Pity
Pity that 70 years have gone by and the US hasn't moved much beyond what this film tells!
shareThings are very different today in many ways, but a few things are the same - money still makes the world go 'round and people want as much of it as they can get.
Working people still get the shaft. They work the hardest and get paid the least. They usually have no benefits and when they get hurt, they get no money. Their jobs are dependent upon their bodies, which they overuse because they work too many hours, which they have to do because of the pay. It's a vicious cycle most can't get out of even if they wanted to.
In the movie, in the bad camp, when the wages went from 5 cents to 2 1/2 cents, the family left. But someone else came in and took the lower wage. This should sound familiar because this is what the illegal immigrant is doing to working citizens every day. Are the working citizens wrong for wanting a decent wage? Are they being greedy because they want healthcare benefits? And yet this is really not the fault of the illegal immigrant - there is ALWAYS someone willing to do it for less.
I think you summed it up perfectly, aleisterhigen.
~j~
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"So who do you feel IS to blame for this situation?"
Good question. I blame the government for not cracking down on companies or foremen who hire illegals. The companies hire the cheapest people they can get away with and the government looks the other way. I also blame the government for not taxing the life out of companies who outsource employment to third world countries, again, going for the cheapest labor.
Some would argue that unions have forced this action by demanding too much from companies but I think this is largely untrue. While it's true that some unions allow shiftless workers to keep their jobs, make it almost impossible to fire anyone, and have union bosses just as corrupt as any ceo, I believe these are problems that could be fixed. Simply abandoning the American worker in favor of the lowest bidder isn't the answer.
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...who hire illegals.
Aleisterhigen, to rant on further...
In the days of the Great Depression, they hired hungry white Americans, as this movie and book showed. After WWII brought America
out of the depression, the "less desirable" work fell, or should I say continued to fall, upon the Black workers. With the great
strides that the Civil Rights movement brought to Black workers, although it didn't totally solve their problems, they were not
relegated only to porter, shoe shine, and crop work, that "White people wouldn't do anyway". But circumstances didn't change in
the thinking of the big farm business, they insisted on cheap labor, and that opened the door to the exploitation and near slavery
that is affectionately called "Undocumented Workers", but called "Seasonal Labor, then".
Anyone who cries (panders) that those workers should be welcomed to come and work, have no idea how they are actually lobbying for
slave labor practices and harsh exploitation, not unlike shown in this film. With 10% unemployment, there is no need for 16-20
million illegal immigrants working in fields such as construction and the restaurant industry, for example, jobs that many
un- or underemployed Americans would gladly do, but can't because the often illegally low wages the illegal immigrants are willing
to work for. (Left unspoken is the forgery and ID theft and cash under the table, that employers, as well as employees,
use to get those jobs.)
Keep in mind most American family run farms were driven out of business with a similar "Company Store" type of exploitation by
global corporations who run huge competitive farms, and sell modified crops and required equipment, all with the help of our Government.
For a look at how legal immigrants hurt American tech workers, starting in the '90's, look up "H-1B Visa". Another Government program
meant to help Global Corporations, who profit, but don't invest in America, at the expense of the American (now underemployed) worker.
This problem is not a new one, but it looks like it's about to hit the fan, this economy is not close to improving, and we may see a
scenario unlike anything Steinbeck could have imagined.
Source: A father, son of legal immigrants, who lived through the Depression and my life experiences starting in 1959!
Your mileage may vary, it won't change my opinion.
Your statement that stands out glaringly as probably most unrealistic is:
"With 10% unemployment, there is no need for 16-20
million illegal immigrants working in fields such as construction and the restaurant industry, for example, jobs that many
un- or underemployed Americans would gladly do, but can't because the often illegally low wages the illegal immigrants are willing
to work for."
I doubt that "many un- or underemployed Americans would gladly do" those manual, menial, back-breaking jobs because they just aren't used to that type of work, and especially because they would see it as "beneath themselves." And that's why you see so many illegal immigrants doing that hard-labor work - they're not as concerned about status and appearance as they are concerned about earning some money and putting food on the table and hoping their kids will have a chance to get ahead in America on the backs of their hard work.
It's the "American Dream" for every immigrant generation.
The thing is, many un- and underemployed Americans these days are so many generations removed from the true immigrant experience, they just can't realistically handle it.
The irony is how they were all so willing to pick that fruit. Nowadays, very few white Americans (or, I guess, Americans of any kind) are willing to do that job, which is why companies turn to undocumented workers from south of the border (or the next generation of those immigrants). Did you see the CNN documentary from last summer?
http://insideman.blogs.cnn.com/2013/07/09/morgan-spurlock-researches-i llegal-immigration/
No,I haven't. Guess I'll have to search it out...
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