Family of Union Organizer Detained By ICE Speaks

Read our article Combat and Resist ICE Terror here.

Gildardo Perdones, a worker and union organizer from Tennessee, was kidnapped by ICE on June 23 along with two family members and another worker. His brother was deported to Mexico on July 7. Perdones remains in an ICE detention center in Mississippi as his family fights for his release.

“The truth is, I don’t know what to do,” says his wife and fellow organizer, Rosalinda Aguilar Acosta. “I want people to be strong and not give up, and fight for their release. We don’t want these detention centers to erase and deport people.”

The Worker spoke with Acosta about her husband’s detention and the strike they helped lead at the Corsicana Bedding mattress factory in Shelbyville, Tennessee, in 2013. This strike is one of the largest led by undocumented, foreign-born workers in the South in the last 15 years, according to union organizers in the region.

Acosta and Perdones worked at Corsicana in 2013. Acosta and other organizers told The Worker they they saw workers face physical and verbal abuse from management, sexual harassment, extreme temperatures, high production demands, and retaliation for translating for other workers or raising complaints.

A day-shift manager once slapped Acosta in the face for being near the same workstation as her.

“She took me to the office and told me she wanted to hit me, that we should ‘go outside’. In the office the translator, who was also the day shift manager, translated what he wanted or not at all. I was crying out of anger. When the rest of management left that’s when she slapped me. They didn’t do anything; the head manager Glen told me ‘Go have a beer and relax’. Around this time Gildardo was getting more angry and agitated and started to gain courage to organize”.

The workers began organizing Oct. 15, 2013, after management attempted to move two night-shift employees to a position with heavier work, lower pay, and fewer hours.

“We told him that we would rather quit. So our manager said that was fine, he didn’t have any other option for us. The other co-workers said ‘If there is no work for you guys then we will all leave’ and we all stopped for about an hour and a half,” one worker testified to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Management threatened to fire the workers when they shut down the line. After about two hours, the company told the workers they would keep their jobs and that no reassignments or pay cuts would take place.

The next day, management fired a bilingual worker who had helped organize the line through his translations, according to further worker testimony. Seven workers, including Perdones, walked out in protest and were fired. Management threatened to call police and ICE if they returned and refused to mail the fired workers their checks. The workers officially began striking on Oct. 16.

“The manager of the plant called the worker translator outside to ‘fix this problem’. We all thought he was going to beat [the worker]. We told our coworkers that we were going to support him and if they were to fire him we were going with him. After that they fired all of us”, testified another worker to the NLRB.

The seven workers filed an unfair labor practice charge with the NLRB against Corsicana in November 2013.

Another organizer told The Worker that while the case moved forward, organizing continued. Acosta organized workers inside the factory with help from the wives of the seven fired workers, who remained employed there. Outside, Perdones, Acosta, and another fired worker went door to door with an organizer from Jobs with Justice of East Tennessee to build support for the strike. Workers from both shifts at the factory joined the campaign, meeting at Catholic churches to develop demands and form a union.

Under the slogan, “The dignity of the people is not for sale—it is defended!,” they formed TUCS, or Trabajadores Unidos de Corsicana en Shelbyville (United Workers of Corsicana in Shelbyville).

TUCS demanded the removal of abusive supervisors, an end to understaffing and layoffs, a worker-led health and safety committee, training and certification for hazardous jobs, regular breaks, first aid and medical care, and improvements to wages, overtime pay, and piece-rate transparency, according to TUCS organizers who spoke with The Worker.

TUCS gave Corsicana 30 days to recognize the union. They started a newsletter called The Workers Voice and gathered the women workers and wives to create a women’s committee.

More than 60 TUCS members delivered their demands to Corsicana that November. Two weeks later, the company fired the manager who had struck Acosta and the day-shift manager who was present. In December 2013, Corsicana was held liable for unfair labor practices and ordered to offer all seven workers their jobs back. Five returned. Perdones and another union leader remained on the picket line outside, TUCS organizers told The Worker.

Corsicana then hired a union buster, played anti-union videos in the break room, and offered one-on-one meetings with workers. Managers also told workers they would have to pay union dues, fueling suspicion of TUCS.

Despite 74% of the workplace signing in favor of the union, the January 2014 union vote failed.

Acosta said workers had begun pursuing individual injury claims during the campaign, weakening the union effort. She also overheard night-shift workers discussing a bonus for voting “no.”

The Worker asked Acosta what could have been done differently to win night-shift workers.

“We should’ve talked with more workers about benefits of the union and been more informed; I didn’t know what it meant to be in a union before being part of it, because I had never worked at a place with a union. Many were in favor of TUCS but not part of it, and didn’t vote in the union struggle”.

Acosta left Corsicana a few months later but continued organizing with Perdones in Shelbyville. TUCS later organized in support of a pregnant worker fired from a local restaurant. After two years of demonstrations and marches, the worker won her wage claim in 2017, according to TUCS social media.

A decade later, Acosta is supporting her children while Gildardo is being held hostage by ICE.

She has found support from the Movement of Women in Struggle, or MMEL, a group led by 15 mothers in mid-Tennessee whose husbands have been taken by ICE.

MMEL organizes food and yard sales to raise money for bonds, food, and housing. The group also supports workplace struggles and helps each other with childcare and cooking.

“Like the motto says, united we do more. We have a lot of fear but we need to do it. Its important knowing we are not alone, not only monetarily but that we have a responsibility to one another to fight. In Minneapolis a lot of people got together and it could happen here too. The women’s group is a community that is supporting each other; they meet, call, talk about our experiences. Hearing their experiences, you can see their dignity and power and see how we want to fight against these attacks”.

A week after Acosta’s initial interview with The Worker, her son visited his father in detention.

Perdones was sick and people throughout the detention center were suffering from illness, including a tuberculosis outbreak, according to his son. Perdones’s health wavers, but he has continued showing solidarity with other detainees.

One man he helped has a wife and two children who could not afford food, Perdones’s son told The Worker.

“Dad asked us to send her money, and Mom talked to her over the phone for two days, encouraging her. We deposited money in her account and helped them buy food,” his son said.

Perdones’s most recent hearing was Aug. 4 to determine who would be most affected by his deportation. One of his young sons suffered seizures as a baby, and the family has provided medical records to the courts to show how Perdones’s absence would affect him.

You can support Gildardo Perdones and Rosalinda Aguilar Acosta through Zelle at danielperdones@gmail.com.

Image: TUCS demonstration during the Corsicana unionization struggle, 2014. Courtesy of TUCS organizers.

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