Annals of Diverse Capitalist Shamelessness: Hispanic Contractors Complain Of Shortage Of Wetback Labor
06/21/2017
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From the AP:
Texas companies tie worker shortages to immigration fears

Meredith Hoffman, Associated Press, June 17, 2017

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Though construction is in high demand in Texas’ booming capital city, Oscar Martinez’s drywall company is suddenly struggling.

One-third of the approximately 20 employees Martinez uses to build new homes and commercial spaces have recently fled the state, spooked by a combination of a federal immigration crackdown by the Trump administration and a tough anti-”sanctuary cities” law approved last month by Texas’ Republican-controlled Legislature.

“The Americans I hire can’t last in this job more than half a day,” Martinez said. …

The biggest industry to take a hit from the immigration crackdown is construction. About half of that industry’s workers are in the U.S. illegally, according to the immigrant rights organization Workers Defense Project.

“Projects are coming in late because we don’t have enough labor,” said Frank Fuentes, chairman of the U.S. Hispanic Contractors Association, based in Austin. …

“It just breaks my heart when they have to leave because of the situation,” said Martinez, whose employees typically work 15-hour days and six or seven days a week.

Who doesn’t want to pour their life savings into the purchase of a house assembled by illegal aliens working 90 to 105 hours per week? My father told me that the government did a study at Lockheed during World War II to discover the optimal long-term number of hours per work week before quality fell off so badly that overall output declined. He said they found 52 hours per week was the optimum for winning the Big One.

But you have to understand, those were pathetic, deplorable, deportable American workers who won World War II, not illegal alien supermen. You should be proud to be able to buy a high quality new house built by illegal aliens working twice the optimum number of hours.

Americans lasting only half a day might have something to do with Mr. Martinez working his employees 15 hours per day.

In Marx’s Capital, Karl’s theory is that capitalists pay workers for only six hours of work per day but make them work for twelve hours per day, appropriating the other six hours of their labor.

But Marx hadn’t run into Mr. Martinez, who boasts of working his illegal workers not 12 hours, like in the era of Marx and Dickens, but 15 hours per day. To most of today’s Marxists, however, Mr. Martinez deserves to be a Who instead of a Whom because his name ends in a Z.

[Comment at Unz.com]

 

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