Statement from the Communications Workers of America District 1 in Solidarity with the Workers on Strike at Delaney Hall

NEW JERSEY – The Communications Workers of America (CWA), District 1, stands in full solidarity with the people detained at Delaney Hall in Newark who have laid down their labor and refused their meals to demand dignity, safety, and freedom.

Make no mistake: this is a labor struggle. The people held inside Delaney Hall are forced to cook meals, clean the floors, and keep the facility running — for as little as one dollar a day. These workers are on strike to protest the unconscionable conditions they are forced to endure and the basic due process they are entitled to, but have been denied.

While the private contractors who operate these detention centers bank millions, the workers who sustain them are denied the most basic protection and respect. When workers in those conditions organize, withhold their labor, and act together to demand better, they are doing what working people have always done to win justice. We recognize a strike when we see one.

The labor movement was built on the principle that no person should be exploited, silenced, or treated as less than human because of who they are or where they come from. The demands coming from inside Delaney Hall — an end to medical neglect, an end to exploitative labor, the release of the elderly, the young, and the sick, and the restoration of basic due process — are the same demands for dignity, equity, and justice that animate our own fight every day. An injury to one is an injury to all.

We honor the courage of the strikers and of the families and community members standing watch outside the facility, and we defend their right to peaceful protest. And we condemn in the strongest terms the escalation and violence by ICE and state police against people peacefully exercising their constitutional rights.

ABOUT CWA DISTRICT 1:

CWA District 1 represents over 160,000 active and retired members across New York, New Jersey, and New England in public service, telecommunications, media, healthcare, manufacturing, and other sectors, including roughly 70,000 members in New Jersey.

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