Blacks Systematically Barred from Temporary Jobs in Chicago

“The Black applicants would wind up sitting in the office beginning at dawn, watching Hispanics get assigned to work all day long.

by Glen Ford

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A national temporary worker staffing agency and a number of its clients have been sued for discriminating against Black workers. It’s a class action suit, filed in federal court by the Workers Law Office, a small but dedicated team of people’s lawyers in Chicago. The offending agency, MVP Staffing, has 60 offices in 38 states and connects hundreds of businesses with tens of thousands of people seeking temporary employment. But, according to Workers Center lawyer Christopher Williams, 98 percent of the jobs in the Chicago area go to Hispanics, most of them undocumented. That’s what most of MVP Staffing’s clients want: undocumented Mexicans who are in no position to argue about working conditions or pay. Temporary work agencies and their business clients conspire to extract super-profits at the expense of both the undocumented workers, who are locked in a twilight zone of low pay and fearful silence, and Black applicants who line up for work every day, but are seldom hired.

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