New article for NYT to write:
HOW TO HIRE IMMIGRANTS TO DO GREAT JOBS IN DESIRABLE PLACES:
The script is already written - by 60 Minutes: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/are-u-s-jobs-vulnerable-to-workers-with-h-1...
Bring in legal immigrants using H1-B visas for well-paying IT jobs in San Francisco;
Have the native-born American employees train their replacements - if they don't stay and train their replacements, they don't get their severance package.
It's not just low-wage hard work jobs that are being taken by immigrants or being shipped overseas by computer byte by byte: it's jobs that require college training. It's computer programmers, engineers, accountants, and so on.
Ask not for whom the bell tolls: it tolls for thee.
16
The story of Illegal immigration and war refugees just becomes more twisted and warped the longer Congress delays new legislation.
We Americans can pluck our own chickens! Some people prefer 8-to-5 jobs where they can leave work behind them when they go home.
If no one wants to do a job, it is worth more. Re-read Walden II. The work that really needs to be done is that which puts a chicken in every pot.
Chevy
South Hadley, MA
14
wow, if we admitted lowest caste people from India, we could fill all those jobs us native born folks don't want to do and we could brag to the world about us warm hearted Americans willing to accept the poorest of the poor to work here!
14
Great! If we keep killing people in their homelands there won't be a labor shortage over here. What a twisted world.
2
It's entertaining to read comments from city people about how to fix a worker shortage in rural America. Clearly those commenting have not spent much time in rural America. It takes a certain personality to live in an area where you have to drive 30 minutes to a grocery store or movie theater. My rural relatives have to drive 60 minutes to get to the hospital. Not everyone wants to raise their children in a community where the local church is the social center and everyone looks the same. Also, many rural schools struggle at levels even inner city schools cannot match. Parents who work in slaughter houses or pick crops do not want their children to follow in their footsteps. They do the work to give their children a better life. Attracting workers to rural America is about more than wages. It is about the overall quality of life for families and opportunities for children.
8
This is why some refugees from war zones (many that were quiet rural areas too, pre-war) agree to rural US work, not just to merely save up money for expanded choices later.
Some might actually be overwhelmed - or even have their dormant PTSD from war zone memories constantly triggered - by our overpopulated, polluted, crime-ridden, noisy, & low wage service work cities.
Others might be seeing long-term rural opportunities a lot of the comfortably urbanized do not understand or are unwilling/unable to work for, too.
Ex. the chance of affording their own modest homes, crop gardens, have soothing pets, etc. w/o being hassled/regulated/taxed to death by snobbish urban NIMBYs, priced out by gentrification, or being victimized by gangs.
Refugees-turned-tax-paying rural workers can be active in local public schools enough to possibly demand investment in broadband Internet. This can supplement physical libraries & provide online schooling, mental health counseling, telehealth for physical maintenance, etc.
W/ freedom of religion & speech, they don't have to go to the sole existing church. They can worship at home or even build up their own modest, welcoming congregation.
They also don't need to be corporate plant workers forever, just as how those who arrived for California's gold rush & their descendants didn't stay miners forever either.
I agree rural life is not easy - but neither is chaotic city life w/ sickening traffic, joblessness, indebtedness, homelessness, etc.
5
Do liberals understand that big business uses these refugees to crush the unions? And that without the unions ordinary working-class people will only get their information about politics from television?
And this country was shocked to see a reality-TV star elected President?
21
WRONG headline
CORRECT headline
:Where Companies exploit desperate People Willing to work for Less
23
Anything, it seems, to avoid having to raise wages.
It is a harsh and uncomfortable truth that a high level of immigration is destroying the chance for the working poor, the working class, and the lower middle class to raise their incomes because it creates downwards pressure on the wage rate for unskilled and semi-skilled labor. Oh but the prices of the consumer goods the upper-middle class likes to consume will remain low, because, apparently, all that matters is whether that already coddled class is coddled enough. Hint: they never are.
Once, not too long ago, the left would defend the economic interests of the working classes. Not any more, it seems. Today what passes for the left is too obsessed with culture and racial issues, insofar as those issues can be divorced from economics, to care about the working classes. Hence, President Trump. Richard Rorty was predicting that this was going to happen in the 1990s, turns out he was right.
This is why the left can't win elections anymore and why they are headed for extinction: there aren't enough yuppies out there to win anything, let alone congress and the presidency.
22
People drive down prices at all levels. Why do you think Dollar Stores are so popular? Yuppies aren't shopping there. It's the working class and poor that keep Dollar Stores in business. All prices are artificially low. It's why companies make the packaging smaller for items like cereal or ice cream rather than increase the price. People are only willing to pay so much for a product.
5
Shouldn't all the economists be committing harakiri in shame at this development? We are told in Econ 101 that in a labor shortage wages will rise to meet the demand. Why isn't that happening? Why aren't the meat packers and grape pickers being offered $100 per hour? Could it be that economic "theory" as it is taught is really a religion designed to defend vulture capitalism?
22
"The jobs they offer are in out-of-way places; the work is low-paid and disagreeable; and native-born Americans, particularly white men, are generally not interested."
Anyone who understands supply and demand, and the graph that shows the market clearing price for labor, knows what this sentence means: Employers in far away places, offering hard to fill jobs, offering below market wages, have gotten comfortable knowing they can fill their jobs with illegal "immigrants" or other folks desperate for any kind of work. You will find this kind of employer fighting for Temporary Protected Status to be preserved forever. You will find them advocating for illegal "immigrants".
21
Doesn't anybody remember The Jungle by Upton Sinclair--about immigrants and the meat industry?
That was published in 1906. It was those horrific conditions that led to, among other things, unions for people doing this work.
23
I guess if they can't have slaves, they have to settle for refugees. (But they're hoping a second term for Trump will bring back "the peculiar institution.")
7
Your ideology is interfering with your hearing and eyesight. Trump and the Republicans are the only ones attempting to rein in illegal "immigration" and unfettered "refugee" immigration.
7
One of many of the ugly side effects of factory farming.
9
As I read some of the comments here I wasn't surprised to see many people arguing that better wages would make these jobs attractive to Americans. The real problem with that idea is that products coming from plants that pay better wages will cost considerably more than Americans want to pay for them. Those plants will go out of business because most Americans won't pay the higher prices. We are too used to paying less and getting more
13
"The real problem with that idea is that products coming from plants that pay better wages will cost considerably more than Americans want to pay for them."
Looking at one of the larger meatpackers, Smithfield:
Operating income: $800 million
Employees: 50,000.
So, by my reckoning, they could increase the annual income of each employee by $4,000, without changing prices in the slightest, and still be making $600 million.
The money is there. We as a society choose for the money to go to people other than those who do the work.
15
Will not be done because their stock price will take a beating and shareholders will revolt.
14
Doesn't Smithfield send its pork to China for processing?
Not sure the who, but a lot of US Comps, now send their meat to China for processing...
5
The GOP misguided their voters into believing immigrants take American jobs but few if any Americans want to harvest crops or similar "strenuous labor for low pay" work.
Trump and his cabal of GOP enablers must go.
10
Question Everything..........including your belief that immigrants do not take American jobs.
Barbara Jordan (D-Tx) was the Chair of The U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform. Read her words: "The commission finds no national interest in continuing to import lesser-skilled and unskilled workers to compete in the most vulnerable parts of our labor force. Many American workers do not have adequate job prospects. We should make their task easier to find employment, not harder."
Ms. Jordan died in 1994.
The Democrats used to be working for the American worker. Now they work against the American worker.
7
If all you pay is $11 per hour for hard boring dirty work only desperate folks will do it. Seems to me if not enough desperate folks available wages will have to rise as well as better working conditions.Chicken is not a luxury item that people will just give up
14
Why are we worrying about illegal immigrants when they are just addicted to supporting their families? Maybe the Trump administration should arrest the drug (job) dealers. If these companies' executives would be jailed for hiring "illegals" I am sure our immigration laws would change quickly.
4
Put both illegals and the owners and executives of the people who hire them in jail.
And deport any illegal and any 'owners and executives' who can be deported.
5
The jobs that these refugees are doing used to be done by Americans until companies moved their businesses to rural areas and broke the unions that provided good wages and benefits. "When meatpackers were unionized and located in cities lWe don't need more poor, uneducated, non-English speaking refugees. We need busineeses to pay a decent living wage
27
Meat rendering plants smell bad and gentrified neighbourhoods want them moved out of the cities. Then it seems few people want to live in small towns without reliable cell phone service, good restaurants or movie complexes. Gee why can't people be poor quietly and stoically like the good old days? MAGA!
4
Olivia. Yes. But that means wage increases all the way up the ladder. Stopping at the top 15%. They have enough...
In order for US consumers to afford products made in the US by well-paid American workers, citizens right? - everyone will need a substantial wage bump. When a package of bacon goes from $4-7, to $15-20 (and a smaller size of course) a lot of folks will be cutting back on their bacon fix.
Even with a wage bump, I don't think people will pay more for their favorite products. We used to value quality, which is why small businesses used to thrive on Main Street. Since Wal-Mart trained people to expect cheap prices for similar products, we have generations who have never paid for anything that didn't end in .99
2
This is indentured labor, plain and simple. No benefits for a year, crap pay, surprise extra salary deductions, and a "recruiter" who your writer depicts as benevolent because he buys desperate people air mattresses and pillows at Wal-mart. It's hearbreaking how grateful these refugees are until they realize they've been had -- that they owe their souls to the company store. Surely we can do better by these people, and the rest of us, by not scaling wages inversely to the palatability of the work.
16
I always buy Chobani Yogurt to support the immigrants that work for the company.
14
Hiring more immigrants is the key to a better and stronger economy. Since a century ago, from the earliest days of immigration through Ellis Island, the United States has grown to be the super economic power it is today. Back then they were often the grand parents and great-grand parents of Americans mainly European ancestry. Now we have a greater influx of immigrants not from Europe but other parts of the globe. That is what evolution and change is all about. A constant refreshing of the immigrant population has made the United States great and it continuation is one of the hallmarks which makes America almost unique in that respect. We are the World's melting pot.
DD
Manhattan
9
We are the welfare provider for Mexico and other countries........not the melting pot any longer.
Immigration has changed - and in the early 1990's, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), called for controlling our border: Sen. Feinstein described "the situation at the time in California, with 2,000 people a day “illegally” crossing the border, adding to the 2 million illegal immigrants already living in the state, “who compete for housing, who compete for classroom space.”
Sen. Feinstein further stated, "describe, in alarmist tones, the situation at the time in California, with 2,000 people a day “illegally” crossing the border, adding to the 2 million illegal immigrants already living in the state, “who compete for housing, who compete for classroom space.”
8
We don't need more refugees to do these jobs. Just pay Americans the decent wage they used to receive for doing this work before these companies moved to rural areas and destroyed the unions.
25
Talk to the factory owners and find out about capitalism before judging and condemning. Find a factory owner (big corporation, not a guy down the road) who will pay $15 an hour for this work AND provide health insurance.
Good luck. To you, to the desperate refugees who will do this work and, quite honestly, to all of us.
10
Right Dave, we can't have anything that wouldn't allow a factory owner to pay his country club fees.
11
Another story about immigrants filling jobs that Americans are unwilling to do.
Immigration suppresses wages because of the law of supply and demand.
Perhaps if the agriculture industry paid a better wage, Americans would be willing to take the jobs.
Also, it is not a sustainable model that relies only on immigrants to fill every unskilled job. With that unsustainable model, it means that we will have to have open borders forever to put people in under-paid jobs. Very few countries outside of the West operate like that, other models are entirely possible.
Increase the pay so that Americans will fill the jobs. Americans will pay more for chicken in the grocery store, but that will be a good thing - we are collectively overweight, partly because the price of food is low in relation to other less obese countries. Increase the wages and in doing so see Americans fill the jobs and see a reduction in waistlines, a double benefit.
Also, get rid of all of the factory farming, Americans will be more likely to work these type of jobs if they own or at least rent their own farms, instead of working on a factory farm.
26
My father, the son of a former slave, spoke of this type of mentality that condones stepping on and over one's fellow human beings. He called it 'hooray for me and the hell with you'. He said the problem with that mentality is that it will eventually bite the society as a whole in the butt. In other words, the exploitation of immigrants, both legal & illegal is blind to its impact upon the children, families and worldwide. The Ben Ladens of the world would never get a foothold, if the rich didn't feed off of the labor of the lower income and all of the middle class.
The children of immigrants today will become all of our futures. So I ask you what would you prefer? Paying an individual a fair wage, providing medical care, apprizing workers of their rights, offering a good education, decent food, clean, fairly priced housing, hence causing the price of goods and services to rise or hostile groups of chronic malcontent adults and children who believe they must oppress others to live a 'Kardashian good life'? Remember, you reap exactly what you sow. I'm guessing the DJT minded and folks who voted claiming they cared about jobs will get exactly what they deserve. . . nothingness, if you were not born with a silver spoon in their mouths. And no, I am not a snowflake or libertard but I believe in applying common sense rather than scapegoating buttressed by lying to address a crisis in morality versus mindless consumerism. rule #1: there is no free lunch.
12
When are we going to get back to regulating business so that they run right or go under? The corporate welfare state imposed by the GOP since reagan is the problem. The welfare to employees not paid enough to live on is subsidizing unfair wages. If we still had the rules and regs we used to those people could not get welfare or any assistance and would be forced to organize to get higher wages and the employer would have to deal with them as they would not be able to simply fire and replace them at will.
The issues of self government have always been the same; do we govern ourselves and make society fair for as many as possible or do we let others make our lives so hard we do not have time to spend dealing with the fake complexity they add to government and by that default allow those same people to govern us?
4
I know where you are coming from when you state "the corporate welfare state imposed by the GOP since Reagan". But you aren't looking at the whole picture: The Democrats used to represent and defend the American worker. That changed in the early 1990's.
The DNC now represents the immigrant, both legal and illegal.
2
One the one hand we have a wall, let's block them off and deport them as fast as we can, and on the other we have let's give you a job that we can't fill otherwise. Could the fact that legal and illegals get jobs stimulate immigration? But let's not do anything to hurt business.
It would seem that immigration policy would try to resolve this contradiction but with an incompetent and unwillig Congress and a presidient who would rather tweet and rouse up his base than do anything positive I doubt that much will get done. Perhpas he likes no solution because he can whip up is base forever.
1
Read about the life and work of Barbara Jordan (D-Tx) who was the Chair of the Commission on Immigration Reform during the first Clinton administration.
"Credibility in immigration policy can be summed up in one sentence: Those who should get in, get in; those who should be kept out, are kept out; and those who should not be here will be required to leave."
"The commission finds no national interest in continuing to import lesser-skilled and unskilled workers to compete in the most vulnerable parts of our labor force. Many American workers do not have adequate job prospects. We should make their task easier to find employment, not harder."
5
There is something fundamentally wrong with this picture. On the one hand we have a paranoid nativist as president nurturing bigotry and racism among his most avid supporters. Yet, on the other hand we have employers seeking the very refugees and immigrants disdained by Trump but with the condition that they work low-paying jobs with no benefits and most likely substandard housing if any. Is this ethical and moral? Is this not exploiting and manipulating the most vulnerable in our society? I have no sympathy for these companies. We live in a nation which is all about money and greed. Let these "entrepreneurs" roll up their sleeves themselves and use their own families to toil and sweat. End of story.
11
Immigrants are a good thing.
3
Kate Steinle agrees, made her whole day.
7
The welcome people willing to work for less - the capitalist owners couldn't care less about refugees.
Importing people willing to work for less, and moving factories to countries where people are willing to work for less has been the tool of capitalists to destroy Unions.
Unions would assure wages where one could bring up a family. You can bring up a family on what these outfits pay.
11
You could also reduce immigration, as recommended by The U. S. Commission on Immigration Reform. The Chair of the Commission, Barbara Jordan, D - TX, said this in the early 1990's:
"The commission finds no national interest in continuing to import lesser-skilled and unskilled workers to compete in the most vulnerable parts of our labor force. Many American workers do not have adequate job prospects. We should make their task easier to find employment, not harder."
This was during the early 1990s - when Democrats were for the American worker, not immigrants both legal and illegal.
3
Hard to understand how so many are on Welfare or aid to children, subsidies for housing, and SNAP if there are an excess of jobs that cannot be filled. Not sure why so many are in remote areas as those areas have never had significant populations. Progressives and Dems won't like this, but when you give something to someone for free, that is what is expected. Welfare reform instituted in the 90s under Clinton, but since gone, worked well. Why are we reluctant to bring this back?
To those commenting that pay is too low, I'm not sure of your definition. Meat packing pays $20 - $30/hour for starting level jobs. Not going to make you rich, but should be a livable wage unless you are the single worker in a household with kids. Sadly, housing and food inflation is well over 20% (inflation is NOT 2%). The government lies about inflation; changed the definition in the early 90s. We need an accurate rate of inflation if we are ever to see wages increase. And we need to stop building mansions and start building neighborhoods with affordable housing.
11
read the article. It paid that in the 60's not now. These guys are getting from 11-13 hr. Even in rural America with all the company store paybacks they have to make for a year it comes out to less than minimum wage. IDK where you are talking about but meat packing has always been just above minimum wage since deregulation allowed them to move and dump their contracts with union workers. if these guys were making 20-30 hr there would be no story and homegrown Americans would be taking the work. that is very good money to the poor.
The reason people need aid is the deregulation and anti union practices of the GOP. Didn't you know that Walmart made most of its profit by us government subsidy to its employees who need aid because they are not paid a living wage? This has been the corporate model since deregulation and was the whole point of it. Why would anyone go into debt to move to some rural community where they get to work harder than ever for almost nothing?
The only welfare that hurts the US and your fellow Americans is corporate welfare which has only gone up since the 80's when deregulation was used to end the protections workers had, free business from its obligations to society and to allow the taking of profits offshore.
7
What is your evidece that so many are on welfare, subsidized housing and SNAP? I suspect it is far fewer than you think. Illegals are generally ineligible for this type of aid. American children of illegals are eligible for SNAP or whatever else citizens are eligible to receive. The main government expense is public school education.
1
Ma -
If you have the time please read this NYT article from 12/21/01.
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/21/us/meatpackers-profits-hinge-on-pool-...
There are no more jobs in the meat packing industry starting at $20 to $30. Due to illegal immigration, which devastated unions, those jobs now pay around $6 or $7 an hour.
It appears that the blue collar jobs Americans would do for a fair and decent wage are gone. Those jobs that have not been outsourced to nations like China, have been decimated by the influx of illegal immigrant laborers who will work twice as long for half as much. The illegal immigrant does not work harder and longer for less money because they are more qualified and experienced, they do it out of fear.
Americans who were once able to provide for their families with these blue collar jobs are now pushed into relying of government assistance.
Now our American companies are turning to refugees to exploit, the only labor group lower on the rung than illegal immigrants.
This is just plain unadulterated greed.
18
Why not just bring back union wages?
Oh, that would hurt the bottom line.
Never mind.
I just don't see where "America" gains by allowing corporations to exploit desperate people willing to live three to a room into this country. We have allowed the pursuit of profits to bring back the industrial poverty we largely escaped in the 1960's and 70's.
40
When are Americans in general and especially Trump supporters finally going to understand that immigrants are NOT the enemy? Trump's grandfather was from Germany! For the record, almost HALF of today's Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their first generation offspring.
8
Trump's grandfather (and mine) weren't subsidized, literally, by American taxpayers. Refugees are immediately eligible for welfare and other means-tested benefits, unlike immigrants. The FEDERAL gov't provides these 'resettlement' organizations with federal funds. The organizations don't generally put up their own money, say, raised from donors. Once the federal funds run out, the refugee is thrown onto the state and local purses for support and assistance. Even legal immigrants who are unskilled and uneducated are a NET cost to American taxpayers, according to the report from the National Academies of Sciences.
30
Ali, I agree that the "feel good/let's include other poor souls in our democratic, free market US" diversity lottery, extended family-based chain migration, and refugee backdoors have cost educated, skilled, & hardworking US citizen taxpayers (both those born & bred here, as well as those like me who got naturalized after risking our lives/limbs as US military vets) a lot, only to get sadly diminishing social & economic returns.
Fact is, not every poor, persecuted person on Earth has the timely willingness or ability to be effective & efficient bicultural global citizens.
In fact, some of these legal backdoor immigrants act like ingrates who are: a) angry about needing to function in English (thus, they & even their kids turn our workplaces & schools into mediocre, reverse-racist Towers of Babel), b) shocked that they have to work hard, pay taxes, & keep good credit (instead of getting the socialist/communist/totalitarian regime hand-outs they're used to), and c) some even bring along abusive mindsets towards all females & kids.
While I commend the legal refugees in this story for having their solid work ethic, intact family values, & willingness to assimilate as best they can in picking up English & filling rural positions . . .
We need merit-based immigration to stay sustainably innovative & competitive economically.
Using naive, desperate, ill-suited foreigners as captive work/debt/vote peons hurts delicate environmental cycles & stokes violent social conflicts.
4
Trump is certainly determined to cut the number of legal immigrants coming to this country. Of course, this might be a reflection of his own personal experiences with immigrants i.e. Mrs. Trumps one and three. On the other hand, his Fla resort jumped right in last summer to hire more immigrants under the seasonal worker program. As to the reference about the low wages for some of these jobs and white males being unwilling to take them-- I wonder how many of these guys used to set around and talk about the dignity of work and welfare queens?
8
In a story about the worst jobs and who does them, one teaches beginning journalism students that it's necessary to have pictures of what it looks like inside those plants, to have pictures of the workers at work and to write detailed descriptions of what these jobs entail. How could you run a story like this without any of these things?
23
I wonder how many of them have read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle? Maybe it's time they (re)did so--and compare the treatment of those immigrants in the meat packing plants with that of today's refugees. Even the wages are about HALF, in real terms, what they were as recently as 30 years ago.
8
As the writer of this story, I completely agree that pictures inside the plant would be great to run. The problem is that meat packing companies I have written about in this state and others are private property and have never given the Times permission to take photographs inside despite repeated requests. -- Patricia Cohen
7
Not one mention of the fact that so many white Americans fail the drug tests administered primarily to gauge attendance and safety issues. As a result, the need for immigrants - especially Muslims who don't drink, smoke or do drugs - are better employees. Check out White Castle's plant in Ohio.
38
I have no problem with high standards for workers, but I want them to be paid reasonable wages, have safe working conditions, and to have their rights respected. It is true in these recent immigrants they are getting good workers. I would like to see them value them.
5
Do you have anything to back your claim that "so many" American blue collar workers are not being employed because they failed drug tests?
You really think an employer is going to be drug testing refugees and illegal immigrants when they don't properly verify a persons identity?
How is this the fault of the man or woman who got up and did their job well and took pride in the fact that they could provide for their family only to see their job shipped over seas or they were replaced by an illegal immigrant?
I'm sure the workers at Carrier and other companies who have outsourced jobs to China in addition to those companies using illegal immigrant labors, would like to know it is their fault.
10
Too many folks want to live in cities w/ all the infrastructure-based amenities for recreation, socializing, & other "edges" (ex. allegedly higher school quality, health care, fast Web speed, etc.).
Yet, too many of them no longer have urban living wage jobs &/or enough disposable income/robust credit/savings themselves to sustainably pay for such.
Too many city folk just get by on low-skilled urban service jobs (ex. exploitative "gigs" like driving strangers in underinsured cars) & too few manufacturing jobs - w/c are all endangered/cheapened by automation/offshoring/outsourcing.
City folk then demand rock-bottom prices for butchered meats & harvested produce.
Yet, when these same unemployed/underemployed, working age, healthy-ish city folk are given the chance to work temporarily (whether for select seasons per year, or a few whole years, to save up some $) in low cost of living rural areas for guaranteed $11-20/hr wages, w/ on-site cheap/free housing or free transport to processing plants & farms . . .
They don't humbly act like their Depression-era ancestors, carefully working in remote farms & plants - even if only for just long enough to save up for better future choices.
Instead, too many city folk of any color & residency status just whine for more govt. benefits & charity - while numbing/debilitating themselves on more drugs/alcohol/videogames/social media.
Kudos to our resilient legal refugees for their pragmatic work ethic & proactively planning ahead!
3
"nstead, too many city folk of any color & residency status just whine for more govt. benefits & charity - "
Right. Sure. Meantime the Trumpers whine and moan that the guv'mint won't make the jobs come to them rather than go look for work where there are jobs. You know, the same ignoramuses who whine about the big bad guv'mint all day, every day.
6
Fyi, I also refer to Trumpers (they're fully covered in my statement of "any color" and "any residency status") who claim they're "tragically" ingesting opioids and alcohol to death . . . because those highly romanticized manufacturing/coal-mining/whatever high-paying "macho white male" jobs should be "charitably" brought back to them - as their God-given "benefits" for being born of "white patriot descent"!;)
My hard-working, contractor white landlord in fact wants to evict his low-skilled, former drug & nicotine addict, state-funded college drop-out, unlicensed electrician brother from the family property for: 1) not paying his full share of the mortgage & utilities for the last 5 years, 2) hoarding his EBT junk in the fridge while displacing his working brothers' healthier stuff 3) watching TV & Web surfing pointlessly all day, while never doing chores or community volunteer work, and 4) ignoring the many local city Help Wanted signs and printed want ads for higher-than-minimum-wage California farm work w/ housing or transport freely provided (I see that ad yearly in my local city newspaper).
That middle-aged, spouseless, childless, white male freeloader claims the local city gigs and svc jobs pay too low, while his white skin is "too sensitive to back-breaking heat" to take on outdoor farm work, and that working in remote meat processing plants in cheap places like Iowa and Nebraska w/ dangerous machines is way beneath him.
If only we cld deport home-grown bums!
2
I just want to compliment the photographer for these moody pictures that create empathy for the immigrants. The man sitting alone in the middle of grassland in Woodstock is a great picture.
7
Mr Wiley is the company man and the workers who owe him for the "helping hand" they are given "owe their soul to the company store".
By this method the meat processor increases the profits that they pocket. But here's the thing they do not tell you; there is only so much profit to be made in this or any industry. They could pay a living wage and stay put so the workers to live decently and still make a profit. But if they push much harder and pay less than half what they should, use people like Mr Wiley as a middle man and hire only the poor or ill equipped for life in the US (this is where the real illegal immigrant story is, corporate use of them to refill the endless processing line system to prevent unionizing) of which their is an unending supply of since the destruction of our economy and society by deregulation they can put money that should go to wages and taxes and insurance for the many debilitating injuries speeding up causes into the profit column.
If all that money Mr Wiley is making and the workers are paying went into the wages where it should be, the plant couldn't run at such a high volume and create this false expectation of profits that are not rational to expect in a properly run industry.
But who cares about people when profit is all that really matters right?
27
$11 to $13 an hour sounds okay, at first. At least it is above minimum. But when you read further and discover that: new employees give up health care and retirement plan for one year in exchange for being hired; are charged $25 a week for a one mile ride to work from a coworker (nice coworker); are dismissed for infractions they likely do not understand; and get only 50 minutes a day to eat, rest, and use the bathroom at a grueling, physically demanding, dangerous job, you realize that these refugees are being exploited.
This makes me sad.
I teach ELL. Many of my students parents work in nearby chicken or pork producing plants. There are injuries, which our GOP legislature has made harder to be compensated for. They work in refrigerated areas all day. They are not aware of the protections that they have.
54
Big Ag execs w/ huge pay/perks - as well as their shareholders demanding high dividends - all pressure both directly owned & contracted plants to yield more products faster at the least possible bottom line costs.
Couple this w/ cities overpopulated w/ underpaid workers demanding cheap meat, then you have the perfect storm for entrapping hard workers w/ higher-than-city-minimum wage hourly cash and relatively lower costs of humble rural living - w/ no corporate investment in worker safety (including updated worker training and less risky machines to repetitively work with), workmen's compensation, and other long-term benefits!
This is why hard workers who are wise tend to just work in these corporate plants only long enough to save up for better options, like advancing/diversifying their education & skills, or setting up their own small businesses, in low cost of living areas.
Big Ag execs & shareholders all threaten to pass the costs of investing in long-term worker safety, better machines, and worker perks to workers, while never really offering to reasonably cut their own pay, bonuses, dividends, perks, etc.
Thus, I'd rather pay a little more (when I can afford to) for meats and produce from small-to-medium-sized, caring family-owned or workers' cooperative-owned, food producers that tend to be in blue states.
We need to re-educate execs, investors, consumers, and workers on valuing the human factor in food production.
9
Though New York City's mass-media central celebrates the DNC Politburo's notion of American sovereignty--open borders for any and all--the majority of Americans, it should be noted, believe that immigrants must use the "Ellis Island" means of entry if they are to become citizens and not sent back to where they started.
10
Your propaganda is belied by the facts. Processing plants who haven't moved import and employ illegals by the thousand all at arms length to give plausible deniability of course, while they wind up people like yourself to think they are trying to stop this with propaganda that make you angry and frightening to the illegals they imported so they are kept in line by you without you even realizing it. You are their unpaid enforcer.
Wage theft is the real American industry since we were a British Colony.
10
Grandfather came through Ellis Island in 1916 knowing not a word of English. Worked for the railroads, backbreaking, dangerous work at 16 for 10 cents a day. Thirty-five years later all four of his children went to college. Not a better country in the world. Don't like the work, don't come.
Greed is destroying even middle class jobs like nursing and teaching, nurses are responsible for too many patients and teachers teach too many students. The American work force is being destroyed by greed and budgets. Glad I am retiring this year, but I do feel for the younger worker even these hard working immigrants
28
Aboutten years ago, a ruor spread amongt the illegals who caome to Californai every year to work in out enormous Agricutruela industry. The rumr was that INS was going to vigoruously depeort all the immlegaswl. So, then did not come to California that year.
Even when the farmers offered almost 3 time the wages and benefits ( about twice what non-agricultural jobs were paying) that they were paying the illegals they could not get Americans to take the jobs.
So crops wer not planted, were plowed under or not harvested. The cost of fresh produce, tomatoes and fruit as well a s many other agricultural products in the USA doubled or trippled. Some farmers went bankrupt.
Farmers would hire American workers if they could find any that would do the work. Unfortualtely Americans would rather take Welfare if they can't get a desk than work the hard dirty jobs.
6
Shades of Upton Sinclair! We have learned nothing. Bring on The Jungle!
21
The American way -- let them in if they are useful for us and then, treat them like slaves. Yes, opportunity to exploit and make money Wiley. The perverted American dream.
15
There are many former Trump administration folks who are now out of a job. Maybe they too can fill positions that Trump voters, also out of job, don't seem to want.
7
We have visas available for workers in low wage industry. There is a a crab producer in Maryland who uses the H1B visa program to bring in workers from Mexico to shuck crabs. They bring in the same worker on a yearly basis and some of worked for the company for 10 or more years. Why? The company pays well, provides decent housing etc. and the workers are please and go home every year to Mexico, but come back when the company needs them for the crab season.
What I am saying you don't need refugees for the work if you treat your workers well as the crab farm does.
24
The trend is indicative of what Americans can't/won't admit; large-scale manufacturing jobs for middle class Americans are NOT coming back to the USA because the cost of labor is too high, and manufacturing is moving toward full-scale automation.
Meanwhile, those angry Americans who lost their factory jobs will typically only take them if they're union gigs (which the GOP seeks to destroy to appease their corporate backers), and the gullible Trumpsters demonize immigrants for "taking their jobs"....
14
In Maine, apple and blueberry growers are long time importers of foreign labor for arduous jobs. Many have been successful at cultivating long standing relationships with extended families in small Central American Communities and assisting members in securing citizenship for ones who return 'home' to recruit family and other community members.
The local home depot had a very tall...6' 10" Black immigrant assisting customers. His English wasn't the best but we chatted and he said he worked in the Apple orchards during the season....where his height was much appreciated and home depot off season. He recruited community members from his home town for local orchards
An outside recruiter interviewed for this article described his desire to recruit 'refugees'; I think working through local communities and with people who have become valued employees may be the best way of meeting the labor shortage.
3
If these companies paid a living wage and benefits them American workers would work for them
57
Californa farmers tried that years ago when the illegals stayed home. Even when offering twice minimum wages and good benefits, they could not get Americans to work in the fields. the few that took the jobs only lasted a few days becasue the work was too hard for them.
3
Jeff, what doesn't make sense about your argument is that a great many Americans want to allow the people who are "illegals" today, to become legal Americans tomorrow. So, if we allow "illegal immigrants" to become legal residents, does that mean that immediately they no longer will do this hard work? Does it mean that the minute we legalize someone's status, they refuse the hard work? If so, that means we are continually dependent on an ENDLESS FLOW of NEW illegal immigrants to replace those who have "graduated" to a more comfortable status and, in graduating up, now refuse the hard work.
I hope that everyone can see the complete unsustainability of such a scenario.
9
Jeff, "good benefits"....I bet, what did they actually propose letting them take bathroom breaks.
4
As long as they are legal, terrific.
4
At the current rate of staff departures, this may become the staffing model for the Trump White House.
8
This is why we continue to take in endless millions of immigrants.
To replenish or refill the slave wage jobs. After the current workers are worn or burned out, it is necessary to bring in a fresh bumpercrop of newcomers.
Most native born Americans know better not to take these jobs at such ridiculously low wages.
Same with the H2B visa workers brought in seasonally.
They put 6 into a rented room and sleep in shifts. The owners of the businesses always claim they can't find workers. Well no, not at the low, low pay they are offering. And the H2B workers MUST work for them or leave the country, so they are typically abused and do not know about labor laws.
Bottom line is it is greed. Typical, unabashed greed.
78
Exactly. Exceptionally low wage jobs offering nasty smelling, difficult work are being revealed as businesses which almost cannot operate legally. They are totally dependent on new refugees or illegal immigrants in order to operate, apparently. And, if we operate things with an eye towards a sustainable future, we do not want to support endless population growth and endless importing of more and more refugees and more and more illegal immigrants. This does not square with limited, finite space, a finite amount of natural resources.
These businesses need to be raising their pay, and improving working conditions. Americans can pay a little more for chicken or other meat, in order to support other Americans' livelihoods and ability to make a living.
Also there are a LOT of homeless people in the US (particularly on the West Coast) who say they are desperate for work. Now maybe they are all liars and none of them actually want to work at jobs that will lead them out of homelessness -- but test their claims, by offering them these jobs.
If a condition of receiving housing was that, actually they are required to work, and to take whatever job was offered that they had the ability to do, I think these jobs would be filled by Americans and we would reduce the number of homeless at the same time. Win-win.
13
Can’t we offer to re-home our own refugees from war-torn train-wrecks like Chicago and Detroit? I’m sure thousands of people who can’t afford to leave those places would welcome a poultry plant job.
Second and somewhat separately, I hear the constant drumming of “every job will be automated in ten years” and wonder “then why are we importing more soon-to-be-jobless people?”
So far haven’t gotten a very good answer on that one.
26
Would you work in a poultry plant, or a slaughter house, or in a field in the hot sun? Most Americans shun those jobs. We can't even find teengers to mow our lawns.
6
Interesting comment. I am well into my 50s and have never seen a teenager mowing their lawn. Most mornings (except winter) the roads in suburbia are filled with landscaping vehicles taking the gardeners and their supplies around. Most of the workers are Latino, many of the owners are Italian American or Italian. Was there ever a time when teenagers mowed the family lawn?
1
You're title indicates that this is a positive move. Yet's it's the opposite. Indentured servitude and exploitation at its worse. Bring back the unions.
73
Illegal immigrants are an unending source of cheap, powerless, and easily exploitable labor.
And they make a great bogeyman for right-wing politicians.
So nothing will change despite all the heated rhetoric from people like Trump.
26
As the first commentator explains, immigration is a more complicated issue than this article describes. Immigrants and refugees desperate for work initially benefit from jobs like those in the chicken processing plant and obviously the operators of the plants benefit. However, the situation is similar to American jobs being exported to factories in cheap labor countries except that the cheap labor is brought here. The factory owners can exploit the workers because they are in no position to object and they have no union or adequate labor laws. If we had adequate labor laws, then at least a few more American workers might take some of the jobs. Of course, without unions with political influence, we won't get adequate labor laws. The result is that unskilled workers everywhere are in a downward spiral. Education and training is only a partial solution. Limiting immigration to skilled workers as the current administration is pushing will only make it more difficult for skilled American workers to get good jobs. There is no simple solution to the plight of all workers but as long as the power is in the hands of the few wealthiest capitalists, it's not going to go well for the workers.
8
The New York City Schools were designed to enhance the upward mobility of the children of these 'cheap' laborers around the concept of a meritocracy. It was a model for the world; don't forget it since the semi-literate kid who enters K, may graduate with a specialized and highly marketable skill and entrance into the City colleges. Who else has a college to teach aviation skills or.....?
2
This is why Kochs and other republican donors love refugee programs and illegal immigration - It keeps wages low.
43
Americans won't and can't do the hard dirty jobs.
5
Because they expect fair wages and basic safety standards at the "hard dirty jobs" perhaps?
15
You have it almost right. Americans won't do those jobs even though they have the abilty to do them. It if doesn't have a keyboard and a screen, Americans won't do it.
5
“...the work is low-paid and disagreeable; and native-born Americans, particularly white men, are generally not interested.”
Wow, what a shocking journalistic discovery, American citizens won’t accept very difficult jobs for slave wages...perhaps the companies should apply a very recently discovered concept of offering higher wages to attract people, you mY have heard of it - its called the law of supply and demand
So basically, the companies want slave labor and want the rest of society to subsidize it through welfare, benefits, public schools/hospitals, federal housing, etc., got it.
You call this journalism?
Why doesn’t the NYT editors do something useful and put the companies on the spot, asking why don’t they increase wages, and why do they think their businesses deserve access to a permanent slave class influx into the US that the rest of us must pay for?
65
The American consumer is also to blame for demanding cheap product that cannot be produces at pervailing wages that Americans will accept.
6
Why don't you show pictures of the real jobs these refugees are doing at poultry plants and meat-packing plants where conditions are inhumane? The reality is that companies such as Tyson, Perdue and Hillshire Farms to name a few are not so "careful" as Mr. Wiley here, and hire undocumented immigrants to take care of these jobs in terrible working conditions. However, your editorial was very careful in presenting the material in a way that is digestible for the NYT American reader so they don't get too upset. Sorry NYTimes, you have lost your spine... For real facts and to see working conditions for these workers in an industry that makes over 30 billion yearly, please refer to the Oxfam America report http://latinasinbusiness.us/2016/05/25/memorial-day-latino-workers-poult...
16
I believe the numbers show there are 1000's of unemployed people living in dangerous neighborhoods in cities like Chicago and Detroit. You'd think they would jump at the chance for a decent job in a safe environment. A new life. There are times when the best decision is to start anew.
7
This isn't a decent job - this is indentured servitude. $11 an hour isn't enough to live on anywhere in this country; if these companies didn't bait and switch immigrants they would be forced to offer a living wage.
13
OK Laura, we'll just keep them jobless, aimless, hopeless. Living in crime ridden neighborhoods. Let's discuss how that story ends.
1
Thank you for this article. There it is, if you want to increase wages for low skill jobs, limit the number of people coming into the country.
We need to employ our own citizens first. I'm not talking about refugees, they are a drop in the bucket. Big business wants low-cost illegal workers. If we make it difficult and expensive to higher those here illegally, three things will happen: wages will go up (to what meat-packing paid 25 years ago?), conditions will improve and maybe those unemployed young man in Oakland will get a job and turn their lives around.
I'm glad that refugees can find half-way-decent jobs. I feel sorry for the folks in Mexico and Central America who want to improve their lives. But lets toughen up employment law and put US citizens first!
56
Maybe you overlooked one whole paragraph with clear stated that crux of the matter is that "native-born Americans, particularly white men, are generally not interest in the job offer in out-of-way places where the work is low-paid and disagreeable".
5
Exactly, Michael H. It's the stingy employers, who pay wages absurd to self-respecting US workers but enticing to people from places with even WORSE wage laws, wot make the "flood of illegals" come here in the first place.
Combine mandatory E-Verify with less creepy ID cards (no passport radio chips!) and tougher privacy laws (don't let megacorps hoard our SSNs to get stolen later, or let the TSA demand ID just to fly domestically!), and a $15 (or MORE) MINIMUM wage.
Require employers who flouted wage laws or busted their unions in the past to have interviews and management meetings (where layoffs, megamergers, and acquihires get discussed) videotaped by the government until they demonstrate full and consistent compliance.
Use our clout (greatly cut thanks to "covfefe", but we'll get it back in November!) to negotiate actual trade deals (not the pro-corporate vile TPP!) to make other countries give higher (NOT lower) wages and workers' rights to e.g. unionize.
Then longtime citizens and residents will have no excuse to say Dey Terk Our Jerbs, there'll be enough jobs available for refugees to have, newcomers who don't immediately and desperately need a job won't be enticed to try to get one anyway (and might even leave), and all the new taxpayers will pay off every bridge and road repair we need!
7
Until the Federal Government actually prosecuted all the companies using illegal workers, nothing will change. The US Government ignores the companies because enforement is bad fot company profits.
6
Mr. Wiley’s comment sums up the situation of labor today, the attitude of at least one comment or who feels its o.k. to abuse people if they aren’t as well educated or fortunate as yourself, while the attitude of Mr. Wiley seems to be these folks are in a “dire” situation, get ‘em while they are down, documented citizens or otherwise(attributable to his Southern Roots perhaps)willing to work for half what they were paid forty years ago and apparently willing to sleep on the floor, several to a room, sort of Twenty First Century Slavery, . If this is indeed the prevailing attitude of management and shareholders it is probably time to bring out the pitchforks. Violence is what it took for the Unions to get workers rights decades ago, history seems to have taught us from revolutions eternal that is the only way the wealthy are willing to part with any of their money. “Fair “ is not part of the capitalist lexicon.
32
There are supply and demand curves for labor and where those two curves intersect sets the price for labor. Instead, businesses today set the price of low wage labor artificially low and then claim no one will do the job. Supply and demand tells us that the businesses need to respond by raising wages, not encouraging an endless supply of recent immigrants to undertake their poor paying jobs for the cheapest.
37
"Yet companies that turn to labor recruiters like Ray Wiley tend to have an especially tough time: The jobs they offer are in out-of-way places; the work is low-paid and disagreeable; and native-born Americans, particularly white men, are generally not interested."
A common talking point takes the position that native-born white (and privileged) American workers are just too lazy to work hard, low wage jobs and therefore the US needs to increase its uptake of immigrants or those jobs simply won’t get done. But the US already has far and away the greatest number of immigrants of any country in the world and presumably many of the recent, non white immigrants here now are passing on those low wage jobs as well. Businesses don’t just want immigrants, they need a continuing flow of the most vulnerable, first generation immigrants to do the job at the cut rate price they demand with as few protections as possible.
77
You are right about the USA having the greatest number of immigrants in the world. That is how we were formed. We all are immigrants or decendants of immigrants.
5
It would be an interesting experiment for a deep pocketed do-gooder, whether government or individual, to set up or take over one of these meat processing plants and raise the pay scale to the market clearing rate necessary to attract American workers to exclusively staff the plant.
I wonder how much those higher wages would add to the cost of a pound of boneless, skinless chicken breast.
8
First off, raising the hourly wage off all plant workers to at least $15 after making the multimillion dollar purchase of one of these businesses would require charging significantly more per pound for the chicken it processes. Unless this change were made by every single chicken processing plant at the same time, the market would favor the less expensive chicken produced by workers earning $11/hour. There's no economic incentive for any chicken processing plant owner to offer a living wage.
3
That is why I suggested a deep pocket entity willing to absorb the cost of the higher wages to attract American workers while selling the product at a market price set by immigrant wages. I'm not sure what the market clearing wage would be, nor what the resulting price of chicken would be if an American market clearing wage was paid.
Coal mines and steel mills were never pleasant places to work, but by paying sufficiently high wages people were willing to work there. Might that also hold true for meat processing?
1
Economics 101. Supply and demand. If you are having trouble finding employees, you are not paying them enough. If you cannot retain employees, you are not paying them enough. This applies to immigrants, and to citizens. Pay more for the job, and you will find willing workers.
103
I'm all for paying higher wages to workers at the hamburger chains, but how much will the public pay for a hamburger?
I read a lot of articles like this, and I read even more comments on the subject. I'm often left wanting. For what?
I'd like to see an article that discusses "the cost of labor." Not "labor costs," or "wage costs," but what the value of unskilled manual labor is in the United States.
Lots of comments refer to strong unions and living wages. These things are laudable institutions and goals, but ultimately all of our best laid plans need to mesh with some basic laws of economics.
Unskilled manual labor should pay, but that pay should absolutely be at the lowest end of the scale. Why? Because unskilled manual labor is a commodity that nearly every able bodied working-age adult can offer. Nobody, anywhere, ever will pay more for a commodity like that than the laws of economics will dictate.
Perhaps part and parcel with the discussion of what "the cost of labor" is, should be a discussion about what sort of lifestyle one might expect to live based on a life of labor. It isn't a middle class one, nor should it be.
While I'm moving away from the subject matter here, Its my opinion that a middle class lifestyle is a reward, not an entitlement. In arguing to provide middle class wages for low-class work, we're demeaning the middle class dream for everybody else - everybody, that is, who has learned a skill.
13
"Perhaps part and parcel with the discussion of what "the cost of labor" is, should be a discussion about what sort of lifestyle one might expect to live based on a life of labor. It isn't a middle class one, nor should it be."
Why not, exactly? In one sense, isn't the cost of labor, essentially, a living wage? That is, a wage that pays enough to sustain a living person on the food and shelter that they need in order to be able-bodied to perform at their labor in the workplace each day? I find it interesting, in this article, that the migrant worker pointed out stated he would "want to go where they pay the most money and charge the least for rent.” There are a surprising number of working homeless people I've noticed in NYC these days.
Why shouldn't people who do some of the most difficult work have a middle-class lifestyle--including immigrants and refugees? Why exactly don't they deserve it? I find it inhumane to suggest that they don't.
7
It's interesting how we refer to "unskilled" jobs -- the assumption that anyone can come in and do it. But as was mentioned in the article, the poultry plan job entails some physical strength and surely concentration and the ability to keep up with unending conveyer line of chickens, not to mention adhering to the company's strict rules. It sounds easy, but honestly, I don't know too many people that could keep that up for an extended period of time, myself included in my younger years.
I worked a white collar job behind the scenes in an office but had the opportunity to regularly observe and hear the interactions of our front office receptionist. She was paid significantly less than everyone else because of the perceived unskilled nature of the job yet she was very skilled in her job. People in the office avoided stepping up to the front line when she was away because honestly they did not have the skill and grace that she did to handle the pressure.
Unskilled? No -- it's our perception that "anyone" can do it, but in reality these jobs rarely can be properly done by just anyone. This is just a way to demean a job and pay those in it less than they deserve. I'm not saying these jobs should be paid equivalent to other highly skilled jobs, but surely those in them deserve a living wage at the least.
34
So you support a permanent underclass of slave wage workers. How Ayn Rand and Paul Ryan of you.
Australia decided they have had enough of that attitude. They enacted a 15 hr. minimum wage. It is now 18.29.
9
If we moderate present record rates of immigration, who will do the grimy, greasy jobs?
To answer this trick question from the cheap labor lobby, we have to ask two other questions.
Who used to do the same jobs in America, often via strong labor unions?
And why do the same jobs in present day Scandinavian countries pay so much more than current American wages; why does a hamburger flipper at a Swedish McDonalds belong to a strong union and make over $20 an hour?
In America's moderate immigration years -- up to around 1970 -- meatpacking became a good, safe unionized job. When immigration began to skyrocket, companies like IBP saw the opportunity to take the meatpacking business away from established companies with labor union contracts. And migrant agricultural labor in the late 1950s and early 1960s earned more than twice what it does today in inflation-adjusted dollars.
In Scandinavian countries, immigration never got high enough to distort the labor market. And the need to protect their own labor markets is why the Scandinavian countries have all lowered the number of refugees they will accept.
After forty years of explosive growth in immigration, American has to relearn that the answer to who will do the jobs is to elevate the jobs, not cheapen the workers.
And American journalists should learn some more American history, in order to give articles like this the perspective they sorely need.
118
Great comment, thank you from a member of LIUNA, Laborers International Union of North America; business loves supply/ demand, until it pertains to labor, than its "we cannot fill our demand..."
16