Does American Made Really Matter?
Joe Smith started the day early having set his alarm clock (made in Japan) for 6 a.m. While his coffee pot (made in China) was perking, he shaved with his electric razor (made in Hong Kong). He put on a dress shirt (made in Sri Lanka), designer jeans (made in Singapore) and tennis shoes (made in Korea). After cooking his breakfast in his new electric skillet (made in India) he sat down with a calculator (made in Mexico) to see how much he could spend today. After setting his watch (made in Taiwan) to the time on the radio (made in India), he go in his car (made in Germany) and continued his search for a good paying American Job. At the end of yet another discouraging and fruitless day, Joe decided to relax for a while. he put on his sandals (made in Brazil), poured himself a glass of wine (made in France) and turned on his TV (made in Indonesia) and then wondered why he can't find a good paying job in
America.
America.
Yes, we can argue that looking for a job in tennis shoes and jeans, no matter how designer, is silly, but the point remains. I think about the fact that while companies such as Walmart say their products are made in America, often that means made in places like the Marshall Islands where workers are paid $2.00/hour as of 2011 which is considered to be a nonliving wage for the Marshall Islands. In our global economy, we've become slaves to the "cheaper is better but _I_ need a living wage" mantra. We can get caught up in the "this is so cheap I have to buy it" without thinking about the idea that nobody they know would accept a job to make it because the pay would be too minuscule.
I've been reading a lot of articles lately about the impact of Alabama's crackdown on illegal immigrants, and I've been paying particular attention to its impact on farmers. Articles like this oneinclude responses by the few Americans willing to work in the fields. I didn't do much work on a farm but I did have a Granny with a very large garden and family members who harvested tomatoes as summer jobs. After a few weeks of this labor, we all redoubled our efforts in school!
We have amazing farmer's markets around here where produce prices are usually similar to the grocery store prices. When I buy from the farmer (or from the coop he chooses), the farmer gets a larger percentage of the money I pay but neither of them is guaranteed minimum wage. When I buy from a grocer, I pay the grocer who pays the packager who pays the marketer who pays the farmer. Most grocers, packagers and marketers have to pay people minimum wage but once again, the farmer isn't. Do people stop to think about how each person in that link gets paid and how little the original farmer must be paid to get the grocery store price the same as the farmer's market price? If the farmer is making that much less, how much less must the workers be making?
I wonder if the Alabama legislature considered the delicate balance between what people are willing to pay in the grocery stores and how much farm workers are paid when they opted to crack down on illegal immigrants. I understand their desire to put Americans back to work, especially in a state with 10% unemployment, but there aren't too many Americans willing to do such back-breaking work for such little pay.
True, farmers could pay their laborers more, but that would have a direct impact on the price we pay in the grocery store.
Working on the farm is difficult, back-breaking work. Yes, there are lots of other jobs that are also very physically demanding but that steelworker's job has bathroom breaks and lunch breaks which your average farm picker doesn't get. Your average industrial grunt is at work 8-10 hours a day but works 7-9 hours. Your average farm picker is on the job 12-16 hours a day and will work 11-16 of them. Many of them start at first light, eat as they work, and don't quit until it is too dark to see any more.
A farm worker isn't required (in many states) to be paid minimum wage but the dishwasher in your average restaurant is. The waitress in the restaurant isn't paid minimum wage but s/he can make some extra money in tips that usually brings them up to, or exceeds, minimum wage. Few farmers will pay their work crew extra for getting the crops in early or fast; a picker's only reward is making it to the next farm where they can repeat this backbreaking labor all over again. The staff in the grocery store where you buy the raw food is usually governed by union or state laws that mandate at least minimum wage. Ditto with the workers in the companies that handle the packaging and transportation of the foods to the grocery store.
Yes, there are a few unions who handle farm workers but most of their bargaining is around living conditions (no, you can't pack them like sardines; yes, they need to have clean, water and toilets provided; etc.) and around toxins (no, farmers can't apply pesticides while farmers are working in the fields; yes, farmers need to provide protective gear for workers who are applying pesticides; etc.). For the most part, even unions targeting immigrant laborers don't push on the wages too much. They've watched the steel and car industries and know that in this global economy, cheap raw materials are essential for getting products to market.
So how do states like Alabama who have a heavy section of their economy based on farming encourage these out-of-work Americans to do this hard work?
I guess we could take away food stamps and other low-income help from these people who would rather be unemployed than work these menial jobs but I think that might undo the major inroads made in child labor, health and education. It's one thing for an adult to have consequences for their actions but I don't like punishing children for things over which they have no control. As a child of someone who would rather starve than accept help, I can tell you first-hand that when you are hungry, you aren't in a good place to learn or to take advantage of whatever opportunities come your way. Pride in one's self-reliance or self-sufficiency is is a powerful thing. It is a fantastic trait in a worker with a job but take away that job, and these people can get hard to see from sideways on.
How do you take Americans who are fed a rich history of worker's rights and convince them that working at any job is better than not working? That's a pretty huge cultural shift. There are lots of Americans who already have this ethic and, of course, all of them were immigrants at one point or another. How do we regrow this ethic among a group of people who have been told by their parents "I've worked this hard so that you can have a more successful life than I have"? By saying this in the first place, the parents are saying that working hard at hard labor jobs is not "successful" so the kids aspire to jobs where they don't have to work as hard or the hours aren't quite so long. If the kids do end up in a job that requires long hours or back-breaking work, they feel like failures who have let their parents down.
With the new immigrants, they are so happy to have a job that they'll take just about any job. They'll take just about any discrimination or abuse just to keep that job. Yes, illegal immigrants bear more of this than legal immigrants, but with laws like Arizona's and Alabama's on the books, immigrants both legal and illegal will look for better, friendlier places to live and work which leaves farmers and other people dependent upon cheap labor up the proverbial creek.
I wish the legislatures had ask the farmers how many Americans were asking to be farm laborers before they instituted this. Certainly farmers had a running list of immigrant laborers who were applying for jobs so if Americans were interested, they should have been applying, too. The same goes for hotel maid jobs and other menial jobs that immigrants tend to do. If Americans are interested in working them, they should be applying for them just like the immigrants do. When I talk to people hiring for these low-level jobs, they talk about the same immigrants coming day after day to see if today they might be lucky. The Americans tend to apply once or twice then give up. Do we need to teach perseverance, too? I don't think the Americans are lazy or unmotivated, but they have a very different set of expectations and skill sets that aren't a good fit for these sorts of low-level, menial jobs. I'm sure the immigrants would like to earn minimum wage, too, but they take whatever job they can get whereas the Americans tend to think that something better will come along.
This isn't an easy problem to solve, and there aren't likely to be any easy solutions that can be easily legislated. Like many problems, compromise is essential. Given the far-reaching implications of these types of legislations, this is way more difficult than rocket-science. At least with rocket-science, you have a whole slew of mathematical equations which form relationships between the many things you are balancing. With illegal immigration, there are no clear cut relationships one can determine.
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