More like indentured servants if the NYT has its facts in order. Here's the scam, recruiters charge people in foreign countries large sums to get temporary work in the US. After these workers get to the US they suddenly find that 3 years of work is really 3 months or none at all. And where there is work the conditions are abominable. These workers may not like the way they're being treated, but once their erstwhile employer has their passport and they have no money, they're kind of screwed. (not to mention being on the wrong side of a large ocean)
It doesn't take a heck of a lot of brains to see how this could happen, in fact it wouldn't take a heck of a lot of brains to see it coming before setting this system up. What you have to remember is this is work that Americans won't do (cough). While that is the rationale, the actual case is that it is work Americans won't do for that kind of money. Think about this for a second, if they are going to pay to import workers from Thailand, half way around the world, and send them back and still pay them here, there's a lot of money on the table. Unless, of course, there's some serious cheating going on.
Just exactly how brain dead do you have to be to not have a problem with THE WEALTHIEST NATION ON EARTH unable to pay its own people to PICK CUCUMBERS!!!??
In the morning I will go out in the snow and probably mud and start putting together the sticks on a new house. I'll spend a few days mucking around with my crew laid off because I can't afford to pay them for the messing about that it will take and it would mess up their UE checks late in a work week/benefit week. I'll do alright from the house, they'll do...ok if somebody else in their household makes up for what their wages are. Alright for me is skidding around the edge of disaster on a consistent basis, the guys are just teetering on that edge. This is so wrong on so many levels I don't have time to write it - or you to read it.
We keep sending our jobs overseas and giving tax breaks for doing it, our manufacturing, our tech work, and for pete's sake when was the last time you got a cold call from a Sam whose real name was Sam and not Jamilwabberjonkey. Do you have any idea how bad cold calling in this country paid? The jobs we don't send overseas (outsource) we insource. I'm not trying to kick anybody because of where they come from, but I'm real tired of watching the really fat cats of this country get fatter and sell out the workers of this country. There is actual unemployment in this country and then there is the segment that is no longer counted and then there's the segment that isn't about to go out into a job market that will just starve them. I'm not talking about lazy no good lay about drug dealing pimping wastes of skin, I'm talking about the folks that take one look at what they can realistically expect to earn and decide to stay home because it's ridiculous to go do it for that kind of money. Yes, we could do the good Republican thing and yank the safety net out from under them and say, "work or starve," so they'd go work and starve. What are you going to get from a Catch 22 scenario? A Yossarian solution, take your clothes off and quit.
Do I have a good answer? No. I have a partial answer, take away all the abilities to game the damn employment system, no guest workers, no illegal hires, a real wage bottom - tied to a lower "in school minimum." Oh yes, no games, full time students only. Get caught outside the rules, fines and jail time to make a hardened criminal sweat. The labor market will force wages up, it does not do so now because it is not a market, it is seriously gamed by the damn plutocrats. Just to make sure things are getting paid for fairly, a tax code that doesn't favor the plutocrats. Unless you're a tax accountant or use one, you have no idea how favored they are. By the way, if you happen to be illegally working, you can go home and we'll see if we can't work out a way to bring you in first, legally, and as needed. (as an alternative - see illegal employers)
Sound draconian? I'll tell you what's draconian, the life of trying to make it on the scraps off the table - in the wealthiest nation in the world.
192 comments:
I addressed this issue partialy in the last blog and comment. It never got published.???? Your point is well taken, some of us on fixed incomes of $20,000.00 per year would have a difficult time paying $1.25 for that cukecumber. We will not buy out of country produce, other than Bananas, so we do without...been a long time since we ate a tomato. Cheap labor really hasn't affected the price we pay for goods, the profit is just larger for the CEO's. Even the stock-owners are ripped off, although they get the blame. Sadder,still i9s going into the poor part of town and kids are wearing $100.00 Nike's. Oh well that's another story.
that does sound like indentured servitude. The problem as I see it Chuck (and we've always disagreed on these matters) is that if you start requiring that everyone hire US Citizens the cost of cucumbers or grapes or whatever else you want to talk about is going to go through the roof, and that's not good for anybody. You were absolutely correct when you said that its not that Americans wont do the jobs, but Americans wont due the jobs at the wages offered. I would contend Americans wont do those jobs at something close to minimum wage (which I firmly believe most employers in these types of businesses pay). I dont think that outsourcing and (as you termed it) insourcing are the problem. Free flow of goods, capital, and people makes for a more efficient allocation of resources, as long as we're careful to put good faith regulations on them that's ultimately better for the environment, the consumer, and the poor everywhere, because everyone is producing primarily what they're best at and wealth is flowing between borders. The system gets messed up in three places:
1) The point where we actually encourage what companies are generally doing anyway and give perverse tax incentives for moving oversees, where clearly the opposite should be the case
2) When there is an insufficient amount of moderating regulations to protect workers, the environment, etc.
3) When the United States, the wealthiest country in the world fails to provide a social safety net for the people who are harmed by globalization. We need welfare, we need to make health care a public good, and we need to keep programs like social security strong.
The advantage in theory of a guest worker program (not of the one you described) is that it takes people who are coming to the US anyway who are under the radar and puts them on the radar. We need to create legal means for people who want to come and work these jobs to do so. At that point employers are not able to exploit these workers by fear and ignore US labor laws including most significantly the minimum wage. That puts them on an even footing with Americans and the market that you talk about being unfree in this case becomes free. I still dont think under those circumstances Americans will be rushing to pick cucumbers, but the playing field will have been leveled to a reasonable point. Personally I'm really afraid of the isolationist approach to these issues, and I think the isolationist approach ultimately destroys the public sphere in politics, something none of us want. Its certainly not an easy question and it is one that will continue to challenge us a great deal over the next several years.
So, the argument is essentially that we need to import a serf class to do jobs Americans are too good to do? You can have it one way or the other, either it is an American job or it is a serf job (I don't care how you cut it, it is employment in America, so it pays 3rd world scale?) The Republican argument is Labor is sooo costly, in reality it's less than 20% of the cost of the product, double the wage and it's a 10% increase in price - on a $.75 item ??? On that $500,000 house you all are so glad to see labor at 50% of 1984 levels, you would see less than a 10% increase, but I'm pretty sure it's a better deal like this, just for whom? You get to make it up on the other end, bankruptsy, poor health care, lack of buying power, poor diet, stressed households, etc, etc. It ain't a free ride.
Now what are you going to do with them when they get tired of picking cukes? They want something as good as "real" Americans get. The next step up the job ladder get's its throat cut and you have to import some new ones to replace the ones that cut the next step up, so finally you've depressed the wages to what point? Are you going to throw them back across the border when they get uppity?
Why exactly do you suppose that around 30% of illegal hiring is in construction? It pays better than picking cukes, even as bad as it sucks now, it beats picking, even at rotten day labor rates it beats it. But what happens to us, me, my guys? How do we cut the bottom out and move up? Whose job do we take?
You buy the plutocrat's argument if you want, but I'm telling you you've got the worker's back to the very edge and when they fall off in big enough numbers, there'll be trouble. It's not as far away as you might think.
Kiss,
I have no idea, there is no moderation, no editing, and no comment shows as deleted (I'm the only one who can other than the author).
Here's a suggestion--start by enforcing the 13th Amendment:
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Chuck's posting isn't even about low wages; it's about bringing people to this country under conditions amounting to servitude. The worst-case that's gotten wide press is of course the Marianas, where mostly Asian women are brought over to work in factories, or often brothels as it turns out after the fact, from which they can't quit because they owe $1,000s of dollars to the importers and local collaborators. Then the products get shipped to the mainland with a "Made in U.S.A." label.
Here's the deal--anyone who comes to this country must do it under conditions that allow them to work towards eventual political rights and equality. If that is not the case, you end up with slaves, like the Arabian Gulf states. Our challenge is to figure out what the sustainable level of immigration is that will fill the empty jobs without depressing wages. Decide that level, and then take the simple steps--like locking up corporate executives who conspire to hire illegal workers as a matter of policy--to enforce the law.
Our current system of de facto amnesty for employers and illegal immigrants on the condition that the latter never gain political (or labor) rights, amounts to slavery.
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