BOURDAIN's stunning love letter to Mexico and Mexicans

[BrotherIvan]

88. Anti-labor propaganda

Your responses throughout this thread are highly disturbing right-wing talking points and anti-labor in every way. This is not about Mexican/Latino/immigrant or undocumented workers. This is about worker exploitation plain and simple. Even when it was pointed out to you by fastsense that you were promoting this practice, you kept on pushing these anti-worker fabrications.

You are arguing that you pay undocumented workers less to do a highly dangerous job such as hanging from a tall palm tree by a rope with a machete because it keeps more money in your pocket. In effect, you are EXPLOITING workers desperate enough to risk their lives for what little work they can find.

That is illegal for a reason.

It is illegal because it circumvents safety laws & regulations as well as wage laws. The tree company likely charges more than an undocumented worker because they have to pay things like TAXES, workman's comp, benefits, social security, etc. There are underlying costs for a company beyond labor costs. As was pointed out to you below, they also provide safety equipment and insurance both for you and the worker.

Hiring workers outside of jobs that provide benefits is the same argument people give for paying nannies and domestic worker less than minimum wage and working them without overtime pay, vacation time, or health care. The reason greedy people give is that Americans are "too lazy" to do these jobs. But, the truth of the matter is they don't want to pay. They don't think their workers are "worth" more.

Then you gleefully boast that you hire undocumented workers because, "they would never organize." That is yet another reason why exploiting undocumented workers is illegal. Workers have a RIGHT to organize, and usually in Democratic/liberal circles we support union workers. We support unions because they empower workers to demand fair wages and safe working conditions. Greedy employers hate unions because they hope to exploit workers as much as possible, such as paying substandard wages and working in unsafe condtions like hanging from a tree by a rope.

This myth/propaganda you are trying to push that undocumented workers are living happy, prosperous lives on substandard wages is beyond the pale. According to you, "Also, how come these immigrants who aren't being paid a fair wage are surviving?" The answer is, they may be "survivng" as in not dead, but they are often struggling and barely able to make it--hence, they will take whatever work they can find at substandard wages. Pretending otherwise is more cold-hearted willful blindness that politicians and employers use against the working poor. You may have one story in your experience of happy field hands living in company housing, with "houses of both are full of love and children and wonderful meals and family." But that is rarely the case. Visit the United Farm Workers page or look up the million of stories of farm workers being physically and sexually abused, intimidated, threatened, their wages stolen, and on and on. Here is a video showing the inhumane conditions of farmworker housing:

http://www.ufw.org/_board.php?mode=view&b_code=res_multi&b_no=8189&page=1&field=&key=&n=218

We need to have strong policies of a path to legal status to PROTECT workers, make sure everyone is paid a LIVING WAGE and works in safe conditions. Dodging taxes and exploiting workers is nothing to brag about. As with any employer-employee relationship, if you can't pay the proper wage for work, then you can't afford it. Capital is trying to push wages as low as possible in order to reap the most profit; not only should we fight this by showing solidarity for workers, we should make sure we are not unwillingly exploiting others for our own selfishness.