Thursday, March 15, 2007

Guest workers just Bigbro speak for Slave labor

The news is abuzz with the "Guest Worker" situation. It's a crock of spin. They say we need these guest workers to fill all the jobs that Americans are unwilling to do.
When I worked at the Whitestone Orchards in Washington State I started the first day as a picker, the second day I was promoted to checker, checking the quality of the other (Mexican) pickers work. The third day I was promoted to tractor driver, shuffling crates of apples.
I can't imagine that one of the mexicans would have been promoted three times in three days.

I opted to live in the "camp" with the pickers. I was charged $100.00 per Month for a two room uninsulated shack with a bed, Table, chair, two lights and three outlets. I had to provide my own hotplate and use the communal toilets and share the shower house. The cabins, toilets and showers were the worst dwellings I have ever seen, and I have lived in Korea, Germany, France and have visited Mexico and other "third World" countries. On the third day in the camp, after asking about fixing some stuff there, I was made "camp manager". Go figure.

Most of those working with me were illegal aliens. They were not hired because there no American Citizens willing to work, but because the managers were able to pay them less, charge them more, and arrange their "deportation" just before the last payday.

Americans were willing to take the jobs if they were paid honest wages and treated with respect. The illegals were willing to take the reduced wages and bear the disrespect.

At $8.00 per 4 ft x 4 ft bin of apples a good picker could make several hundred dollars a day. Americans were not hired because they were usually "troublemakers" always wanting safe working conditions. I was assigned to spray the orchards with pesticides one day. I read the label and it called for complete hazmat gear for the sprayer. I was to spray the rows that were not being picked that day. The next day the pickers and their children would be in the rows I'd sprayed the day before. Eating lunch and playing in the pesticide covered grass. The pestcide caused the internal organs of the "pests" to hemorage. When I pointed out the evident dangers to the pickers to the manager I was told to either do as I was told or get out.
I did the spraying, and that night I went door to door in the camp and explaned the dangers in the sprayed areas to the Mexican pickers. Not a single one of them entered the areas I'd sprayed for the next three days, and I was fired for being a troublemaker.

Guest Worker is just a nice term for slave labor or indentured servant. Most are charged to come to America to work, have their passports (if they have one) taken, are charged for housing, food, water etc., and if Americans were hired to do the same work we would be pating more for vegtables at the supermarket, but would be paying less in welfare to able bodied Americans.

The industrial giants that own the forests, farms and manufacturing plants don't care about you, the Mexicans or the laws they consider themselves above. They only care about wealth and power, and until we have the second American Revolution it will remain that way.

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