When Border Patrol agents arrested eight migrant workers on a dairy farm in Berkshire, the entire dairy farming industry in Vermont felt the shockwaves.
My SiL works with temporary foreign workers in Canada for one of the companies that is considered to be the best in how they treat their employees. Those workers are unionized and their employer had to limit them to 75h/week as they were asking to work even more than that… In a sense I kinda can understand them, they’re here to work and don’t know anyone except for their coworkers, some of whom they share an apartment with, and they don’t speak the local language so might as well be paid all day instead of being at home in front of the TV waiting for your next shift…
What I’m saying is that even if these workers are not forced to work that many hours, they want to do it (as long as they’re paid to do it). Even with a union they negotiated to work 75h and even wanted more and it was their employer that prevented it.
If somebody agrees to work for me at below minimum wage and seems enthusiastic about it, am I still exploiting them? What if I’m paying them $15/hr but no medical, 401k, or other benefits because it’s under the table? Is it not exploitation, even if the person is happy to get the wage?
It seems a very different situation between legal, documented immigrants being represented by a legitimate job placement company, vs undocumented immigrants who are being paid unknown wages and have much less ability to negotiate.
Ok, but that has nothing to do with my original point which was simply that saying they’re being exploited because they work so much when they’re probably the ones who wanted to work 72h/week is ridiculous.
“Oh no! My exploited labor!” Fuck off. What’s happening is atrocious, but not because these fuckers can’t continue to underpay immigrants.
My SiL works with temporary foreign workers in Canada for one of the companies that is considered to be the best in how they treat their employees. Those workers are unionized and their employer had to limit them to 75h/week as they were asking to work even more than that… In a sense I kinda can understand them, they’re here to work and don’t know anyone except for their coworkers, some of whom they share an apartment with, and they don’t speak the local language so might as well be paid all day instead of being at home in front of the TV waiting for your next shift…
What does that have to do with unrepresented immigrant laborers? Do you think they are really getting a union level wage?
What I’m saying is that even if these workers are not forced to work that many hours, they want to do it (as long as they’re paid to do it). Even with a union they negotiated to work 75h and even wanted more and it was their employer that prevented it.
If somebody agrees to work for me at below minimum wage and seems enthusiastic about it, am I still exploiting them? What if I’m paying them $15/hr but no medical, 401k, or other benefits because it’s under the table? Is it not exploitation, even if the person is happy to get the wage?
It seems a very different situation between legal, documented immigrants being represented by a legitimate job placement company, vs undocumented immigrants who are being paid unknown wages and have much less ability to negotiate.
Ok, but that has nothing to do with my original point which was simply that saying they’re being exploited because they work so much when they’re probably the ones who wanted to work 72h/week is ridiculous.
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