Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me … 3064.story
Ummm...I wonder how many of these guys are now getting unemployement checks now?LA Times wrote:
Computer 'raid' in Vernon leaves factory workers devastated
Overhill Farms, a major food-processing plant in the L.A. area, terminates more than 200 employees after an IRS audit finds that they had provided 'invalid or fraudulent' Social Security numbers.
By Patrick J. McDonnell
June 12, 2009
No immigration agents descended on Overhill Farms, a major food-processing plant in Vernon. No one was arrested or deported. There were no frantic scenes of desperate workers fleeing la migra through the gritty streets of the industrial suburb southeast of downtown Los Angeles.
For more than 200 Overhill workers, however, the effect was devastating: All lost steady jobs last month and now find themselves in a precarious employment market, without severance pay or medical insurance. It wasn't a hot tip or an undercover informant that helped seal their fates, but a computer check of Social Security numbers.
"A desktop raid" is how the workers' representative, John M. Grant, vice president of Local 770 of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, described the scenario.
Overhill, a $200-million-a-year company that provides frozen meals for clients such as American Airlines, Panda Express, Safeway and Jenny Craig, says it had no choice: An Internal Revenue Service audit found that 260 workers had provided "invalid or fraudulent" Social Security numbers. The government took no action against the workers. But Overhill did: All of the employees were fired May 31.
The dispute underscores some of the complex issues facing President Obama as he tries to make good on his pledge to overhaul the nation's "broken" immigration system. Like agriculture, the food-processing and preparation sectors rely heavily on immigrant labor, much of it illegal.