Working at a chicken plant is honest but unpleasant work. If the NYT cares so much about "inequality", why doesn't it support immigration enforcement that will enable American citizens who do these tough jobs to be paid more?
Related thread: Rank-and-File Workers Get Bigger Raises. Short supply of labor, minimum-wage rises and increased poaching have helped lift wages for lower-income workers.
Let’s hope Pres. Trump puts the full package out there. This should be part of a Comprehensive Immigration Enforcement bill, missing since 1987 ONE TIME amnesty. The List of Comprehensive Immigration Enforcement, missing since 1987 goes like this -
1) southern barrier;
2) require eVerify to hire;
3) end all chain migration;
4) birthright per Minor v. Happersett (plural parents);
5) end work visas;
6) 10-year moratorium on all new applications for citizenship (40 years to allow workplace automation effects on downsizing population);
7) Set up an illegal aliens’ victim restitution fund.
Enactment of these provisions will motivate illegal aliens to SELF-deport, and remove colonizadors from our welfare rolls.
The 2006 Swift Raids Assessing the Impact of Immigration Enforcement Actions at Six Facilities
I dislike posts like this because I don’t subscribe to the NYT, I can’t read it. I won’t give them a dime. So, I say either point to a similar source for the study or don’t post it at all.
Having worked at a cannery cleaning fish, I have to agree that it is probably really tough work.
...and the reason that it is really tough work is because the plant operators see no need to invest in automation, since they have a steady stream of desperate (and capable) people willing to do the work. Cut off that pipeline and operators will either pay enough to find Americans willing to work that hard, or they will automate (or both). It’s not hard to do.
They didn't "come at the Hispanic race," they arrested illegals.
He did not know the time before Hispanic workers began arriving in the heart of chicken country by the thousands, recruited by plant managers looking to fill low-paying jobs in an expanding industry.
And why aren't the people who brought them in being prosecuted?
The owner of Koch Foods, Joseph Grendys is worth $2.8 billion and lives “relatively modestly in the Chicago bungalow where he grew up and drives a beat-up old Cadillac.
I said FULL.
People will do tough jobs if they are sufficiently remunerated.
Cut off the supply of foreign serfs and the companies will 1) have to hire locals and 2) pay them sufficiently and 3) improve working conditions such that they can retain people, just like every other employer in America.
I have heard horror stories in other industries, even professional, where people on iffy immigration status are abused because they really can’t say anything. Force companies to hire Americans, or at least legal residents who have access to the law and magically work conditions improve or they leave.
I live in the middle of the area where all these raids happened, here’s my opinion on some of the points.
First, e-verify is a joke. It’s designed to be a joke so as to enable illegals to defraud the system just like the rest of our immigration laws. Mississippi actually requires employers to use it but it’s irrelevant if it’s a useless system that is designed from the beginning to allow illegals to slip through.
Second, there is a huge population in the immediate area of these plants that is unemployed and perfectly capable of doing these jobs. They’re all on welfare though and welfare pays better than working in a chicken plant. That’s why the plants bring in illegals instead of hiring locals. I remember in the late 80’s when the plants went from almost all black workers to all illegals, it happened almost overnight and my dad had to hire a Spanish interpreter at his tax prep business. The illegals live 20 to a trailer, work hard for low wages, and show up for work on time. They don’t back talk when told to do something hard. The locals show up drunk or not at all, slack on the job and balk at hard work. Given the choice between getting $50k a year in welfare for nothing and making $30k in a chicken plant working in hard, disgusting conditions they pick the former so instead of paying more the plants bring in illegals. Trust me, they know they’re hiring illegals, they’ve known it all along. The whole act of not knowing they were illegal is BS, everybody knew they were illegals but all the plants care about is plausible deniability, don’t ask don’t tell.
Any fix is going to have to involve huge reforms to our bloated welfare system so locals can’t sit at home watching TV for more money than they can make working. I don’t see congress having the guts to cut money to the welfare queens, it’s too politically unpopular.
And what happened to the tax dodging compa6that hired them?
And the NYSlimes is now advertising an “expose`” on Gallagher and how some of the cowards around him “were so brave in their unprecedented action of betraying the brotherhood, but it didn’t go how they expected”...
If they honestly had to compete for American workers they could manage to improve the conditions. They’d also pay more so more automation would be justified, too.
For the right price, even that kid who lasted only 3 hours would have done the job.
Every city in America has garbage collectors and they are paid well above what we’re paying illegals to do our chicken work.