Far Too Many Businesses Would Embrace Slavery

[MineralMan]

if they had the chance. They're crying already because too few people are willing to work for low wages that can't support even a single person, much less a family. They're saying they won't be able to stay in business because "too many people don't want to work."

We're about one step away from some industries calling for bringing immigrants into the United States as indentured servants, working for room and board and committed by contract to work for that employer without further compensation under those conditions for multiple years before being able to leave and return to their home countries.

Put that idea in appealing language that didn't use the word slavery and you'd find many small business owners eager to sign onto such a program. I guarantee it.

Call it the "Immigrant's Freedom to Work Compact," and watch employers line up to sign on.

Instead of competing for workers in a fair-pay, living wage environment, they whine about not being able to find people to hire. Meanwhile, they drive to their business in a new Lexus from their home in an affluent suburb and expect their employees to live on lousy wages so the business owners can further enrich themselves.

[marble falls]

1. It's the sad truth. They would use slaves if they could. Chains, poverty, whatever it takes to ...

... to gather workers.

[wnylib]

14. Several companies did use slave labor

in the 1930s. They took advantage of the savings in labor costs to raise their profits by employing camp prisoners held by Nazis. Henry Ford did it. It's what Oskar Schindler set out to do, before his conscience kicked in over what he saw.

[marble falls]

56. During the war, GM's Opel division was the only heavy industry corporation that retained day ...

... to day control over operations. They received payments all through the war from the Nazis though banks in Switzerland.

Coca Cola did, too, through their Fanta division in Germany.

Dirty little secrets are buried all over history.

[wnylib]

62. Ford was quite open in his

anti Semitism, though. Back in the 1970s, when the Volkswagon Beetle was so popular, a couple Jewish friends told me that no one in their family would ever buy a Volkswagon or a Ford.

[marble falls]

64. Ford used to pass out copies of the 'Protocols of the Elder's of Zion' ...

Henry Ford receiving the Grand Cross of the German Eagle from Nazi officials, 1938.

https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/henry-ford-grand-cross-1938/

I swear I saw a photo, one of Henry Ford shaking Hitler's hand in Germany. I can not find it, but I can see it in my mind clearly.

[wnylib]

65. He also published an anti Semitic newspaper

with the costs coming out of his own pocket because he did not want sponsors who might disagree with him.

There were many other prominent Americans who supported Hitler, e.g. Lindbergh, the Bushes, and the Walkers.

[Binkie The Clown]

2. Or prison labor, which amounts to the same thing. nt

[MineralMan]

3. Sure. Contracting Prisoners out to Work for Local Business Owners

is still going on in some states. You're right. It is the same idea.

[marble falls]

57. That one totally frosts me. Prisoners get no more than $.50/hr. and the products sell for ...

... for full price. These prison "industries" are little better than plantations and your tax dollars support it.

[uponit7771]

7. Prison labor IS technically slavery which is still legal in US outline in the last 2 sentences of ..

... 13th amendment.

https://westportlibrary.libguides.com/ThirteenthAmendmentLoophole

The 13th Amendment, ratified in 1865, says: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Scholars, activists and prisoners have linked that exception clause to the rise of a prison system that incarcerates Black people at more than five times the rate of white people, and profits off of their unpaid or underpaid labor.

Slave "TRADE" isn't legal but slavery is lawful and practiced often in the US through our jail system.

Put's another spin on so many blacks in jail imho

[MiHale]

25. And with the U.S. being the country with the most incarcerated people...

The prison work force may be the largest in the world . Could be why we have the most people in prison.

[OMGWTF]

34. Remember AZ Gov. Jan Brewer's "Papers Please" law aimed at jailing brown people?

Turns out her campaign manager was a principle in a private prison corporation that was paid by the state to house inmates and it was a way to scam money while ruining brown peoples' lives -- so, a two-fer.

[marie999]

49. That's what they did after the Civil War and it was constitutional under the 13th Amendment.

[FoxNewsSucks]

4. That's the goal.

Remember Willard Rmoney's disgusting admiration for the working conditions at the factories he visited in Asia? He flat-out said he wished that could happen here.

Then there's the guy who wanted to put factories on giant ships so he could go to whatever part of the world the people would work for the least amount.

[mrsadm]

41. That was from Jack Welch

"Then there's the guy who wanted to put factories on giant ships so he could go to whatever part of the world the people would work for the least amount. "

It was Jack Welch, CEO of General electric, who said that ideally factory owners should have “every plant you own on a barge”.

[Captain Zero]

45. I hope Jack Welch is dead with many pissing on

His grave. He was the propaganda poster boy for Reagan's trickle down bullshit. And the media propped him up like the goon he was.
I hope Pete Peterson is dead too. He was a fucking fucker as well.

[mrsadm]

61. I hope so too

[Devil Child]

5. Damn good post MineralMan

This was a predictable corporate trial balloon floated in reaction to US workers advocating for themselves in saying NO to oppressive working conditions.

Now watch corporations cynically frame this is a progressive issue which some will all to easily latch onto. Useful idiots in the Corporate world's goal of destroying the US worker's ability to advocate for living wages, wage disparity decrease, and many other important issues.

[MineralMan]

8. Thanks! Watch out for this to be proposed

by someone.

[Marcuse]

6. H-1B-IS?

[keithbvadu2]

9. Actually the slave owners found that sharecropping was a better deal for them.

Actually the slave owners found that sharecropping was a better deal for them. As a slave owner, you were responsible for housing, feeding, and their general upkeep.

Sharecroppers can be kept in your perpetual debt and servitude. A form of slavery with less corporate responsibility. Same with company towns and the company store.

Remember Burl Ives in the Roots series? Owning land is the real wealth. Always has been. Always will be.

[wnylib]

24. Same thing happened in Europe when

serfdom ended. Under the feudal system, landowners were legally responsible for some aspects of care for their serfs and the serfs had a few legal rights as part of the system.

When serfs were freed from the restrictions of feudal obligations, so were their lords. The serfs continued to work the land and received wages instead of clothing, medical attention, a portion of the harvest for their food, and hereditary rights to a hut and plot to work. They had to pay rent, buy food, arrange for their own medical care on the wages they received from the lords. Since the lords had the power and money, they paid wages that were too low for former serfs to provide for themselves. The few legal rights of serfs under feudalism evaporated.

Colonists and later citizens in America used slavery in imitation of the old feudal system - intensive labor, very few rights (that often weren't enforced) in return for a shack, minimal clothing, and medical care. They could rnforce it more strictly by bringing in people of a different race, from different countries on a different continent as "the other," easily identified by appearance. Keeping families, clans, and cultures separated prevented successful mass rebellions do that enslaved people on America did not even have the shared culture, family, and identity that European serfs had had.

[MineralMan]

26. Yes, but they fought to the death to preserve slavery.

Then, they replaced it with something that was still unjust and bigoted. People of color today are still feeling the effects of that in the workplace.

[misanthrope]

59. Precisely**nm

**

[sarchasm]

10. Disturbingly prescient

[The Magistrate]

11. Damn, Skippy!

"Immigrant's Freedom to Work Compact"

Ripped from tomorrow's headlines....

[MineralMan]

27. I truly hope not, Sir.

[berniesandersmittens]

12. IG Farben

When greed, propaganda, and apathy take over the collective, the poor and working class become mere fuel for profits.

[hunter]

13. Businesses that are unable to pay comfortable living wages shouldn't exist.

It's that simple.

[MineralMan]

28. That should be the case. However, business owners are fighting

to preserve their low wage structure, because it allows them to earn so much more. That is why we do not have a minimum wage that is a living wage. Until we do that, we will continue to see employers pay their employees as little as they can get away with. Once the minimum wage is a living wage, they will find a way to continue to do business, albeit with higher prices to the consumer.

[hunter]

44. Very strict enforcement of labor laws and mandatory living wages...

... would greatly reduce any incentives businesses have to hire undocumented workers.

Businesses hire undocumented workers and other desperate immigrants because they can abuse them by paying them less than living wages, subjecting them to dangerous working conditions, or by firing them en masse if they begin to organize.

I suspect many businesses employing undocumented workers have called ICE on themselves when their workforce becomes inconvenient, knowing that they'll be insulated from any serious consequences by unscrupulous labor contractors who simply vanish.

If someone who makes a good living wage and supports their family can't be considered a citizen because they are a recent immigrant then our entire economic system is bullshit. Just because the last of my immigrant ancestors arrived here in the mid nineteenth century doesn't make me a superior human.

My wife has Native American ancestors who'd been here for tens of thousands of years. Some of her ancestors returned to the United States as "immigrants" after their ancestors had been forced into Mexico by violent oppression. Others returned to Mexico again during the Great Depression when discrimination against Native Americans and other non-white working people once again became intolerable. My wife's grandmother deeply resented that and never sought U.S. citizenship. Yet she was a permanent resident, worked hard as a farm worker and in the canneries until she retired, and all her children were born in the U.S.A.. There was no reason for her not to be a citizen but her distrust of this nation.

I saw this sort of discrimination in my own family. One of my grandfather's had a fit that I was marrying, in his own words, "a Mexican girl." Men in his white Wild West family simply didn't do that. To his credit he got over it, but I was shocked.

[MineralMan]

46. The California town of about 5000 where I grew up

was about 1/3 Hispanic. In first grade, I was in the first integrated class at the grammar school I attended. That was in 1950. Prior to that year, it was exclusively for Hispanic kids. I was one of just a few Anglo kids at that school, so all of my early childhood friends came from families where Spanish was spoken at home. I learned Spanish naturally, through osmosis and because I spent lots of time in my friends' houses.

With that heritage mix, all through high school (there was just one of those in town), there was a lot of friendship and dating between Anglo and Hispanic kids. However, it was also very common for Anglo parents to forbid any relationships with Hispanic kids. Still, they existed and a number of my old friends from that town married people from the opposite background. There were social penalties for doing that, though.

It was my home town that taught me just how pervasive such prejudices could be. I rejected that, because I had so many Hispanic friends. But, the prejudice never went away, and still persists in that town, even now. But now, the town is at least 50% Hispanic, and the tables have turned somewhat.

[Texin]

15. You speak the truth, MineralMan.

That's been the stated goal since FDR's New Deal and especially the implementation of Social Security. The rich corporatists realized at that time that people wouldn't be content to toil in sweat shops for pittance and they vowed to kill every aspect of the policies of that era. Their political allies -- primarily within the the GOP -- embraced those same goals and they've been working non-stop to dismantle anything and everything that built the middle class, with Reagan being the principal driver of their subsequent policies since. They have been frenziedly tearing apart union representation, fighting higher minimum wages and safety regulations within work places since the eighties (and really since the Depression as much as they could do so), and with the current rethuglican state legislatures and in the US Congress, they have just about accomplished their long-held goals. If things continue (and I have no reason to believe they will not at this point), they will have sealed the doom of average workers in this country.

[MineralMan]

29. Yes, that could happen. However, the COVID-19

pandemic caused a shortage of workers in many "essential" but underpaid jobs. At the same time, companies like Amazon and direct-to-consumer delivery companies increased wages, giving some of those workers better opportunities. That is part of what is driving the worker shortage for employers who still are following the lowest-wage possible strategy.

We'll have to see if those things balance each other out to some degree.

[spike jones]

16. The fact that we need child labor laws tell you all you need to know about the Capitalism system

The bottom line of that system is slavery.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

17. I've said that for years.

Then other businesses, who wouldn't initially consider doing it themselves, would adopt the same policy in order to better compete in the marketplace.

After even more time passed, everyone would be told it was perfectly acceptable because of some passages in the Bible that supposedly support it.

[KS Toronado]

18. If "Immigrant's Freedom to Work Compact," became real..........

I suppose reQublicOns will stop hollering about our southern border, or the wall they wanted.

[Maggiemayhem]

20. j 1 Visas

After taking deductions for housing and other expenses, they are left with much of nothing. They are put in low wage jobs and crowded housing. I know of several restaurants that use this program for all their staff. Front and back of the house. Mostly Eastern Europeans.

[Maggiemayhem]

21. j 1 Visas

After taking deductions for housing and other expenses, they are left with much of nothing. They are put in low wage jobs and crowded housing. I know of several restaurants that use this program for all their staff. Front and back of the house. Mostly Eastern Europeans.

[rampartc]

22. unlimited sex with the employees and you've got a cinstitutional amendment

[seta1950]

23. Sadly

It’s been that way until now

[Dukkha]

30. I always said about Wal-Mart

If they thought they could get away with it, they would pay their employees only in vouchers or scrips for the company store.

PBS did a documentary about this in 2012 titled "Slavery by Another Name" where in remote locations such as railroad construction sites, lumber camps, turpentine camps, or coal mines, the employer sometimes developed a company town, where an individual company owned all the buildings and businesses. Your employer had a total monopoly and therefore owned you. Without external competition, housing costs and groceries in company towns could become exorbitant, and the workers built up large debts that they were required to pay off before leaving.

"Saint Peter, don't you call me, 'cuz I can't go. I owe my soul to the company store."

[MineralMan]

31. Oh, yes. Walmart would love to be a "Company Store"

business. However, I think it's too late for them to do that at this point. They can't build the needed housing and other facilities, due to the cost of doing that.

[Snackshack]

32. What is going on today

Is basically the same thing that went on back in the 14th century with the “Peasants Revolt”. The Black Death had killed so many the peasants were in demand to work lands all over Europe so they had options that did not previously exist to go elsewhere and make more $$. The Nobility didn’t like this and told them “No” you can go elsewhere and enacted laws against the fledgling “free agency” and that’s when the Peasants got mad and revolted.

The more things change the more they stay the same.

[MineralMan]

33. Yes, there are parallels there.

[moondust]

35. Too many morally bankrupt.

For hundreds of years.

I fully expected some movement in that direction during the morally bankrupt IQ45 years, spreading beyond prison labor into the private sector. I vaguely recall some suggestion of that in Oklahoma or some other deep red state but don't know what came of it.

I suppose it would be okay as long as you tear gas your way to a church and hold up a Bible for the cameras once in a while.

[CrackityJones75]

36. THEY ALREADY HAVE IT

To a large degree they already have it. Consider how much it would cost to feed cloth house and maintain slaves. Consider the time effort and energy it takes to do so.

Now consider that wages have been stagnant for a long time, especially “unskilled labor”. That’s why they fight wage increases tooth and nail. They pay people just enough to fulfill those obligations for them.

[Pepsidog]

37. Is there any doubt that low paid workers especially undocumented immigrants are the slave class.

[MineralMan]

39. Not exactly slaves, but the 21st century equivalent.

However, a couple of things are throwing a monkey wrench into the works for the would-be slave owners. Companies like Amazon, in some areas, are hiring people without high skill levels and training them in the jobs they'll be doing. Last-mile delivery services are hiring drivers, too, which also cuts into the available labor market. Gig work, as crappy as that can be, is also eating into the labor supply, since it's possible to earn more than minimum wage, in some markets, anyhow.

For workers who have learned skills on the job, there are also new opportunities that might not appear to affect huge numbers, but, stuff like appliance installation, furniture assembly, and other after-sale needs of consumers are also offering opportunities for individuals who have skills they can parlay into getting into the pool at places like Home Depot, Lowes, and other retail vendors. It's hard work and you have to be an efficient worker to make enough, but it's a possibility for many.

School bus drivers, too, are moving onward and upward. Pay has been low for them, traditionally, and they work a split shift, which is pain. Now, they're working driving trucks and getting training for that and even hiring bonuses for signing on. Local delivery services, too, pay more than driving a school bus, and offer a more normal work day. Getting those people back into the school buses is going to be difficult, and online shopping is creating demand for local and longer distance delivery drivers.

[Pepsidog]

48. Well said.

[Alpeduez21]

38. Immigrants are used as slaves across the middle east

The practice of using immigrants as slave labor is happening in many countries of the world. NPR consistently has stories of Indians and Phillipinos trapped in countries b/c authorities or business have their passports and force them to work while withholding paychecks. I believe that is how the world cup stadiums in Qatar are being managed.

[MineralMan]

40. Yes. Immigrants can be intimidated into working for little,

under the threat of being returned to their home country. Also, the "company store" sort of economy can put them into debt that they cannot pay off, leading to additional coercion. Often, in many countries, those immigrants do not have the same rights as citizens, making the problem even worse.

I'm afraid we're in danger of something similar happening here. The old bracero program in California that brought Mexican workers to pick crops was rife with corruption and wage-robbing schemes. That program ended in the 1960s, but I've seen similar programs proposed much more recently. The problem is that labor contractors are used to avoid dealing with individual workers, so the corruption creeps in, and there's not enough oversight to stop it. I grew up in a citrus-growing town in California in the 1950s and 60s, and saw that happening myself as a child.

[Coventina]

42. Just look at firms in Nazi Germany for your answer. n/t

[MineralMan]

43. Yes. We're in danger of something similar.

[dawg]

47. Slavery would suck for some of them, because they'd have to provide adequate food and health care ..

for their slaves instead of simply paying them the minimum the market will bear, and then outsourcing those responsibilites to the government.

[mathematic]

50. Stop. Immigrants come here of their own free will.

You're inventing a fantasy of corporate-sponsered immigrant slavery and using it as a strawman to support anti-immigrant politics.

Slavery is illegal. Legal immigrants cannot be slaves. The solution to illegal immigration is to make illegal immigrants legal immigrants. This is called "amnesty". Right wing populists are against it.

You use DU enough to know that there is a thread out there today about Domino's CEO calling for more immigration. I don't know why you're conflating immigration with human trafficking or slavery but all it does is turn people towards immigrant-hate.

You can support immigration and whatever fair-pay or living wage policies you like because they're not at odds, just as women entering the workforce were not at odds with fair-pay or living wages for men. The size of the workforce is irrelevant to the justice of the workplace.

Immigrants do not steal jobs, they create jobs, unless everybody "all of a sudden" no longer believe that demand creates jobs. Who knew the business owners were the job creators after all?

[MineralMan]

51. You are misunderstanding me altogether.

That's OK. But, you're incorrect.

[A HERETIC I AM]

52. As comedian Chris Rock once noted.....

Last edited Mon Oct 18, 2021, 04:17 PM - Edit history (1)

By paying you minimum wage, essentially an employer is saying to you; "I'd pay you less, but that's illegal"

[MineralMan]

53. Tipped employees are an excuse for Restaurateurs to pay

servers less than minimum wage, unfortunately, and they do it consistently

While servers in some dining establishments earn more than minimum wage, servers in casual dining restaurants often do not, and the difference is rarely made up by employers.

[A HERETIC I AM]

55. Look into the racist/post emancipation origins of the tipped workforce.

Forcing restaurant workers and other service industry positions (Skycaps, Redcaps, Bellmen, Porters, etc.) to accept tips in lieu of an actual salary has its roots in the post slavery days when those positions were mostly held by men and women of color.

As a contrast, in France being a waiter is a position of professional renown, and waiters make a good living and can retire comfortably after working for decades for the same establishment.

[BadGimp]

54. We are there already... Have been for some time in fact.

Domino's Pizza CEO says U.S. needs more immigration to address nationwide worker shortages
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/10/15/dominos-ceo-us-needs-more-immigration-to-address-worker-shortages.html

[misanthrope]

58. I have long been of the opinion that what finally put the kibosh on formal slavery in America

Last edited Mon Oct 18, 2021, 05:56 PM - Edit history (1)

were 19th century immigration surges combined with the South's Jim Crow workarounds. Once industrial barons and other aspiring capitalists figured out the surplus of low-skilled labor provided by immigration meant you could treat workers as the most expendable portion of an enterprise, they looked back on slavery as folly.

Filling a garment shop with workers making a few dollars a day proved more cost-effective than buying, housing and feeding human chattel. If the workers didn't like the job, or dropped dead in the factory, there was an inexhaustible supply of warm bodies to take their place. Even better for the capitalists if they could keep the ranks of the exploited divided with tribalism, like the way they set the Irish and Blacks at each other's throats, or the Italians and Jews, or any other combination of ethnic friction that kept power ensconced.

Down South, they just learned how to change the patina of slavery. Blacks were still kept at the bottom of a rigid social caste system, still disenfranchised, still terrorized, still forced to provide tantamount free toil via sharecropping or prison labor.

[MineralMan]

60. All true.

[marie999]

63. Texas had slaves 3 times, they might like to go for a 4th.