“The owners claim that African Americans don’t want the jobs, and are incapable of doing the work.”
African Americans are not wanted in the fields – or the factories, or the offices, for that matter – because they are “joiners”: the U.S. group most likely to want to join a union or other self-help organization. The imperative to unity in the face of implacable hostility of the larger society, is an essential component of the African American legacy (one that Obama does not share). As free labor, Blacks rose to the top of the hierarchy of union-joiners, which is, in descending order:
African American Women
African American Men
Hispanic Women
Hispanic Men
White Women
White Men
Latinos would be right behind Blacks in bargaining for better wages and working conditions, if they were documented and secure in their residency. Many come from political cultures in which labor solidarity is more ingrained than in the United States. It is not that African Americans need to “run” as hard as undocumented Mexican field workers, but that field laborers need to be emancipated, so they can work as free men and women, with bargaining power, civil and human rights, and the force of law on their side.
Hard work should be well-paid work, but only the organizing ability of the hard-workers can make it so. Guest worker programs institutionalize perpetual worker insecurity in the fields, in order to guarantee high profit margins for shareholders up and down the corporate chain, from the farms outside Vidalia, Georgia, to the WalMart mega-grocery in Chicago (endorsed by food Czarina Michelle Obama).
There is a lot more at stake in immigration policy than gaining visas for 25,000 or so additional Africans per year – although, certainly, the Diversity Lottery is worth fighting for. Immigration policy is also national economic policy, national labor policy, and national infrastructure policy. An immigration reform vision that projects a captive labor population into the national future is a nightmare formula.
Been there, done that.
Article Appeared @http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/black-labor-too-uppity-fields-guest-workers-needed
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com