On the eve of Thanksgiving, about 141 workers processing immigration forms at the Nebraska Service Center in Lincoln learned they would be laid off, effective Jan. 31, 2025 — a decision union leaders have characterized as the latest move in a national “union busting” effort.
The employer, ITC Federal, is a venture capital backed IT service company that provides services for government agencies. The 400 workers who punch-in at 850 “S” Street, near downtown’s Haymarket district, mainly handle the beginning steps of immigration applications for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
i.e. Collecting and opening mail, sorting applications, checking documents for errors, imputing the info on a computer, and moving them along the process.
The mass layoff wave was made official earlier this month, Dec. 3, when the Nebraska Department of Labor was notified of this action alongside the workers’ union — United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America, UE, Local 808.
Union leadership tells KLIN News they saw this coming, but hoped they were wrong.
Crackdown Campaign
ITC has employed the members of Local 808 since 2020. In early 2023, USCIS expanded the company’s contract to include union members at the Vermont (Local 208) & California (Local 1008) Service Centers. This meant that all three job sites shared a common employer for the first time since they’d organized. Collectively, their contract covered nearly 1,000 workers.
With newfound leverage, the locals began negotiations for a new three-year contract. The threat of layoffs loomed large during negotiations, with USCIS having announced a multi-year plan to automate much of the work currently done by union members. In June 2023, the locals successfully bargained for their platform — including the elimination of point-based attendance policies; full employee control over when and whether to use PTO to cover absences; enhanced flexibility in work schedules; and wage increases to account for inflation. The union made zero concessions on their platform.
Local 808 lunchtime picket in Lincoln, NE. 2023. (Courtesy: UE Union)
In the summer of 2024, layoffs struck about 450 workers in California. Lincoln branch workers took to the street in solidarity with their sibling local and protested the layoffs.
“They had the strongest union of our group. They were very helpful in negotiations and bargaining. They were the first targets,” Jackson Thomas, Local 808 Vice President, told KLIN News. “They had monthly layoffs over the course of this year. Now, UE Local 1008 no longer exists… So now they’re moving on to the next targets: Us and the Vermont Service Center.”
On Dec. 3, the same day workers in Lincoln received layoff notices, VTDigger reports 74 workers in Essex, Vermont, learned they would be let go — amounting to nearly half of the 170 employed at the center.
Thomas says these jobs have not vanished entirely, instead, they are being moved to USCIS “lockbox” locations. These employees, under a different contract with J.P. Morgan, are not unionized.
“They have lower pay, worse benefits,” said Thomas. While the overarching threat of layoffs looms at these locations too, “…it doesn’t look like they’re in a rush to gut those. So it’s kind of obvious at this point… a big part of it has to be union busting.”
While USCIS is a government agency, it is self-funded by the cost of application fees. Meaning these layoffs will not result in savings for taxpayers.
“It just really shows their lack of value for us. Many of us have worked here for a long time. We know what we’re doing, but they’ve just thrown us to the side because they have a slightly cheaper option at these lockbox locations,” said Thomas. “If you have these operations run by a company that’s beholden to their shareholders above anything else, it doesn’t make me feel like they care about the quality of our work… shuffling all of us around, what is it all for? To make their pocketbook look better for this quarter? What matters most is doing the job right. I’m not confident this is actually helping anyone. This doesn’t help the workers who process all these applications, and this doesn’t help the people trying to make their way through the immigration system legally, the right way… it just doesn’t make sense to me.”
Thomas does not believe these layoffs are related to president-elect Donald Trump’s forecasted crackdown on immigration services.
Recourse for the 141
For the 141 Lincoln workers let go, the opportunity is open for them to apply for their same jobs with in USCIS. Thomas says a single job fair was held. Workers who were interested followed a ticketing system, which ran out in a matter of minutes. Further, Thomas says ITC Federal has been “reluctant” to promise severance pay to these workers — which is routinely offered under these circumstances. Local 808 will be trying to bargain for it.
“We’ll see what we can do… the fact that they have so far refused any kind of severance is just appalling to me,” he said.
At this time, ITC Federal has not returned request for comment.
(Chase Porter, KLIN News)