Workers Say No to "No Match" at Hearing

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)Workers and labor and community leaders from across the country will testify on how "no match" letters – notices the Social Security Administration (SSA) sends to employers about discrepancies between their employment records and SSA database – are used to intimidate workers and prevent them from organizing for better pay and working conditions at a National Workers’ Rights Board Hearing today. “’No match’ letters have long been used by employers to defeat worker organizing,” says Jobs with Justice, who is co-sponoring the hearing with the Low Wage Immigrant Worker Coalition. “Time after time, employers have tried to use the letters as a pretext to fire workers when they try to organize, file a wage claim or otherwise exercise their workers' rights.” The hearing comes after the recent lawsuit, filed by the AFL-CIO, the ACLU and others, over a proposed rule that would that would require that the SSA include a notice from the Department of Homeland Security along with "No Match" letters, instructing employers on the steps they need to take in response to the letter, including firing workers. The rule would allow the Department of Homeland Security to use the error-ridden Social Security database – a database where 70% of record discrepancies belong to US citizens – for immigration enforcement and impose fines on employers who did not terminate workers who could not reconcile their records within a brief 90-day deadline.