Martin O'Malley Makes Nevada Stop About Workers, Immigration.NBC

Standing outside the gleaming Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, called for two things: immigration reform and bargaining rights for workers.

"If we want our economy to grow, we need to treat our workers with dignity and respect, pay them better and respect their right to organize," O'Malley said. He listed that as one of two things that he said GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump does not understand.

"Secondly, in every generation, new American immigrants have made our economy stronger and have made our economy better," O'Malley said Wednesday in a news conference and rally of Trump hotel workers demanding union organizing rights.

While often treated as separate issues, for Latinos, work and immigration are very connected. . .

Many immigrants do not unionize because of concerns about its effect on their ability to remain in the U.S., even if they are legally present.

O'Malley tied collective bargaining and union membership to wealth gaps in the U.S. saying "70 percent of us are earning the same or less than we were 10 years ago."

"We have so concentrated wealth in the hands of so few that it is literally taking opportunity out of the homes and the wallets and the neighborhoods of the many," he said.

As of July 2015, 24.4 million Latinos over the age of 16 were employed, according to a National Council of La Raza's monthly job report. Sixty-six percent of the Latino population over age 16 is in the labor force.

In 2007, 56.1 percent of Latino workers were foreign born, but Pew Research Center noted last summer that for the first time in nearly two decades, immigrants were no longer the majority of Latino workers.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/martin-omalley-makes-nevada-stop-about-workers-immigration-n412726