Posted on 05/02/2006 12:28:19 PM PDT by Rick_Michael
NEW YORK (CNN) -- We all awoke to headlines in our nation's most important newspapers reminding us that this is "A Day Without Immigrants." Not illegal immigrants, mind you, but immigrants.
~SNIP~
"The meat packers are confirming what we know," says University of Maryland economics professor Peter Morici, "and that is that this large group of illegal aliens in the United States is lowering the wage rate of semiskilled workers, people who are high school dropouts or high school graduates with minimal training."
In fact, a meat-packing job paid $19 an hour in 1980, but today that same job pays closer to $9 an hour, according to the Labor Department. That's entirely consistent with what we've been reporting -- that illegal aliens depress wages for U.S. workers by as much as $200 billion a year in addition to placing a tremendous burden on hospitals, schools and other social services.
~SNIP~
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
i did temp day labor in a meat packing plant for $7 in 1987.
fwiw- it was crappy pay then
WOW!
can't wait utnil the media whouts this one from the rooftops and DC realizes that all the hype has been wrong....waiting........waiting.......
$19 an hour in 1980 is amazingly awesome. And it's not bad today. More than what I'm making.
But Bush says we can't survive without them...
The unions drove meatpackers out of business. Then tose packinghouses left standing consolidated operations into the rural midwest and imported illegal labor to fill the jobs at low wages.
Are you saying that wages went down that quickly or rather wages were at that position already and had always been that way? 19 vs 7 is a big difference in the 80's.
A fifty percent drop in wages, good new, atleast from Dane's persepctive.
Not that I expect him to take a paycut.
I don't recall hearing of a single case of E. coli in 1980.
I pack meat but don't get paid. My little SUV can pack alot of roadkill meat between it and the pavement!
And shoeing horses was a good paying job 100 years ago.
Dobbs doesn't get it.
So they went from extremely high wages to extremely low wages? How interesting.
It may have been $19 for a senior packer in a union shop in a large northeastern city at a meat packing plant where the chief customer was corrupt gov't institutions who didn't mind overcharging.
I bet Lou Dobbs doesn't complain when he pays $2.99/lb for beef when it might be $7.99 if we were still overpaying a relatively low skilled worker.
I have compassion for those who come here looking for a better life but they do lower wages, that is a fact. I heard an illegal say the other day that they build the roads and highways, a job Americans won't do. That is a job that Americans used to do, with pride, but the wages have been so lowered that it is not worth it. One can live on that wage when you have 10 people living together.
"Dobbs doesn't get it."
What specifically doesn't he get?
Illegals negatively impact Wages... Hell thanks to our government even legals via the H1-B do the same thing... Government has been selling us down the tubes for a while, and both parties are guilty of it.
Breadstown, Illinois has been completely destroy by Cargil. the population is now 80% mexican. Once upon a time you could supoort a family with a stay at home mom by being a butcher.
Reagan (or Truman) wouldn't have blinked at your threat, you puke.
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