Author Archives: gstine9

The Root Cause of Our Mistreatment of Immigrants

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This is a response to Sydney’s post “Migrant Workers Have Always Been Essential, So We Should Be Treating Them Like It” found here: https://sites.uw.edu/pols385/2020/05/19/migrant-workers-have-always-been-essential-so-we-should-be-treating-them-like-it/

While I agree with Sydney’s point that migrants have served in essential roles throughout our nation’s history, I would like to challenge the idea that the migrant workers themselves are essential to those roles. Let me be clear: I completely disagree with the notion that immigrants are “stealing our jobs.” Most Americans are unwilling to fill those positions as they currently operate, and we absolutely should not blame the immigrants for seeking a better life. But I believe that calling immigrant labor itself “essential” only serves to excuse our luxury-obsessed culture and the costs it imposes on immigrant workers.

As Sydney points out, immigrant labor is used because they are one of our most vulnerable populations so they will accept dangerous conditions at low wages. The key point there is the low wages: agricultural work is not the most dangerous job out there, but it is certainly one of the lowest paying dangerous jobs. Looking at other, more dangerous jobs like garbage collectors or construction workers, their average salaries are considerably higher than agricultural work and they subsequently have much lower undocumented immigrant participation.

Source: USDA, Pew Research Center
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/illegal-immigrants-us-jobs-economy-farm-workers-taxes/

It is not that Americans are entirely unwilling to do the work; they are simply unwilling to do the work below a certain salary. The way I see it, our agricultural industry has convinced us that immigrant labor is essential to our food system in order to keep payroll artificially deflated and dissuade investigation of poor working conditions. They are basically using slave labor to keep food prices low and profits high. 

As available undocumented labor goes down, wages must go up to attract legal citizens.

I worry that the discourse around this topic can easily become confused and subsequently counter-productive. Agricultural work is undeniably essential; without our food industry, we (along with many other parts of the world) would starve to death. And our immigrant labor force is essential in order to keep food prices low. But are low food prices essential? They are not only inessential but inherently detrimental, as argued by Michael Carolan in The Real Cost of Cheap Food. Thus, by calling immigrant labor essential in and of it itself, we perpetuate the idea that our food should be cheap and, to a certain degree, excuse the poor treatment of immigrants as a necessary evil to reach those ends.

Sydney calls on the agriculture industry to improve wages and working conditions for undocumented workers. In my opinion, this represents individualization of responsibility to a degree: it fails to address the larger systemic reasons for those wages and conditions, which include America’s love of ultra-cheap food, a difficult-to-navigate legal immigration system, and our willingness to look the other way when our industries abuse desperate populations. Solving this problem will require deep systemic changes to our immigration systems, law enforcement, the agriculture industry, and, most importantly, the way Americans relate to food. We will need to accept spending much more of our income on food, which will require far less discretionary spending: smaller houses, less luxurious vehicles, and significantly less entertainment consumption. We will need to fundamentally alter the typical American lifestyle.

Systemic thinking shows us just how complex the situation is, and reminds us that we cannot just expect the food industry to make things right on its own. We must act as consumers and citizens, as individuals and communities, as social and political entities, in order to institute the massive changes necessary to protect vulnerable immigrant communities and move towards a more ethical and sustainable food system. 

Letting Your Guard Down in a Time of Crisis

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During a pandemic it is natural to worry about your defense systems. Will my immune system fight off the disease? Will my financial savings and food stocks last long enough? Will my government adequately protect me from hardship? In all of this, it can be easy to neglect one of your most important defense systems: your ego. Your ego acts as the immune system of your personality, reacting defensively to the information you receive and filtering it through various emotional and intellectual processes until it aligns with the way you conceptualize the world. The biggest worry during a time of crisis is not that your ego will fail to protect you, however, but that it will protect you too well. The quarantine has put my ego on high alert, and I have often found myself stressed, irritable, and defensive because of it. In a class such as ours that deals with controversial topics, this could make it difficult for me engage with challenging information, but contemplative practices have been crucial in allowing me to openly and honestly engage with ideas that challenge my worldview.

These practices work by altering my learning environment and physiological state. During a contemplative practice I am in a safe, comfortable, and quiet environment which allows me to relax. In this state of peace, my ego is able to let its guard down and I can abandon the defensiveness I feel towards challenging ideas. For example, while learning about fossil fuels, my mind is usually coming up with excuses for why I am not personally responsible for environmental damage, or why the information I am learning does not apply to me. A contemplative practice, however, lowers those defenses and forces me to engage with the material more honestly. I was not just hearing statistics, but I was feeling the information on a visceral level and applying it directly to my own life without making excuses. I also find that my ego encourages me to think linearly so I can ignore the wide range of effects my lifestyle has on a global scale; thus, contemplative practices have made it easier to think systemically which is crucial when analyzing our complex food system.

Note: I’m not sure this really came from the Buddha but I’m sure he would agree!

Overall, I have found the contemplative practices extremely helpful at improving mindfulness and self-honesty, and I now see them as a necessary step towards internalizing the things I learn. I believe that exercises like these will be critical for us as a society to be open and honest about our most significant problems, which will be necessary if we ever wish to solve them.

How Industries Individualize Responsibility Amid the Covid-19 Epidemic

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Meatpacking plants are being devastated by Covid-19 amid orders to continue essential work, exposing the shortcomings of the institutions tasked with protecting our most vulnerable populations. This situation is a clear example of the claims made in Michael Maniates’ “Individualization,” where he discussed how institutions deflect responsibility onto the individuals they are ostensibly responsible for.

The Covid-19 epidemic seems to be an obvious example of an extraordinary circumstance requiring large institutional changes, especially as it relates to crucial industries like food production. These industries simply must continue operating to prevent food shortages. At the same time, however, workers in meatpacking plants tend to belong to vulnerable populations including the elderly and undocumented immigrants with no health insurance. Thus we should be seeing major operational changes to these facilities, such as the universal adoption of strict safety practices, or additional financial support for those who cannot work.

Photo by Andy Cross/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images.

Instead, both the government and the meatpacking facilities have externalized costs onto their workers while absolving themselves of any responsibility. The CDC and OSHA have issued guidelines to the facilities, but rather than recommending a productive solution which could be costly to the company such as mandatory testing or installing distancing barriers, they recommended better communication and wearing masks; plus, none of their guidelines are compulsory but are unenforced recommendations. The facilities, in turn, did not institute actual policy changes either, though they now “offer access” to masks for employees who request them. More egregious is the fact that any worker who wishes to quarantine is required to take unpaid leave and risk getting fired. This is a perfect example of institutions continually pushing responsibilities further down the line until it reaches their most vulnerable members, and it exemplifies the need for legitimate structural change if we wish to solve our most pressing issues.

Original article at https://thefern.org/2020/05/the-workers-are-being-sacrificed-as-cases-mounted-meatpacker-jbs-kept-people-on-crowded-factory-floors/