COTTONDALE, ALA. Polish workers raise ire of unions

Union officials question the use of Polish workers in building a U.S. plant.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
COTTONDALE, Ala. -- At 6:20 in the morning in central Alabama, the six men of Apartment 1404 throw their lunches into plastic grocery bags, dash down the stairs to the sidewalk and climb into a white van.
Then it's off to nearby Vance, where DaimlerChrysler AG is doubling the size of its Mercedes-Benz assembly plant. These sheet-metal workers are building the portion of the plant that paints new luxury vehicles, clocking as many as 65 hours, and as many as seven days a week, on the job.
Their take-home pay, according to them: the equivalent of $1,100 a month.
But they do not complain. Things could be worse. They could be back at home in Poland earning just a fourth of what they make here.
Work visas
A spokeswoman for Mercedes said the men of Apartment 1404 and dozens of others like them are here legally, on visas that permit them to work at the plant because they are installing a highly specialized paint system.
But union officials question whether the visas were obtained under false pretenses. They say the Polish men are doing the same work as any skilled American pipefitter or sheet metal worker, and that the Poles, along with men from elsewhere in Eastern Europe and Britain, were imported just because they are cheap labor.
A member of Congress is now investigating the visas, while the federal Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the men's B-1 visas are supposed to be used by foreigners here on short-term business, not for extended stays.
American dream
For the Polish workers, this is the American Dream, circa 2003. They live here for three to six months at a time in a furnished apartment supplied by their bosses. Although they earn only a fraction of their American counterparts, it is still enough to furnish their homes in Poland.
For U.S. workers, this is the hard reality of the American Economy, circa 2003, where large international companies export jobs to places like China and India and, even more disquieting, perhaps because it's more visible, import labor from overseas.
"I imagine that's the way America is working these days," said Ezzard Davis, a 51-year-old union sheet-metal worker from Mobile, Ala., who would like to work on the Mercedes site, about a four-hour drive away. "It's unfortunate, it's a shame that if they're not sending jobs out of the country, they're bringing people into the country."
And never mind that the Polish workers represent only a fraction of the 6,500 workers who have helped expand the Mercedes plant. What really hurts, Davis and union leaders say, is that Mercedes got $253 million in incentives, most from state taxpayers, to build its original plant in the mid-1990s and another $119 million for the $600 million expansion.
Going to foreign workers
They thought the tax breaks were supposed to create jobs for Alabama workers. Now, with the national unemployment rate at 6.4 percent, and at 5.7 percent in Alabama, dozens of jobs created by Mercedes' expansion are going to foreign workers.
"I think that it's a crying shame that we're giving tax breaks to a company that's allowing foreign workers to come in. I don't appreciate it at all, and the Alabama people shouldn't appreciate it," said Robert Payne, an organizer with the Sheet Metal Workers Local 441 in Mobile.
Union leaders from Michigan and Alabama have asked members of Congress to investigate, saying the foreign workers may be here on improper visas.
Diana McBroom, district director for Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., said the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement has agreed to Levin's request to determine what type of visas the men were given. Levin began his inquiry in early June.