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Are We Eating the Fruits of Slave Labor?
Read More:
Cheap Labor, Cheap Wages, Exploiting Foreigners, Immagrant Workers, John Bowe, Nobodies, Slave Labor, Sweatshops,
Business News
Slavery in America is alive and well, according to author John Bowe, whose book Nobodies documents the shocking degree to which some American industries--including food producers--are exploiting foreign workers. Bowe's book is a shot across the bow to American consumers; are we so enslaved by our own addictions to cheap food and cut-price clothing that we'll still buy these things knowing they're a product of slave labor?
Bowe's book unravels the Florida-based food chain that connects Tropicana, Minute Maid, Taco Bell and McDonald's, among others, to a network of contractors who lure migrant workers into a form of indentured servitude that sounds so Dickensian you can't believe it exists in this country, in this day and age. The workers Bowe profiles in Nobodies sometimes don't get paid at all, and are essentially prisoners in squalid camps or trailer parks where they're subjected to abysmal living conditions and routinely threatened with violence if they attempt to leave.
The workers, many undocumented and most speaking little or no English, are reluctant or unable to seek help, so they make perfect victims. Their employers pay them little or nothing, and pass the savings on to the corporations who've subcontracted the production of citrus fruits and tomatoes to these shady operators so that they can reap the benefits of this sleazy system without having to worry about public relations.
After breezing through Bowe's lively, gripping expose of Florida's fruit and vegetable growers, I understand just how crucial undocumented workers are to some of our largest companies. Corporate America needs those porous borders to keep its profits flowing.
But does it, really? Bowe discussed the pervasiveness of the problem with Jon Stewart on Monday's Daily Show, and again on Tuesday with Doug Krizner of American Public Media's Marketplace:
KRIZNER: So what are the companies, then, that I might be familiar with who are taking advantage of this situation, where we have workers in conditions that we are calling slave-like?BOWE: I would say that the conditions are bad enough, especially in the fruits and vegetables area, that pretty much every large vendor of food products -- that means McDonald's, Burger King, Wal-Mart, anybody big at the top of the supply chain -- probably has a trickle of slave-picked stuff in their supply chain.
KRIZNER: If we go up and talk a little bit about pseudo-slave labor, immigrants who have come in and are making themselves available to do work, what would be the impact if these people were to be fairly compensated for their work?
BOWE: Well, one of the things I found that was so surprising is how little money it would take to make it so that the lowest-tier workers are adequately treated. So for example, for the 1 to 2 million migrant farm workers we have in the U.S., for them all to be paid minimum wage would cost the average American household $50 a year. So I don't think it'd be stretching too far to be able to make it fair.
Bowe expresses the hope that Americans would rather not knowingly purchase goods made by slave labor. He's also optimistic about the power of organizations like the Florida-based Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) to shine a light on this very dark side of our food chain. CIW's mission is to help migrant workers, bring their exploiters to justice, and shame corporations into raising their standards.
They've succeeded in getting the Department of Justice to prosecute some of the worst subcontractors, and they've also persuaded Yum! Brands, which owns Taco Bell, to pay an additional penny per pound directly to their tomato pickers. That may not sound like much, but, according to Bowe, it will nearly double the pickers' wages. And, pressured by CIW and a coalition of church and student-based groups, McDonald's has agreed to a similar program.
Nobodies profiles two other industries that rely on indentured servitude besides the Florida produce growers: a Tulsa, Oklahoma pressure tank plant that imported fifty three workers from India and then essentially held them hostage, paying them three dollars an hour; and the garment industry of Saipan, a U.S. commonwealth in the Western Pacific, where workers toil for companies like Target and the Gap in sweatshop conditions while the clothes they crank out get to bear a "Made in America" label, thanks to the machinations of patriots like Tom Delay and disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Bowe writes about the grimmer aspects of globalization and capitalism run amuck in a surprisingly entertaining and engaging way, providing a wealth of facts and figures while openly acknowledging his own biases. He dissects the notion of "free trade" and wonders just how much unfairness and misery we're willing to inflict on others in pursuit of our own creature comforts.
We're paying a price, too, with millions of U.S. manufacturing jobs washing out to foreign shores and a commensurate flood of shoddy and toxic consumer goods from overseas filling our store shelves. Bowe takes issue with Thomas Friedman's rosy view of our globalized economy; a "flat" world hasn't translated to a level playing field for the workers Bowe profiles. What's so great about a flat earth, anyway? Seems like you could sail right off the edge of it without seeing the precipice.
Follow Kerry Trueman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kerrytrueman
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I doubt americans will care about this very unfortunate incident since it involves foreign workers! It's a very sad day when we could care less of the mistreatment of human beings! But hey, what else is new?
The biggest cash-cows in the world are:
armament industry
drugs
human trafficking
And it does not matter if that happens in a Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu environment. Money is always more important than religion.
"Our nation was built on slavery, a house torn down by the great Civil War. But this new house, a house of mirrors, of secret rooms, of hidden passages - indeed, a vastly more subtle and deluding structure - has been built on the same malignant foundation. And today we live in this structure built on the same malignant foundation
What if what we are taught in school the state religion that condemns as heresy all that interferes with the monied class extracting yet more money from those least able to protect themselves? What if the state's religion is the religion of the dollar, a faith based on a sort of economic Darwinism?
What if a sort of subtle slavery has been taught to us, made acceptable to us, made to appear even as freedom itself? What if we are not free, but instead are taught the faith of fredom, as Muslims and Christians and Buddists are taught their faiths?"
Give Me Liberty! Freeing Ourselves in the Twenty-First Century
- Gerry Spence
A good read for the "new wage slaves" and those who are saying a final farewell to our Constitution and the human spirit as global corporatism swallows the planet in the New World Order.
Have we not outsourced slavery so that we do not have to wield the whip? See the suffering? Hear the cries? The task is to graft a conscience onto the corporations that enslave us and to convert our corporate masters into our servants.
Mostly, what we are eating is the flesh and muscles of living, thinking beings. We enslave and fatten creatures much like us so we can kill and eat them. There is a world of pain in every muscle you eat.
Not to get off the subject, but does this mean that you do not wear or own any type of animal products as well - leather coats, wallets, shoes, belts, briefcase. Do you not participate or watch sports that use animal skin: football, baseball, basketball, tennis (racket strings are made from pig guts), etc. Do you own any of these items as well: leather couch, chair or car with leather seats? Just wondering.
As long as hugh profits are King there will be no justice in the work place. The Unions used to make sure that there was some equality in the work place but they are being systematically busted. soon there will be no one to speak for us.
When this happens we all will be SCREWED.
Logic of Empire.
Even in the future, the technology available to a new colony is always initially low. If a machine to do a necessary job is too expensive to import(say a wheat harvester, a water pump, or even a washing machine), a human must do it instead. If too many jobs must be done by hand, a market for slavery develops. Decades later, this market remains because the colony itself has quotas to meet and debts to repay-they cannot spare the money to develop local industries and build the machines themselves.
http://en.
"The Logic of Empire brings poverty at home and slavery in the colonies".
You won't have to pay more. One of the side effects of higher wages is the introduction of labor saving machinery and technology. These technologies are stalled because of cheap labor. Unleash labor saving technology and in the long run things are cheaper with high priced labor.
The broader question needs to be posed with regard to outsourcing as well as insourcing.
We always hear about how should love globalization/free trade for all the cheap goods and services we get, but is there any actual research to suggest HOW MUCH money this really saves us?
I don't think the higher productivity (we've exceeded Japan in this category) paired with lower wages and benefits most workers have today (vs the post new deal, pre-Reagan era) lets us come out on top in the end.
Give people healthcare, pensions and greater job security, and something tells me they'd be more than willing to pay a few extra grand each year for their tv's, cars, "gadgets" and so on.
Finally, do people really believe that when some giant corporation starts outsourcing jobs that there is a measurable decrease in prices for the goods and services it provides and or an increase in quality?
The answer is clearly no.
The profits for the top executives and the shareholders benefit tremendously, but of course, when 85% of the stocks in this country are owned by 15% of the people, we have to ask if this makes any sense overall.
theyoungtu
That is the big lie of slavery. Prices are not set by costs. Where Keynes was lying. There is no such thing as cost push inflation in a free market. Only in a monopoly market.
Microsoft is a monopoly. If it gives the cubical nerds a raise it can pass it on because you are forced to buy their product. What are you going to do write your own operating system? Thousands of lines of code.
In a free market like apples the cost of an apple is set by supply and demand and has no relation what is paid to the guy who picks it.
What is effected is profit. Profit=Price-Cost
If the cost of labor is zero Profit in maximized at Price=Profit
The supply demand equations are more complicated but WIKI has a graph.
http://en.
Supply and Demand are independent of profit or cost unless Profit goes negative, which cause you to stop picking apples, reducing the supply.
You've been eating the fruits of slave labor for a century and a half. Why stop now? Would the fruit be any sweeter if it were picked by decently paid adult workers?
At any rate, there ought to be a bit more effort than was put towards ending slavery in the US.
Can we get monkeys to pick the stuff? I mean we got genetic engineering now.
"Can we get monkeys to pick the stuff? I mean we got genetic engineering now."
I take it you're not a monkey?
I never thought of it till I talked to a girl at a Chinesse Restruant here, but slavery has a lot of forms and can be right under our noses.
This your girl of 16 years had been working at a Chinesse Resturant I ate at a lot. One day we talked and she said she was leaving for another Resturant in Maryland.
We talked and she told how this family that owns the Resturant has given her family in China money to send her brother to college and she was working off that money. She said they gave her and several other girls an apartment to live in which they charged back to her account. She got free food and tips for her self. She said she was lucky some Resturant owners don't even let the girls keep tips.
She seemed happy because her brother will finish college soon and will buy her back from this family in America.
This is Endentured Severtude and is Illegal in the USA. I called the SLAVERY HOTLINE but they took my number and never called back.
Here is the secret fantasy of all those who favor eliminating minimum wage laws and worker protections. Wages driven down to subsistence level.
Dadw5boys, that situation you encountered in the Chinese restaurant is actually frighteningly common in the US. Many of those restaurant employees are working off the enormous bribes paid to Chinese smugglers to get the employees into the US.
Some of those workers are as young as 14, plucked out of school and shipped off by parents who treat them as an investent, like livestock. As you discovered, they live and work in conditions little different from indentured servitude. Essentially these are domestic Chinese labor practices imported into the US.
Great NY Times magazine article on this:
http://www
Let us not forget about the sex slave trade. The girl you know is lucky: she could have been sold to work in a brothel. It is estimated that nearly a million women and children are sold into this form of slavery every year. Human trafficking is one of the fastest growing "business" in the world, and after weapons and drugs, it is the third most profitable. A weapon or drug can only be used once; but with women, you can sell them over, and over, and over... These women and children are literally worked to death--the average life expectancy is 4 years.
America is a big destination point. Chances are, if you go to a strip club on the East coast and encounter a woman from Russia or one of the other former Soviet block countries, she will be a victim of human trafficking.
Slavery is no longer based on race; it's based on gender.
oops! "businesses"
This should only be a concern for about one generation. The next generation of "slaves" will not be so quiet. Remember the many nights of car burning in France? Yep, those were second generation immigrants not staying quiet.
This makes a good case for closing the US/Mexico border for a year, stop all of this
crap cold in its' tracks. Stop handing out
welfare checks, start handing out job applicatio
Nice theory but did you know some Walmarts hand out food stamp apps to NEW HIREs? Even they don't believe you can actually make a living on what they pay you.
how about start passing some fair trade laws and some environmental laws which level the playing field (aka make import prices competitive with us prices), some labor laws which protect workers, and then actually enforcing them??
and why on earth do you care if john or juan is doing a job as long as the best person for the job is being treated well?? birthplace and race are accidents, not merit-based, so don't start having entitelment issues because you were born here.
I Juan is being used to keep John down then it's surely a matter for John. Besides the 'best' person for the job always seems to be the cheapest.
And I certainly see no reason to support ridiculous 'open borders' policies. I have a sense of entitlement because I am a CITIZEN and thus am in fact entitled. Or do you favor granting presumptive USA citizenship to everyone in the world no matter their place of birth?
I think this is an area where progressives really fall short. Normally we stand for "the little" guy, and fair wages and good benefits, safe working conditions, etc.
But when it comes to the illegal employer problem (notice I didn't say immigration problem), we play dumb.
Meanwhile, people are exploited (as the author points out) and Americans miss out on jobs with the AWFUL excuse that the immigrants "do the jobs Americans won't do".
What? I absolutely can't stand that pathetic excuse.
OF COURSE Americans won't work for $2 an hour with no benefits or safe working conditions, etc, and why should they?
People act as if Americans are "too good" to pick fruit. But really, think about this for a second.
People currently mop floors, clean up vomit, unclog your toilet, work in dirty fast food hole-in-the walls, and you're telling me they won't pick fruit *provided* they get paid a decent wage?
It's ridiculous and completely unfair to everyone involved.
The problem is that most progressives are fighting against the xenophobia and racism that informs the opinion of a lot of conservatives who are "anti-immigration".
And while xenophobia and racism clearly exist, it's a mistake to pretend that illegal immigration (excuse me, the Illegal Employer Problem) isn't an issue when it clearly is based on the above points.
We don't need a wall. Prior to Reagan there were less than 2 million illegal immigrants in this country compared to 13 million or so today.
Cracking down on illegal employers and revisiting (to put it lightly) failed policy like NAFTA is the right course, not just building some Giant Wall.
I'm glad the author pointed out we wouldn't suddenly be paying $5 for an apple and $10 for a hamburger as some free market fanatics like to suggest when trying to argue that we NEED to insource labor.
jeezus h krist realitytru
Gluttony is one of the 7 deadlies..
I was so sad when Levi's closed its last U.S. clothing factory..a
Welfare checks would not be necessary IF say, McDonalds paid it's workers $8.00 a hour..but then..you'
ready for that one fatboy?
Has it never occured to you that the loss of cheap labor isn't the problem? Lettuce pickers, as an example, could be paid a living wage and lettuce would still be affordable, if it weren't for the fact that someone at the top is making approximately 20billion times the salary of the lowest paid worker. Is it really necessary to pay the CEO of a company millions of dollars in salary, stock options and bonuses? Wouldn't it be better to cut their salaries a little and give everyone a living wage?
It seems anti-intuitive but if you open your eyes a little wider you will see much closer to home on this issue - at least your trying keep at it.
Thank you for reminding us of the continuing evil of slavery in the world!
Most Americans seem to think that slavery suddenly vanished with the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. No! It simply became illegal in the United States, it never disappeared, even here. The CIA estimates that, in addition to the farm laborers and factory workers who are currently exploited in conditions that somewhat resemble slavery, over 50,000 women and children are smuggled into the U.S. each year to work as sex slaves or as domestic labor.
Anti-Slavery International www.antisl
Two groups active in the United States seeking abolition of contemporary slavery are The American Anti-Slavery Group www.anti-s
All three of these organizations have outstanding web sites detailing the problems and ways that you can help this continuing fight. They know that it will not be easy, and Free the Slaves has laid out a twenty-five year action plan to FINALLY end this horror. I’m afraid that they are overly optimistic that it can be accomplished in such a short time frame.
"Most Americans seem to think that slavery suddenly vanished with the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. No! It simply became illegal in the United States"
I'd say it's more a case of the ownership arrangement giving way to the rental arrangement.
No DUH!
Doing it right here at home too!
Oh, we call it the Guest Worker Program.
Have you ever read the Chinese exclusion Act of the 1800s????
Nearly word for word.
READ!!!
Sheeese!
NOT GOOD!
All the best
Knute (Neo-LIB)
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