It's Time to Boycott Arizona

[NJFemmie]

I keep seeing "taking jobs Americans do not want".
If there were no "illegal" immigrants to take these jobs - do you think wages would finally be livable?

I'm curious to see the answers.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by NJFemmie

I keep seeing "taking jobs Americans do not want".
If there were no "illegal" immigrants to take these jobs - do you think wages would finally be livable?

I'm curious to see the answers.

Almost certainly yes.

[Corkey]

Originally Posted by NJFemmie

I keep seeing "taking jobs Americans do not want".
If there were no "illegal" immigrants to take these jobs - do you think wages would finally be livable?

I'm curious to see the answers.

One word....YES!

[Apocalipstic]

Originally Posted by NJFemmie

I keep seeing "taking jobs Americans do not want".
If there were no "illegal" immigrants to take these jobs - do you think wages would finally be livable?

I'm curious to see the answers.

No, I do not.

Capitalism is based on someone working for below a livable wage.

[Apocalipstic]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

Almost certainly yes.

Originally Posted by Corkey

One word....YES!

Maybe I am not seeing this right beacsue I usualy agree with you both.

Would you explain how this would work?

Are you saying if we made all the people who are here and not citizens into citizens then no one would work for less than a livable wage?

Ir that of we allowed no immigration and kicked out everyone who does not have papers then we would all make a livable wage?

How would this work?

Would we still be Capitalist then?

[MsDemeanor]

Define "livable wage", please. It's certainly not minimum wage.

[Apocalipstic]

Originally Posted by MsDemeanor

Define "livable wage", please. It's certainly not minimum wage.

For me it is enough to keep a family of four housed, clothed and fed with full insurance and benefits, federal and state taxes, and 5% to save.

Way over minimum wage.

[key]

Originally Posted by MsDemeanor

Define "livable wage", please. It's certainly not minimum wage.

What is so heartbreaking is this definition was giving - and agreed upon - in 1912. Another version came 20 years later or so from FDR when he said "A necessitous man is not a free man" - Meaning if one cannot afford the basics in life, you are a slave to a broken system. "The basics" are defined below by Theodore Roosevelt (who had to leave the Republican Party to get out from the shackles of the corporatocracy if his day - sound familiar?)

Teddy Roosevelt 1912:

We stand for a living wage. Wages are subnormal if they fail to provide a living for those who devote their time and energy to industrial occupations. The monetary equivalent of a living wage varies according to local conditions, but must include enough to secure the elements of a normal standard of living--a standard high enough to make morality possible, to provide for education and recreation, to care for immature members of the family, to maintain the family during periods of sickness, and to permit of reasonable saving for old age.

Key 2010:

Let me break it down.

A living wage must:

secure the elements of a normal standard of living. Wages must be enough to provide enough food, water, shelter, clothing, heat, cooling, transportation, and communication. These are the basics of modern living.

a standard high enough to make morality possible. So no one has to lie cheat or steal to have all of the above necessities of modern life.

to provide for education and recreation. To be able to relax (not working two, three, four jobs) and to be able to better your and your family's station through higher education.

to care for immature members of the family Childcare, tutors, education, special needs.

to maintain the family during periods of sickness To provide health coverage during illness and recovery. to be able to not have to work when you are sick.

and to permit of reasonable saving for old age. To be able to afford to retire.

And let me be clear, I submit that these measures should be met with one (1, a single) wage earner, not mom and pop each working two or three jobs. The reason why the Republicans do not want this. (seriously, there are some crappy Dems, but 100% of the Reps are crappy - on the side of corporations over actual human beings)

Is because when there is a thriving, educated middle class they start getting "uppity", they start demanding things like....Equal Rights, Democracy, like not fighting in rich men's wars, like stopping genocides, like doing the right thing for the planet. Republicans (and some Democrats) prefer that there be no thriving middle class to question their authority.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by apocalipstic

Maybe I am not seeing this right beacsue I usualy agree with you both.

Would you explain how this would work?

Are you saying if we made all the people who are here and not citizens into citizens then no one would work for less than a livable wage?

Ir that of we allowed no immigration and kicked out everyone who does not have papers then we would all make a livable wage?

How would this work?

Would we still be Capitalist then?

Actually, here's how I see this playing out;

For those jobs that are *not* portable--i.e. those requiring physical presence--the presence of labor willing to work at below-market-rate wages AND who are vulnerable to exploitation because they are afraid of approaching the legal system puts downward pressure on wages in those fields. So if we made it unprofitable for companies to hire undocumented workers (and that would be my preferred approach, get at the problem from the demand side, not the supply side) then that would do two things.

1) It would put upward pressure on the job market. The work would still need to be done, someone would have to do it, so now there would either be a guest-worker program (which we could stipulate *requires* employers to play by Federal and state labor laws) or employers would hire US citizens to do the job.

2) It would eliminate the incentive to get into the US by hook or by crook. Right now, if you are from a border area where there is little to no work and you can, by going north a couple of hundred miles, find work where you would make, in a week, more than you could have made in a month back home you have a pretty powerful incentive to get into the country up north. There would *still* be migration but now there would be no real good reason to route around the immigration process since there's no work here.

(The idea that people come to the United States to live fat and happy upon the endless bounty that is our paltry social safety net is risible.)

The reason why employers *pay* a below-market wage (and here I mean livable) is because they can get away with it. I'm going to use a tale of two lesbians jobs to illustrate my point.

I work for a mid-sized software company. My wife works for a mid-sized cell phone company catering to older people (a competitor of Jitterbug). We are paid fairly well, our benefits are very good and we have a great deal of flexibility--it is nothing for me to say, for instance, that I'm going to finish up the afternoon at home, leave at lunch and then telecommute. When we have a snowpocalypse (where we get snow then ice then snow and then more ice) Portland shuts down. With my company, we just telecommute until the roads clear. My wife has to go in. My wife is seriously underpaid and has to operate under a truly odious set of rules violation of any of which could get one fired very quickly. There ARE things that could get us walked out the door, but handing Tylenol to a co-worker with a headache isn't one of them! Now, we both answer the phone for a living. The difference is that my job requires a pretty diverse and intense skill-set while my wife's job requires the ability to have a good phone manner, the ability to write grammatical sentences and sort of generalized customer service skills.

By any objective measure my wife and her co-workers are abused at work. They are treated, at best, like unruly children and her bosses behave in a way that almost says "we DARE you to quit". They know that they can pull someone off the street and train them to their standards and have them on the phones in a week. My employer dare NOT treat us that way. It is in their best interests to keep us happy. Why? Because on any one of our product groups it takes *at least* six months before you're up to speed and a year before you are truly crossing the threshold of self-reliance (meaning that you can solve most of your user-issues on your own except for the weird stuff). It takes two years before you can reasonably say that you can handle all but the weirdest problems on your own. So if we all walked out the door, they would be seriously hurt for at least six months and more likely two or more years. Since support contracts on *ONE* product alone (the product I support) accounts for 40% of company revenue (those aren't new sales, that's just companies buying support on software they already own) they have a serious incentive NOT to make us miserable lest we leave.

So the tighter the pool of labor is, the better it is for workers. The tighter the pool of jobs, the worse it is for workers.

(cont)

[Apocalipstic]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

Actually, here's how I see this playing out;

For those jobs that are *not* portable--i.e. those requiring physical presence--the presence of labor willing to work at below-market-rate wages AND who are vulnerable to exploitation because they are afraid of approaching the legal system puts downward pressure on wages in those fields. So if we made it unprofitable for companies to hire undocumented workers (and that would be my preferred approach, get at the problem from the demand side, not the supply side) then that would do two things.

1) It would put upward pressure on the job market. The work would still need to be done, someone would have to do it, so now there would either be a guest-worker program (which we could stipulate *requires* employers to play by Federal and state labor laws) or employers would hire US citizens to do the job.

2) It would eliminate the incentive to get into the US by hook or by crook. Right now, if you are from a border area where there is little to no work and you can, by going north a couple of hundred miles, find work where you would make, in a week, more than you could have made in a month back home you have a pretty powerful incentive to get into the country up north. There would *still* be migration but now there would be no real good reason to route around the immigration process since there's no work here.

(The idea that people come to the United States to live fat and happy upon the endless bounty that is our paltry social safety net is risible.)

The reason why employers *pay* a below-market wage (and here I mean livable) is because they can get away with it. I'm going to use a tale of two lesbians jobs to illustrate my point.

I work for a mid-sized software company. My wife works for a mid-sized cell phone company catering to older people (a competitor of Jitterbug). We are paid fairly well, our benefits are very good and we have a great deal of flexibility--it is nothing for me to say, for instance, that I'm going to finish up the afternoon at home, leave at lunch and then telecommute. When we have a snowpocalypse (where we get snow then ice then snow and then more ice) Portland shuts down. With my company, we just telecommute until the roads clear. My wife has to go in. My wife is seriously underpaid and has to operate under a truly odious set of rules violation of any of which could get one fired very quickly. There ARE things that could get us walked out the door, but handing Tylenol to a co-worker with a headache isn't one of them! Now, we both answer the phone for a living. The difference is that my job requires a pretty diverse and intense skill-set while my wife's job requires the ability to have a good phone manner, the ability to write grammatical sentences and sort of generalized customer service skills.

By any objective measure my wife and her co-workers are abused at work. They are treated, at best, like unruly children and her bosses behave in a way that almost says "we DARE you to quit". They know that they can pull someone off the street and train them to their standards and have them on the phones in a week. My employer dare NOT treat us that way. It is in their best interests to keep us happy. Why? Because on any one of our product groups it takes *at least* six months before you're up to speed and a year before you are truly crossing the threshold of self-reliance (meaning that you can solve most of your user-issues on your own except for the weird stuff). It takes two years before you can reasonably say that you can handle all but the weirdest problems on your own. So if we all walked out the door, they would be seriously hurt for at least six months and more likely two or more years. Since support contracts on *ONE* product alone (the product I support) accounts for 40% of company revenue (those aren't new sales, that's just companies buying support on software they already own) they have a serious incentive NOT to make us miserable lest we leave.

So the tighter the pool of labor is, the better it is for workers. The tighter the pool of jobs, the worse it is for workers.

(cont)

OK, I knew you had a plan! and so far I like it!

[dreadgeek]

I learned about this dynamic during the 90's when I got into the computer industry. By 1996 or 1997, things in Silicon Valley were so tilted in favor of labor that we were getting paid *mad* money. Folks were getting jobs as system admins who were barely qualified to do technical support. We had our pick of jobs. I turned down two jobs that paid pretty decent--one was at a law firm I had consulted at in between jobs. They offered me a full-time position as their IT director and told me what they were willing to pay. I *literally* laughed at them and told them that there was no way I would take that responsibility on for anything less than 75K and only that because I had only worked in the field 4 years at that point. I walked out of that office, went a few blocks down the street to a start-up did one interview and had a job offer on my cell phone before I had got back home. The other job was at a large manufacturer of telecommunications equipment. They were ready to pay my moving costs, increase my pay to within spitting distance of six figures but I turned it down because I hate L.A. I had my choice of jobs, what did I need Qualcomm for? I didn't because it was 1998.

Then the bubble burst. That happened right after I moved to Portland. When I moved up here, the start-up moved me up here, was paying me a very, very handsome salary AND had given me 5,000 shares pre-IPO stock. We were going to be TiVo before TiVo was released. Then we didn't get our last round of funding. I went from making 70K in 2000 to 13K in 2001. I ended up working in a call center in 2003 making money I hadn't made since before I got into high tech. Had my skill set gone out of fashion? No. I kept my Linux skills as sharp as ever so I would be ready to plug-and-play into any job that came along. It was simply that, in Oregon, my skills weren't worth that much until 2005 when I got the job I hold now.

I bring this up not to boast but to simply illustrate the difference between a labor market that favors employers (where wages are depressed and employees are treated like crap) and a labor market that favors employees (where wages rise, or at least hold steady, and employees are treated as having some value). I do not blame undocumented immigrants for depressing wages any more than I blame people in India for creating a slight downward pressure on wages in my industry (or in the industry--biomedical research--that I'm moving into). I blame *employers*.

So what I'm saying is that if we make it unprofitable for employers to do two things, which I'll detail in a minute, then employees will do better.

1) I think that US tax law should be changed in the following way. If you want to be considered an American corporation, then at least 75% of your work force MUST be in the United States with those jobs held by US nationals. Your headquarters MUST be in the United States as well. You are free to move your headquarters off-shore, you are free to hire mostly non-US citizens abroad. However, if you do so you are now a *foreign* corporation. You will be taxed as a *foreign* corporation and your products are now *imports* and will be levied as such. That way, the government isn't telling anyone how to run their corporation. There's just clear consequences for moving your operations offshore--one of which is that you are no longer an American corporation.

2) The aforementioned rules re: hiring undocumented workers. What I would like to see are fines that draconian. I mean you hire a *single* undocumented worker you will lose your profits for the year. Each incident after the first costs you another year's profits. Make it *hurt*. Put fear into the hearts of employers. They won't hire undocumented workers.

Both will have a positive, upward force on wages.

Cheers
Aj

[key]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

I work for a mid-sized software company. My wife works for a mid-sized cell phone company catering to older people (a competitor of Jitterbug). We are paid fairly well, our benefits are very good and we have a great deal of flexibility--it is nothing for me to say, for instance, that I'm going to finish up the afternoon at home, leave at lunch and then telecommute. When we have a snowpocalypse (where we get snow then ice then snow and then more ice) Portland shuts down. With my company, we just telecommute until the roads clear. My wife has to go in. My wife is seriously underpaid and has to operate under a truly odious set of rules violation of any of which could get one fired very quickly. There ARE things that could get us walked out the door, but handing Tylenol to a co-worker with a headache isn't one of them! Now, we both answer the phone for a living. The difference is that my job requires a pretty diverse and intense skill-set while my wife's job requires the ability to have a good phone manner, the ability to write grammatical sentences and sort of generalized customer service skills.

By any objective measure my wife and her co-workers are abused at work. They are treated, at best, like unruly children and her bosses behave in a way that almost says "we DARE you to quit". They know that they can pull someone off the street and train them to their standards and have them on the phones in a week. My employer dare NOT treat us that way. It is in their best interests to keep us happy. Why? Because on any one of our product groups it takes *at least* six months before you're up to speed and a year before you are truly crossing the threshold of self-reliance (meaning that you can solve most of your user-issues on your own except for the weird stuff). It takes two years before you can reasonably say that you can handle all but the weirdest problems on your own. So if we all walked out the door, they would be seriously hurt for at least six months and more likely two or more years. Since support contracts on *ONE* product alone (the product I support) accounts for 40% of company revenue (those aren't new sales, that's just companies buying support on software they already own) they have a serious incentive NOT to make us miserable lest we leave.

So the tighter the pool of labor is, the better it is for workers. The tighter the pool of jobs, the worse it is for workers.

(cont)

Did any else hear the "This American Life" Episode that was the story of GM's Partnership with Toyota back in the 80's. Fascinating, and oh so enlightening. I suggest you search for it if this episode is still available.

Long story short, and leaving out many points made in the story, the Toyota workers in Japan were allowed at any time to pull a yellow cord and stop the entire production line. It could be for anything, from a loose bolt to a major part failure. When the worker pulled the cord, the manager of the plant would rush over to find out what was wrong, taking in every word that the worker said - even writing down suggestions for new tools or other innovations that might fix not only this one problem but future problems.

The result: Quality

GM on the other hand was a production machine and the people there were simply another tool, not there for their minds. There was no yellow cord to pull. In fact any stop of the production line would result in a yelling at from the boss, and possibly losing your job.

The result: Quantity.

Lots and lots of cars ended up sitting in the lot at the end of the production line because they could not even be driven onto the truck for delivery to the dealer.

I once asked a friend visiting from Japan what she thought was the biggest difference between American Society and Japanese Society and her answer was: Everyone in America tries to be an individual, everyone in Japan wants to be part of society.

I think America has a lot to learn from other cultures. In our defense we are a very young country and hopefully we will grow to be a decent adult country. One that cares about being part of society. One that sees the weakest and most vulnerable among us as people to protect and care for rather than to step over or walk around on our way to our individual goals.

[Waldo]

Interested in showing your solidarity? http://stickerobot.com/human/

[betenoire]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/desmon..._b_557955.html