Low paying jobs in meat packing and lumber industries do NOT appeal to American job seekers….Trump’s cut back on refugees and legal immigrants have caused some businesses that need workers to rely even more on those whole can supply those new to the American dream…
Citing the need to protect national security and jobs, however, President Trump has moved to sharply limit legal immigrants and refugees, capping the number of refugees at 45,000, the lowest yearly total since the program began in 1975. The actual pace of admittance has so far fallen below that level, which could make it even harder for meat processors and similarly situated industries to fill their ranks.
“I appreciate what Trump is doing in trying to create more jobs for Americans,” Mr. Wiley said, in response to the president’s argument that immigrants are taking work from native-born Americans. “But for some lower-paid jobs that are undesirable, a lot of Americans don’t want to do those jobs.”
Of course they might, if the pay were good enough. When meatpackers were unionized and located in cities like Chicago, hourly wages averaged $20 an hour in today’s dollars, plus generous benefits. In the 1960s, though, packers began moving to rural areas, bringing workers to where the animals lived instead of the other way around. The shift enabled companies to cut wages drastically, escape the pressures of collective bargaining and speed output.
The move from high-wage locations to low-wage ones has become commonplace as the economy globalized, upending stable middle-class communities.
In the international arena, companies like Carrier and Rexnord recently closed factories in the United States and moved operations to places like China, Vietnam and Mexico where labor could be found at cut-rate prices.
But long before complaints about the North American Free Trade Agreement or steel imports from China commanded headlines, a domestic version of this pattern was already playing out in some industries. And as the pay changed, so did the face of the work force, once dominated by white males. Women, immigrants and people of color now hang chickens on hooks or hack them into parts on an assembly line. They are paid about half of what their counterparts earned four decades ago (after taking inflation into account), and have fewer benefits and protections. Such conditions don’t foster long-term stability. In some plants, employers have to replace up to 70 percent of their staffs every year.
Reducing that churn has become harder as the unemployment rate has dropped and several cities have raised the minimum wage…..