WP: Help Wanted as Immigration Faces Overhaul

[primavera]

Help Wanted as Immigration Faces Overhaul
Congress Considers New Rules, and Businesses Worry About Finding Workers

By S. Mitra Kalita and Krissah Williams
Washington Post, Monday, March 27, 2006; A01


Year after year, Professional Grounds Inc. runs a help-wanted ad to find landscapers and groundskeepers. Starting wage: $7.74 per hour.

In a good year, three people call. Most years, no one does.

So the Springfield company relies on imported labor -- seasonal guest workers allowed to immigrate under the federal guest-worker program -- to keep itself running. For 10 months this year, 23 men from Mexico and Central America will spend their days mulching and mowing, seeding and sodding for Professional Grounds.

Occasionally, company President Bill Trimmer asks himself: If I doubled wages, would native-born Americans apply? He thinks he knows the answer.

"I don't think it's a wage situation. It's the type of work and the nature of the work. It's hard, backbreaking work," said Trimmer, who started the company 31 years ago. "I think we're a more affluent society now. They expect more. Everybody expects more. . . . I have contracts, and they want an affordable price, too."

Here lies the dilemma facing Congress as it attempts an immigration overhaul. Businesses say it is hard to persuade Americans to perform the unskilled jobs that immigrants easily fill. Significantly higher wages might work, but that increase would be passed on to unhappy consumers, forcing Americans to give up under-$10 manicures and $15-per-hour paint and lawn jobs.

[MountainLaurel]

1. One note

On their description of FAIR: an advocacy group governed by business leaders and activists favoring national immigration limits

The Post forgot to include "and funded by avowed white supremacists and pro-eugenics organizations"

:shrug:

[primavera]

5. Good point

Well, at least they described FAIR as an activist group supported by anti-immigrant interests, rather than letting them skate by as a non-partisan thinktank. I suppose we should be grateful for that much at least.

[proud2BlibKansan]

12. FAIR is a very RW group

They have been fighting us here in KS over instate tuition for children of illegal immigrants. They are very racist and ultra conservative.

[primavera]

14. And designated a hate group by Southern Poverty Law

If you aren't yet fully acquainted with just how thoroughly evil FAIR is, check out SPLC's report on the FAIR consortium of anti-immigrant groups. It's pretty seriously scary stuff, the only things these guys are missing are sheets.

[MountainLaurel]

15. Oh, he knows that

and has done research on FAIR for his graduate degree and for work. (I'm his spousal unit.) The fact that FAIR is often used as a legitimate resource by news organizations is a cause of much hollering and raised blood pressure in our household.

:hi:

[NVMojo]

2. I can't wait to see where all the rich hospitality industry owners

of hotels and casinos are going to get workers to clean toilets after the illegals are gone. Minimum wage is hard for the spoiled in this country.

[TygrBright]

4. Gee.... Maybe they'd have to hire...

SEIU members, and pay them living wages, dontcha think?

quel horreur!

cynically,
Bright

[Critters2]

10. Exactly

When did the Dems cease to be the party of Labor?

[TygrBright]

3. But he'd never DREAM of trying to find out...

>>Occasionally, company President Bill Trimmer asks himself: If I doubled wages, would native-born Americans apply? He thinks he knows the answer.<<

I would bet my house on it that if he doubled the starting wage and included health care, insurance, and other benefits, he'd be able to pick and choose from amongst a sufficiency of applicants.

And who the HECK gets a paint job for $15/hr? Cripes, last time I looked even the illegals were charging more than twice that, even if you supply the paint, ladders, rollers, brushes, etc. Getting a REAL paint job from SKILLED, UNION painters is worth the money-- you don't have to have it done again two years later when the badly-prepped surfaces start spalling and peeling, you don't have to pay someone else to come in and finish the skimped cleanup and finishing tasks, etc.

What color is the sky in these peoples' galaxy, anyway?

exasperatedly,
Bright

[primavera]

6. And when you're shopping at your local grocery store...

... are you purchasing the $5/lb locally-raised, free-range, organic chicken, or the 79 cent/lb Tyson's chicken raised in plants run largely by undocumented aliens? When you go shopping for clothes, are buying locally-made garments, or are you ducking into Mal-Wart and buying the $3 sweatshirt made in Burma by garment workers making 13 cents per hour in conditions about on par with a slave galley?

Don't get me wrong, I'm with you 100%, I think we do need to be hiring US workers and they need to be unionized and be getting decent wages. All I'm suggesting is that we shouldn't underestimate just how far-reaching the consequences to our pocketbooks would be of adopting such a practice. We like our goods cheap in this country and have come to believe we're somehow entitled to cheap goods, no matter how those ultra-low prices are achieved. How many Americans really feel strongly enough about this issue to put their money where their mouths are? Perhaps cynically, I doubt very many would be willing to give up the cheap goods and services if they understood that was the price they'd have to pay to support US labor. I hope I'm wrong, but Mal-Wart's reputation is pretty bad, yet people continue to shop there regardless.

[TygrBright]

9. I agree with you, and I'm not afraid...

...of higher prices at the grocery store, clothing store, etc. SO LONG AS PEOPLE ARE MAKING A LIVING WAGE.

We consume too damn' much in this country. Too much food, too much fabric, too much plastic, too much end product of the cheap-labor manufacturing processes, period. I haven't bought a new garment in nearly two years, but when I buy clothes, I pay a premium to get quality that will last, and I take care of what I have. I need only enough clothing for a eight days, I wash every seventh day, and if my closet is darn near empty on wash day it doesn't bother me. (It isn't, of course, since there are plenty of out-of-season and special-purpose garments stashed there, but sometimes the pile of t-necks is down to one...)

Most people have no IDEA how much fabric goes into landfills. Even many charities won't accept used clothing anymore, they have warehouses full. The chemicals used in synthetic fabrics, the sizings and fabric treatments, etc., end up in the watershed, too. I use my old clothes for cleaning rags to cut down on the number of paper towels I use (still too many, alas!)

Likewise with food. What's cheap? PROCESSED FOOD. The least healthy stuff you can eat. If the prices of processed foods go up to match the price levels of fresh produce, grains, dairy, legumes, etc., maybe more people will make the choice to buy unprocessed ingredients and make a couple of big healthy meals and put some in the freezer for when they need 'convenience.' And not all fresh foods are that expensive, especially if you buy and eat in-season produce. (Which our bodies are evolutionarily programmed for, BTW... the nutrients we need more of in dark cold winter days JUST HAPPEN to be nutrients found in cruciferous vegetables, root vegetables, fall-harvest fruits, etc., and the stuff we need during long sunny high-activity summer days happens to be abundant in spring & summer produce, WHO'D-A THUNK IT!?!)

Higher prices might make us THINK about buying stuff, stuff we don't necessarily NEED, stuff that costs non-renewable fuels to produce and transport, stuff that ends up in landfills and groundwater. It might make us think about how we eat, what we wear and why, what we choose to spend our money on. The availability of cheap crap is not necessarily a highly desirable thing for a sustainable society in an era of expanding populations and diminishing resources.

Everything has a price-- artificially subsidizing that price at the time of consumption only delays the payment in full that WILL be exacted eventually.

scrupulously,
Bright

[Critters2]

11. If more workers were making a decent wage, the whole economy would

benefit. Everyone...making everyone able to purchase better quality goods. Of course, we'll never know this becaue everyone from "progressive"Dems to pro-business Repugs is trying to keep wages low.

[primavera]

18. Hear, hear!

As a percentage of total income, Americans pay far less to feed themselves than do the populations of any other country on earth: we pay about 7% of our income for food. The second cheapest country is France, whose citizens pay approximately 20% of their income on food. We have got to get over this expectation that we are somehow entitled to dirt cheap goods and services. Unfortunately, that means paying people decent wages, which means the economy would no longer support the mega-billionaires like Donald Trump and Bill Gates and the Walton family and so on, which would mean our politicians wouldn't be able to fund their hundred million dollar election campaigns, which means it probably won't happen. Sigh.

[Gormy Cuss]

7. Yeah, why not try?

Why not try starting wages of $7.74 and benefits?

Nice of the Post to frame the issue by profiling someone who hires H2B visa holders, you know, guest workers who are here legally and not afraid to stand up for themselves if they have a sleazy employer.

[acmavm]

8. This crap has just gotten out of hand. Pay a decent wage

and Americans would be lining up to work. What the hell is wrong with everybody? Why all the negativity about AMERICAN workers? Too lazy, won't do hard manual labor, feel the work is beneath them. I'm so incredibly tired of that stereotyping. And that includes from the people here too.

I've done a lot of crap to bring in money when I didn't have a full-time job. And I know a lot of people who have done the same.

Now, since everyone is being so generous I think I'll pick out the laws I don't want to obey. I mean, let's be fair now. Illegal apparently comes in degrees, some of it perfectly acceptable. And I think I'll pick out a law for my friends too.

[proud2BlibKansan]

13. $7.74 an hour for hard, backbreaking work?

I think it is perfectly reasonable to expect more than that.

[MountainLaurel]

16. Especially since

In the DC area, the living wage rate is somewhere above $13/hour.

[Critters2]

19. The why were you so pissed with me over the weekend,

when I was arguing for a living wage? I gues someone finally explained thins to you in a way you could understand, huh?

[mitchum]

17. Maybe that CHEAP motherfucker Bill Trimmer should try doubling...

the wages to see if his self-serving chickenshit little theory is correct