Posted on 11/12/2021 5:40:59 AM PST by Theoria
Longtime field laborers in the Mississippi Delta said in a lawsuit that they were asked to train white guest workers from South Africa before losing their jobs to them.
For more than a quarter-century, Richard Strong worked the fertile farmland of the Mississippi Delta, just as his father and his grandfather did, a family lineage of punishing labor and meager earnings that stretched back to his enslaved ancestors brought from Africa.
He tilled the soil, fertilized crops and irrigated the fields, nurturing an annual bounty of cotton, soybeans and corn for a prominent farming family. “I’ve been around farming all my life,” Mr. Strong said. “It’s all we knew.”
Black families with deep connections to the Delta have historically been the ones to perform fieldwork. That began to change about a decade ago, when the first of dozens of young, white workers flew in from South Africa on special guest worker visas. Mr. Strong and his co-workers trained the men, who by last year were being lured across the globe with wages of more than $11 an hour, compared with the $7.25 an hour that Mr. Strong and other Black local workers were paid.
Growers brought in more South Africans with each passing year, and they are now employed at more than 100 farms across the Delta. Mr. Strong, 50, and several other longtime workers said they were told their services were no longer needed.
“I never did imagine that it would come to the point where they would be hiring foreigners, instead of people like me,” Mr. Strong said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Yes, those greedy employers, they’re always hiring cheap foreign labor....hey, wait a minute! They’re paid MORE? What’s going on here?
Maybe those who paid more were more productive?
Maybe they want American workers unemployed and desperate for money aka “Socialism”
This story is from the NYT.
Somehow I doubt we’re getting the truth about what’s going on.
When a class of worker is clearly shown the exit door and they do not take it during the highest demand in a lifetime, and then they sue to retain lousy pay and positions, it becomes clear about low wage workers, lack of economic intelligence got them in their position. There is something to be said for people who fall into the habit of being used.
White South Africans have no place to work other than foreign contrives, beyond the US, Canada and Brazil there is little place they are welcome. The odds that any specific south african stays in the low economic group long enough to form a lawsuit over a pay disparity for very long is insane. they are looking for enough cash to emigrate from a truely racist country to anyplace to restart without class by race represion.
Per day Farm work is for Teens to Twenties to do, it is not something to do to support a family, it is something to pay rent on the first place away from home. It is something to do between teen jobs and the 20+ million jobs sitting unfilled that take some more responsibility than loading cotton bails onto a truck.
Now I really smell a rat.
$7.25 an hour at 50 doing hard work. Wow, he could find nothing else to do for more money for 35 years?
Reminds me of the guy I read about that walked 6 miles to and from work every work day for 40 years, my 8 year old son asked why didn’t he buy a bicycle?
Maybe that's what he enjoyed. Farm work is hard, but it can be very enjoyable as well.
Wait I thought talking about blacks doing field work was racist, now it’s a proud tradition?
they were probably paid more because they worked harder and didn’t cause as much trouble. Blacks have no one to blame but themselves for the overwhelming majority of their problems, which is caused mostly by their bad behavior.
I have little sympathy for south africans, white or black. That is reserved for Americans who face a bleak future. The constant battles of immigration, outsourcing, global wage arbritage and government malfesance already but Americans in weak hand.
If he loves the work he will be able to find it, hope he does.
A Hispanic man who occasionally did some work for me is here legally and is now a citizen. In order to get work at a mushroom packing facility he had to pretend to be an illegal. He said that “Americans have rights but illegals, they work us as long as they want. I was working sixty hours a week with no overtime pay.” (He is terrified of authorities as he witnessed the police and military drag people from their huts and shoot them. So reporting these folks wasn’t possible to him. Also, it seems improbable that an employer this big isn’t known to the authorities for what they are. This was several years ago and the property they operated on was sold for another business.)
They can join the many black masons who were driven out of business by Mexicans who would work for half the price.
My guess is that the white SAs are working circles around the black folks, and not smoking dope behind the haystack, not stealing anything that is not tied down, not constantly carping and complaining, not constantly asking for an advance because they done spent their paycheck on a good time instead of the rent, not skipping out on work because they are “sick” - in other words, the white folks just plain work harder, thus the farmers are willing to pay more.
You left out "black time", i.e. showing up for a work day whenever.
It may be enjoyable for some but not that I have heard, my mom was in the cotton fields from age 6 to 16 during 1935 to 1945 never touched a garden again the rest of her life. My girlfriend grew up on a farm and does not speak fondly of the work she had to do as a child. Both hard workers but not on a farm.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.