Is immigration the real issue for American Workers?

Mass

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Sat Apr-01-06 04:10 PM
Original message

Is immigration the real issue for American Workers?

Edited on Sat Apr-01-06 04:12 PM by Mass

Or is it a scapegoat to hide other issues?

This editorial by Robert Kuttner is asking the real questions and looking at the real issues?

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/04/01/stagnant_wages_made_in_usa/

Stagnant wages? Made in USA
By Robert Kuttner | April 1, 2006

AS CONGRESS GRAPPLES with immigration policy, most experts agree that wide-open immigration slightly depresses wages, especially among unskilled workers. But the main reason for static wages has more do with policies made in the United States. .

However, it is worth leaving the immigration debate to explore the deeper causes of stagnant living standards that make so many Americans fearful of immigrants. In the current recovery, for the first time since the government has kept such statistics, median household income has lagged behind inflation in a recovery for five straight years.

...

It's great that shirts are cheaper than a decade ago, and that we all have cell phones. But that doesn't exactly substitute for a house, an affordable college education, or health care.

...

To use a favorite word of my grandmother's, call it the Tchotchke Economy (a Tchotchke is a small trinket): Plenty of nifty, ever cheaper electronic stuff -- and ever more costly housing, education, healthcare. An iPod is swell, but it doesn't exactly make you middle class.

Why does this describe America in 2006? Don't blame it on immigrants. Blame it on the people running the government, who have made sure that the lion's share of the productivity gains go to the richest 1 percent of Americans. With different tax, labor, health, and housing policies, native-born workers and immigrants alike could get a fairer share of our productive economy -- and still have the nifty iPods.

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TahitiNut

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Sat Apr-01-06 04:24 PM
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1. The underlying corruption is the treatment of labor as a commodity.

Edited on Sat Apr-01-06 04:29 PM by TahitiNut

This is both unethical and illegal. Interestingly enough it's under the enabling statutes for labor unions and collective bargaining (Clayton Act) that unions are exempted from antitrust legislation.

"The labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce."
Clayton Act, sec. 6, c. 323, 38 Stat. 730 (1914)

See also 15 USC 17 ...

TITLE 15
§ 17. Antitrust laws not applicable to labor organizations

The labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce. Nothing contained in the antitrust laws shall be construed to forbid the existence and operation of labor, agricultural, or horticultural organizations, instituted for the purposes of mutual help, and not having capital stock or conducted for profit, or to forbid or restrain individual members of such organizations from lawfully carrying out the legitimate objects thereof; nor shall such organizations, or the members thereof, be held or construed to be illegal combinations or conspiracies in restraint of trade, under the antitrust laws.

It must be understood that "supply and demand" and "labor market" are terms and concepts that treat human labor as a commodity. This, in a tahitinutshell, is corruption. When we see truckloads of laborers being smuggled across the border like so many cattle, that's treating labor as a commodity. Slavery is the commoditization of human labor. It is a fundamental evil. It corrupts all who participate.

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TreasonousBastard

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Sat Apr-01-06 04:37 PM
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2. We're robbing workers of produvctivity gains...

among other things.

Aside from Mercantile theory where labor is merely a commodity, workers should shere in productivity gains.

If the boss buys a machine that allows you to make 100 widgets an hour rather than 10 widgets, with only a little extra effort on your part, your value as a trained widgetmaker on the widget machine just went way up to your boss. Balancing that-- it may be that it's easier to train a machine widget maker than a hand widget maker, and the boss did risk his money on that machine.

But, your value as an employee did go up, and you might not deserve the entire fruits of your new high productivity but you certainly should get something out of it. Sharing productivity gains has always been a major goal of unions, although you rarely hear about it.

Right now, nobody's gaining from productivity but the boss, and it could be argued that not even the boss is getting much out of it in smaller companies-- as soon as you find a way to save a buck, your customers demand another price reduction. Not your retail customers, of course, just those big buyers who are doing you a favor even talking to you.

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Sarah Ibarruri

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Sat Apr-01-06 05:16 PM
Response to Original message

3. You're correct. It's a scapegoat issue.

It's meant to make us ignore that we are the advanced nation with the least workers' rights. In fact, do we have any workers' rights at all? Workers comp and nothing else in my state, as far as I know.

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