Collective Pause as Worker Protection

Construction workers on a job site, representing industries that rely on collective care and worker solidarity. Photo by Arron Choi on Unsplash

I was talking with a friend in the eastern part of the U.S. who told me that they had a friend who owned a construction-type business. When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement came to their town, they shut down their business because they didn’t want to lose their workers in the middle of a job. In fact, they said that the whole construction industry in that town shut down for the same reason.

The potential problem they saw was that if their group was on a job that was supposed to be done in a day, and ICE came along and took their workers, the job would be unfinished and the customer and the company would be left high and dry.

— Ben Roe, member of WMJM Leadership Team