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The Hindu

Article Summary   by:jitendra kumar sharma    
  • Summary rating: 4 stars (1 Ratings)
  • Visits : 253
  • words:900 
ª
 
2/21/2006



ABSTRACT BY Dr. JITENDRA KUMAR SHARMA


Plight of America's migrant day
workers

Watch the morning scene on a cold day on Atlantic Avenue and Lefferts
Boulevard in New York. Brick workers, builders, and unskilled laborers await a
car to stop and offer work. But the snow is an ill omen. Construction work is
scarce in bad weather.

On a bad week one can get nothing, says Victor Singh, a villager Punjab> near Amritsar five years ago and has not had a full-time job since.
Wintertime is always sluggish. In the summer up to four days a week is
possible. If nothing comes by 9 a.m., he would go home and return the next day,
and every day until his luck gets better.

Such scenes are common throughout the United States every day. A broken
pattern of supply and demand woven together with intense insecurity that
manifest the human imperfections of a so-called perfect market.

The University of California’s recent report suggests that each morning
117,600-day laborers are hired this way.
Homeowners requiring help for gardening and domestic work employ a large
part of these job seekers. Contractors in construction and landscaping engage
slightly more than 40 per cent. Nationally, almost two-thirds are Hispanic and
just over a quarter are from Central America.

Migrant laborers are crucial to the U.S. economy. Yet xenophobic and
militant minority allied with opportunism among a majority of the politicians
has conspired to demonize them. It goes to President Bush’s credit that he has
not stooped to racism on the issue of migration in spite of his supporting
voter’s anger. He has, in fact, proposed that once illegal immigrants have paid
their fines and back-taxes they should be allowed to stay for a fixed period of
time. Under this "guest
worker" program, they would then have to return home on expiry of their
allowed stay. The aim, he explains is to match willing foreign workers with
willing American employers to fill jobs that Americans will not do.

The presidential proposals have split Republicans horizontally. The
Republican Divide has the bigots and big business on two opposing sides. But
beyond those narrow, powerful constituencies there are deeper concerns that
involve neither prejudice nor profit. According to John Berger, It is not men
who immigrate but machine minders, sweepers, diggers, cement mixers, cleaners,
drillers etc. In his Seventh Man, in 1975 he wrote that that was the
significance of temporary migration. To re-become a man (husband, father,
citizen, patriot) a migrant has to return home. The very home he left because
it held no future for him.

A long-term solution to this problem cannot be found until the global
inequalities exacerbated by U.S. trade policies are addressed As long as some
people are able to feed other people's families for a week, labor will seek and
deserve all the freedom of movement that capital has been granted. For the time
being, the more pernicious effects of US trade policies could be mitigated. A
strict enforcement of existing labor laws would punish callous employers. Some
American towns and cities have appointed official day labor sites, in order to
render the process more orderly and safe. Some unions have started organizing
immigrant labor to ensure that they do not breed resentment by undercutting
wages.

But this is not America's problem alone.
However, until it is solved, the desperate workless migrants will roam
the globe, moving from one marginal experience to another, seeking survival and
facing alienation. Day laborers are not a U.S. novelty. From earlier days one
can recall black women standing at corners in northern cities waiting to be
hired for domestic work. This has been a constant element of the immigrant
experience. Only, now but recently their presence has sparked ugly antagonism.

The nature of day labor work also puts them at greater risks and increases
chances of their being exploited. The Southern Poverty Law Center has recently
filed two collective action lawsuits in New Orleans on behalf of several
thousand workers. These workers allegedly have been victimized and not paid or
have been underpaid. As John Berger wrote: "The gold fell from very high
in the sky. And so when it hit the earth it went down very, very, deep."

An abstract of The Hindu
article of “Plight of America's migrant day workers”



Dated 2/21/2006 submitted
by Professor Jitendra Kumar Sharma

=========The
End=========
Published: February 21, 2006   
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