When "boxed beef" became the new concept, these packers did EVERYTING they could to import cheap labor to the new, rural locations. But note what they did not do - move to Mexico. Why? Because the whole damned food industry imported Mexicans - blatantly, knowingly, sending buses to Mexican towns. That way they keep their subsidies AND get their cheap, powerless foreign labor.
How can you possibly fight the power of capital by supporting the supply of illegals?
The Left has to fucking grow up. Legalization of drugs means REGULATION of drugs - marijuana with a tax stamp. Legalization of illegal workers means REGULATION of immigration. I want illegal workers to be CITIZENS of the country in which they produce, so they have all the rights they can get.
An "undocumented" life is a bullshit life. It's a lie. Let workers be citizens where they work or let them work where they are citizens.
boddi
On 12/19/06, Yoshie Furuhashi <critical.montages at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/19/06, boddi satva <lbo.boddi at gmail.com> wrote:
> > These ICE raids on the meatpacking industry come only after decades of
> > racketeering throughout the food industry where packers, producers and
> > distributors blatantly and deliberately import illegal labor to force
> > down wages.
>
> You got the chronology wrong. The meatpacking industry first busted
> unions and forced down wages through bankruptcies, concession
> bargaining (eventually accepted by UFCW), and ruralization of jobs.
> Then, meatpacking jobs became jobs for which only desperate
> undocumented workers would apply.
>
> <blockquote>Between 1980 and 1982, 35 meatpacking plants across the
> country closed when workers, backed by the UFCW, refused to accept
> concessions. Faced with the prospect of even greater losses, the UFCW
> decided to back down. As early as 1981, the union was calling for
> workers to accept retrenchments as a means of "achieving bargaining
> stability and developing an avenue of recovery for the future."
>
> After Wilson Foods, one of the big five in meatpacking, filed for
> bankruptcy in 1983, Hormel joined other companies in the industry to
> take a strong stand against workers throughout the chain.
>
> "Wilson's Chapter 11 was the straw that broke the camel's back," a
> UFCW official said. "We had to make a decision to allow the industry
> to go non-union at $5 and $6 an hour rates with re-opened plants, or
> to retrench within the industry and hold the concessions between $8
> and $9 an hour, maintaining the vehicle [the union] that would bring
> wages and benefits back up."
>
> "We made the decision, rightfully or wrongfully, to retrench," the
> official explained. ("Concessions and Convictions: Striking
> Meatpackers Face-Off Against the UFCD and Hormel," Multinational
> Monitor 7.5, 15 March 1986,
> <http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1986/0315/concessions.html>)</blockquote>
>
> The struggle of Local P-9 that Peter Rachleff chronicled in
> Hard-Pressed in the Heartland: The Hormel Strike and the Future of the
> Labor Movement (1993,
> <http://www.southendpress.org/2004/items/HardPressed>) and Barbara
> Kopple captured in American Dream (1990) was probably the old union
> rank and file's last stand. And they lost, for most of the rest of
> the American working class failed to stand in solidarity with them,
> and here's the result.
>
> <blockquote>In 1970 the typical American meatpacking worker earned
> about 20 percent more than the typical factory worker. Today he or she
> earns about 20 percent less. Enormous changes have swept through the
> industry over the past thirty years, as big companies swallowed up
> small ones, moved slaughterhouses from urban areas (where unions were
> strong) to rural areas (where unions were weak), imported poor
> immigrants from Mexico and ruthlessly cut wages by as much as 50
> percent. Today meatpacking workers have one of the lowest-paid
> manufacturing jobs in the United States--and one of the most
> dangerous. At a modern slaughterhouse hundreds of people work at a
> furious pace, close to one another, wielding sharp knives. The most
> common injury is a laceration, as workers stab themselves or a worker
> nearby. (Eric Schlosser, "Hog Hell," 27 August 2006 [online], 11
> September 2006 [print],
> <http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060911/schlosser>)</blockquote>
>
> Now, the new union rank and file _are_ immigrant workers, with or
> without papers, and they are the ones with whom we must stand in
> solidarity. Unions understand that, too.
>
>
> On 12/16/06, Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Just out of curiosity, is there much immigration INTO Mexico?
>
> <blockquote>Immigration into Mexico is comparatively meager. The
> foreign-born population increased between 1990 and 2000 by slightly
> more than 150,000, amounting in the year 2000 to around half a million
> persons. This represents half a percentage point of Mexico's total
> population. Among those aged five and older, the US born were the
> dominant group with 63 percent of the total, up from 57 percent in
> 1990. Those from Central America accounted for 11.2 percent; from
> South America 7.3 percent; from the Caribbean 2.4 percent; and from
> Europe 11.9 percent. The remaining four percent came from the rest of
> the world.
>
> In contrast, the number of "aseguramientos" (potentially deportable
> foreigners) increased significantly from 1999, when it amounted to
> 131,500 "events" -- not necessarily different persons -- to 2000, when
> it reached 168,800; but in 2001, it declined to 151,400. On average,
> around 90 percent of these events ended up in actual deportations.
>
> These apprehensions provide an indirect indication of the
> nationalities that use Mexico as a land of transit. In 2001, of a
> total of 151,400 apprehensions, 44.9 percent were from Guatemala, 26.6
> per cent from Honduras, and 23.2 per cent from El Salvador. The tiny
> remainder was divided among countries like the US, Ecuador, and
> Nicaragua.
>
> At very specific historical junctures, Mexico had very generous
> responses to refugees and asylum seekers, most notably in the 1930s
> for exiles during the Spain Civil War, and in the 1980s and 1990s for
> people fleeing oppressive political systems in several South and
> Central American countries. In 2000, Mexico ratified the 1951
> Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol.
> Two years later, in March 2002, the Mexican government began
> adjudicating asylum claims on its own, thus replacing the eligibility
> determinations of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
> (UNHCR) in place since 1982. The majority of refugees use Mexico as a
> route to reach other countries, especially the US and Canada.
>
> In 2001, Mexico received about 500 asylum applications and granted
> refugee status to roughly a third of the applicants. Approximately
> half of these refugees came from Latin American countries (Colombia,
> Guatemala, El Salvador, Cuba, Honduras); the other half came from all
> over the world. Around two-thirds of all applications are filed from
> detention centers within Mexico. (Francisco Alba, "Mexico: A Crucial
> Crossroads," first published in July 2002, updated in March 2004,
> <http://www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/display.cfm?id=211>)</blockquote>
>
> --
> Yoshie
> <http://montages.blogspot.com/>
> <http://mrzine.org>
> <http://monthlyreview.org/>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>