Detail of a mural inside the Madison Labor Temple building celebrating unions and worker rights. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)

“This fight is all of labor’s fight,” Kevin Gundlach, president of the South Central Federation of Labor, declared at a “solidarity dinner” for 43 immigrant workers who recently lost their jobs at a Monroe, Wisconsin cheese factory. “Even Wisconsinites who don’t know about the story, should know in a cheesemaking state we should support cheesemakers.” 

The workers, some of whom labored for more than 20 years at W&W Dairy, were told in August they would have to submit to E-Verify screening and confirm their legal status in order to continue their employment after a new company, Kansas-based Dairy Farmers of America (DFA), bought the cheese plant. They walked off the job to protest, hoping DFA, which has a policy of subjecting new hires to E-Verify screening, would exempt them because of their many years of service. The company declined, but asked the workers to return to help train their replacements, one worker said. 

The cheese plant employees I spoke with said they were still in shock, worried about supporting their families as they face the loss of pay and benefits at the end of the month.

Workers who pulled long shifts, kept the plant going through the pandemic and took pride in producing high quality, Mexican-style cheeses — queso fresco, queso blanco, quesadilla and panela — now feel betrayed. 

Their goal is no longer to return to their old jobs. Instead, they are focused on getting severance pay from W&W Dairy, which is still technically their employer until Sept. 1 — Labor Day — when DFA assumes control of the plant.

On Thursday, Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of the immigrant workers’ rights group Voces de la Frontera, wrote to W&W president Franz Hofmeister to ask that the dairy show appreciation for its longtime workers by offering them a severance package. A Labor Day picnic organized by community members to support the workers, “would be an excellent opportunity to announce that the workers and the company have resolved their differences and that workers are being given some compensation,” Neumann-Ortiz wrote. “This would give the workers a chance to thank you publicly and provide some healing and closure.”

W&W’s success was propelled by its loyal workforce — fewer than 100 people who knew how to do multiple jobs in the plant and switched roles to keep things running smoothly. The quality of the product attracted a high-profile buyer. 

“The growth trajectory for the Hispanic cheese market is more than three times that of the cheese category,” Ken Orf, president of DFA’s Cheese, Taste and Flavors Division, told the trade publication Cheese Reporter, in an article about the benefit to the company of its “strategic acquisition” of W&W, which puts it in a “stronger position for growth with this important dairy category.”

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the Hispanic employees of the plant.

Bibiana Gonzalez, a child care provider and community leader in the Monroe area, said she liked the term “essential workers” when she first heard it. The W&W workers felt they were essential to their employer’s success, and put in long hours during the pandemic, when other people were staying home to protect their health. But “unfortunately, people confuse essential workers with workers who can be exploited,” Gonzalez said.

“They want to toss these workers in the street just for being immigrants,” said Voces de la Frontera organizer Pablo Rodriguez.

DFA wants to distance itself from any thorny political issues around immigration. In a statement to WKOW Channel 27 news, the company asserted it had a goal “to retain 100% of the W&W workforce,” but that “as part of the hiring process to become DFA employees, all W&W workers and other applicants were notified of the need to provide documents to complete both an I-9 form and the E-verify process.” Failing to produce the proper documents, unfortunately, would mean “DFA’s ability to offer employment was impacted.”

Using cold, passive bureaucratic language, DFA casts it as a regrettable accident that its E-Verify policy rendered nearly half the cheese plant’s employees ineligible to continue working there. But as a cooperative with 5,000 dairy farm members, it’s impossible DFA leadership is unfamiliar with its industry’s heavy reliance on workers who don’t have papers.

In Wisconsin, where DFA has 399 member farms and four dairy manufacturing plants, an estimated 70% of the dairy workforce is made up of immigrants who cannot get E-Verifiable legal work papers.

In dairy, as in other year-round, nonseasonal industries, immigrants who make up the majority of the work force are ineligible for U.S. work visas. Congress has simply failed to create a visa for year-round jobs in agriculture, manufacturing, construction, food service and other industries that rely on immigrant labor.

Far from being a drag on the economy, immigrant workers who lack legal authorization are heavily recruited by U.S. employers and “supercharge economic growth,” according to a new Center for Migration Studies research brief. The research brief shows that 8.5 million undocumented workers in the U.S. contribute an estimated $96.7 billion annually in federal, state and local taxes, “filling roles vital to critical industries.”

The brief also warns that mass deportations could cause critical workforce shortages. No one knows that better than Wisconsin dairy farmers, who would go out of business overnight if their mostly immigrant workforce was deported.

Union members who came out to support the W&W workers Tuesday night embraced the idea that all workers are in the same boat, are ill served by an authoritarian, bullying Trump administration, and will do better if they band together.

That’s the whole idea of solidarity: Working people need to unite to protect their common interests against the rich and powerful, who will run roughshod over all of us if they can. Expanding on that unifying message, Al Hudson, lay leader of the Union Presbyterian Church in Monroe, whose congregation supports the W&W workers, brought his social justice gospel to the union hall.

“We are proud to be a gathering place for the Green County Hispanic community,” Hudson said of his church. “We’re proud to do our part to be a Matthew 25 church,” he added, referring to the Bible verse in which Jesus calls on the faithful to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, care for the sick and visit those in prison. “This is what churches are supposed to do,” Hudson said. “I admire your courage,” he told the displaced W&W workers, pledging to continue to “walk with you and support you in your struggle as long as you want us there.”

The union members in the hall cheered. They applauded the W&W workers, they applauded speeches about solidarity among working people of every race and ethnic background. They seemed enlivened by the chance to do something to help.

The warm feeling of pulling together to resist the violent bigotry of the anti-immigrant Trump administration, recognizing the common struggle among all working people, was uplifting.

“Solidaridad!” shouted Gundlach, and the mostly gringo crowd of unionists shouted back, “Solidaridad!”