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Corporate Greed and Immigrant Workers: The New Slave Labor |
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Wednesday, 23 January 2008 |
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Florida - a place of sunny beaches, wholesome resorts, and slave labor. Just this December, three Florida fruit pickers were found after escaping an employer who brutally beat them and forced them to work as slaves for over a year.
The three escaped from the van in which they were imprisoned and later reported having to work inhumane hours as well as paying for the most basic of services, such as showering with a garden hose and substandard food. This horrifying event sheds light on some of the horrid human rights abuses happening right here in the United States. Florida produces almost the entire crop of U.S.-grown tomatoes as well as numerous other fruit crops. The industry exploits its undocumented immigrant base, paying around 42 cents per 32-ounce bucket of produce picked. This amounts to an individual having to pick two and a half tons of fruit in order to make the minimum wage. Many migrant workers in Immokalee, FL are kept in similar conditions as the three escaped slaves. They are locked in vans, forced to use the corners of their living spaces as bathrooms, and are beaten if they cannot work, even due to illness. Recently, there has been a campaign to get the major fast food chains to pay each migrant worker an extra penny per pound for their work. While some businesses, like YUM!, which owns Taco Bell and was the target of a campaign by tomato pickers the past few years, have agreed under intense pressure, Burger King and Whole Foods refuse to, unwilling to accept even a meager cut in their profits to provide a basic standard of living for their workers. Undocumented workers throughout the country often have no control over their working situation and face tremendous obstacles when fighting for their basic rights. For example, the Fresh Direct warehouse in Queens, NY recently used intimidation, fear, and the threat of deportation to bully its immigrant workforce to vote against unionization. Less than two weeks before the unionization vote, the company sent a notice to all its workers that federal immigration officials were investigating the documents of all workers at the warehouse, causing many to quit. In the end, only 500 of the plant’s 900 employees voted at all, 400 of which voted no. Capitalism allows for the creation of a secret underclass of slave labor. In the current system, when this sort of abuse is discovered often it is the undocumented worker who is punished or deported, rather than the corporations who violate basic human rights and needs and exploit their workers. These workers live under constant fear of federal discovery as well as threats to their own and their families’ well-being and lives. The system is working for the greedy capitalists, who can avoid unionization and pay substandard wages to keep costs low and profit high. We need to build a fighting immigrant rights’ movement, allied with a powerful labor movement that places the struggle of immigrant workers at the forefront of a fight to improve the living standards for all workers. Without this, it is unlikely that conditions can or will change. |
