any improper motive in seeking to hire the workers as regular Eastern employees,” the company spokesperson said.
“This is not retaliation,” he said.
Photo courtesy of Justice at Work
