Poor American kids in Florida to take immigrant jobs

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My teen wanted to work over the summer, but foreign Eastern European temp workers took all the jobs.

Your teen sounds like veal if they were not able to figure out how to land one. Or did they ask for every weekend off? Never more than 2 days in a row?

Guessing your teen lacked the work ethic of the "foreign Eastern European temp workers."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No time for joyriding and crime when you're tired from physical labor.

Nor for an education.

FWIW, the most joyriding and crime I saw in my teen years were committed by the kids of the richest families in our community.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This law would apply to HOMESCHOOLED CHILDREN ONLY. Look it up.

In that case, I see nothing wrong with it, though I would not allow my own kids to work overnights.

I worked 15-20 hours a week starting at 16 (and usually more in the summers). I balanced school, a school sport, marching band, and my PT job as a grocery store cashier just fine. It was good for me (taught me great time management skills) and I needed the money to help pay for upcoming college expenses.

Are you dense? No one is talking about the merits of teenagers having jobs. They are talking about rolling back worker protections and allowing 14 year olds to work oversight, leaving them open to the predation and danger that happens when you work at jobs at 1 am.

Honestly, people in this thread and others today are so dumb. Just the way MAGA likes their voters.

+1

I can’t believe all stupid people in this thread defending this $&it. These jobs will be taken mostly by low income POC. Specifically girls. But of course this would never affect the DCUM crowd because they would never allow their kids to do this, or be in a position forced to do this. And the fact that so many don’t see the trickle down effect is astounding. I thought this country cared about its children? This sad. Set aside the work part, are you also okay with kids not getting a break to eat during an 8 hour shift? Most of you would quit jobs if they don’t allow coffee runs while on the clock.


Example of the trickle down. In Memphis Tn, FedEx during the mid 80s, started hiring college students during the Christmas season to sort millions of packages on the overnight 10pm to 6am shift, the pay was significantly above minimum wage. Back then they also offered about $500 a year for tuition reimbursement, so it was a great recruiting tool. As FedEx grew, they started hiring students to work year around. The University of Memphis (Memphis State) had over 22% students of color (meaning African American) drop out after only working for FedEx for 8 months, 17% decrease in college applications from Memphis area AA high school students. Understandably, most are now 18, and can decide for themselves, but most came from low income families that needed them to contribute to their household. Instead of attempting to get an education/complete their education, they started working for FEDEX because it paid good money. It took Memphis nearly 20 (around 2003) years to recover from this deficit and get the percentages back up to where they were in the 1980’s regarding college applications from families making less than $30,000 annually (including non-POC families). Even with high paying jobs from FEDEX and UPS, Memphis consistently ranks in the top 5 for violent crime. Now of course FEDEX wasn’t the main factor in these drops, and I’m not blaming FEDEX at all. (My mother worked there for over 30 years, actually worked for Fred Smith in the early years.)And of course I’m probably leaving out nuances from the study conducted by U of M, but it clearly laid out when lower income young adults, especially AA males, joined the work force from high school or while in college, they don’t go/go back to college. Thankfully, FedEx has made significant inroads in keeping the enrollment up for college student workers by better managing the shifts of that demographic and incentives to stay in school.

Saying this to say, many times when kids on the fringe start working, they often push education to the back burner because they’ve become dependent on the money.

Thank you for bringing data and evidence to this discussion. Very powerful.

Some of you will lap up anything you agree with.
College tuition and expenses are no longer 1980s prices. Its okay for people to work hourly jobs. Truly.
Some times this DCUM bubble is hilarious and sometimes it's frightening how out of touch some of you are with life outside the beltway.

What's your point? Like really, what is your point?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No time for joyriding and crime when you're tired from physical labor.

Nor for an education.

FWIW, the most joyriding and crime I saw in my teen years were committed by the kids of the richest families in our community.

That's why work is good for kids. Too many today are given way too much unsupervised time, and rich kids are often given nice cars. Not a good idea unless attached to responsibilities.

[Anonymous]

There are no doubt many poor, dysfunctional families who are excited by the prospect of being able to sell their children off to fuel their own addictions and laziness.

I worked as a child (14+), and saw how unscrupulous employers would exploit my peers who were more vulnerable. They knew better than to try their crap on a white LMC girl, but my friend who was the daughter of immigrants was working 8-10 hours every day at 15 for $5/hr. Her family was happy for the money and didn’t care one bit about what it was doing to her. After all, weren’t things worse where she came from? She was smart and had a ton of potential which she never did get a chance to realize.

At the same place, the owner’s 21 year old son knocked up the 16-year old front end manager. After she dropped out of school to have the baby and work full time, they fired her. And defamed her as a slut. And the owner’s son now runs the place.

I could keep going but let’s just say employers like hiring kids because they are cheap and can’t defend themselves. Last place any caring parent would want to see their precious child end up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meatpacking used to be a stable, middle-class union job, with multiple generations of families working at the same plant. In 1960, the industry was 95% unionized, paying wages that were comparable to those in the auto and steel industries. Meatpacking was skilled labor. A meatpacker was trained like an old-fashioned butcher to take an animal from slaughter to final cuts.

In the 1960s, a company called IBP (Iowa Beef Packers) figured out that you didn't need skilled labor if you didn't care about your workers. Instead of workers doing a variety of jobs, IBP had workers do one cut all day long, maybe separate the hind quarter from the carcass, or slice a single cut of steak.

Meatpacking wages across the industry stayed high through the early 1980s, but then started to fall, as more companies adopted the IBP method. After all, anyone could be trained to do a single cut. By the mid-80s, wages had plunged and unions were disappearing. It was a race to the bottom and meatpacking was quickly becoming the worst job in America.

One reason it was now so awful, was that the IBP method resulted in a huge rise in repetitive stress injuries and debilitating knife cuts caused by inattention and fatigue. Doing one cut all day long on a speeding factory line was good for corporate profits but disastrously bad for actual humans.

Today, Places like Tyson Chicken and Smithfield Ham need an endless supply of 3rd world immigrants to keep wages low and unions busted, but also because it's a job that destroys the human body and spirit. Even if you're not injured, the work is so grueling that most immigrants can only do it for a couple of years before they move on. That's why you'll see that the ethnic composition of rural meatpacking towns goes through successive waves of foreigners-- Mexicans, Somalis, Sudanese, Guatemalans, Haitians-- as each group gets brought in and burned out, while management goes looking for another group of suckers.

Shutting down the immigration pipeline and deporting the illegals will go a long way to restoring the balance between workers and corporations. Likewise, we need to go back to a system with lots of small-scale regional meat processors staffed by skilled workers, something that will require breaking up these abusive corporations and overhauling the USDA inspection program.

Yes, prices of meat will certainly rise, but you already shouldn't be eating factory-farmed meat and you shouldn't be patronizing corporations that are actively wrecking America.

There’s no plan for any of that except deportations. The meat industry isn’t going to police itself, and Republicans will protect them. That’s why we need bipartisan effort and compromise.

No

That is why we need Democrats to focus on helping LABOR first, and not rich urban elites.

The nonsense on school loans was/is a perfect example for what is wrong with the current Democrats party.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are no doubt many poor, dysfunctional families who are excited by the prospect of being able to sell their children off to fuel their own addictions and laziness.

I worked as a child (14+), and saw how unscrupulous employers would exploit my peers who were more vulnerable. They knew better than to try their crap on a white LMC girl, but my friend who was the daughter of immigrants was working 8-10 hours every day at 15 for $5/hr. Her family was happy for the money and didn’t care one bit about what it was doing to her. After all, weren’t things worse where she came from? She was smart and had a ton of potential which she never did get a chance to realize.

At the same place, the owner’s 21 year old son knocked up the 16-year old front end manager. After she dropped out of school to have the baby and work full time, they fired her. And defamed her as a slut. And the owner’s son now runs the place.

I could keep going but let’s just say employers like hiring kids because they are cheap and can’t defend themselves. Last place any caring parent would want to see their precious child end up.

If we limited the overwhelming immigration, business would not be able to exploit labor.

And yet Democrats expand H1B, expand OPT, expand H4EAD.

Just ask Sen Durbin.

Democrats will continue to lose until they put US workers first.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This law would apply to HOMESCHOOLED CHILDREN ONLY. Look it up.

In that case, I see nothing wrong with it, though I would not allow my own kids to work overnights.

I worked 15-20 hours a week starting at 16 (and usually more in the summers). I balanced school, a school sport, marching band, and my PT job as a grocery store cashier just fine. It was good for me (taught me great time management skills) and I needed the money to help pay for upcoming college expenses.

Are you dense? No one is talking about the merits of teenagers having jobs. They are talking about rolling back worker protections and allowing 14 year olds to work oversight, leaving them open to the predation and danger that happens when you work at jobs at 1 am.

Honestly, people in this thread and others today are so dumb. Just the way MAGA likes their voters.

+1

I can’t believe all stupid people in this thread defending this $&it. These jobs will be taken mostly by low income POC. Specifically girls. But of course this would never affect the DCUM crowd because they would never allow their kids to do this, or be in a position forced to do this. And the fact that so many don’t see the trickle down effect is astounding. I thought this country cared about its children? This sad. Set aside the work part, are you also okay with kids not getting a break to eat during an 8 hour shift? Most of you would quit jobs if they don’t allow coffee runs while on the clock.


Example of the trickle down. In Memphis Tn, FedEx during the mid 80s, started hiring college students during the Christmas season to sort millions of packages on the overnight 10pm to 6am shift, the pay was significantly above minimum wage. Back then they also offered about $500 a year for tuition reimbursement, so it was a great recruiting tool. As FedEx grew, they started hiring students to work year around. The University of Memphis (Memphis State) had over 22% students of color (meaning African American) drop out after only working for FedEx for 8 months, 17% decrease in college applications from Memphis area AA high school students. Understandably, most are now 18, and can decide for themselves, but most came from low income families that needed them to contribute to their household. Instead of attempting to get an education/complete their education, they started working for FEDEX because it paid good money. It took Memphis nearly 20 (around 2003) years to recover from this deficit and get the percentages back up to where they were in the 1980’s regarding college applications from families making less than $30,000 annually (including non-POC families). Even with high paying jobs from FEDEX and UPS, Memphis consistently ranks in the top 5 for violent crime. Now of course FEDEX wasn’t the main factor in these drops, and I’m not blaming FEDEX at all. (My mother worked there for over 30 years, actually worked for Fred Smith in the early years.)And of course I’m probably leaving out nuances from the study conducted by U of M, but it clearly laid out when lower income young adults, especially AA males, joined the work force from high school or while in college, they don’t go/go back to college. Thankfully, FedEx has made significant inroads in keeping the enrollment up for college student workers by better managing the shifts of that demographic and incentives to stay in school.

Saying this to say, many times when kids on the fringe start working, they often push education to the back burner because they’ve become dependent on the money.

Thank you for bringing data and evidence to this discussion. Very powerful.

Some of you will lap up anything you agree with.
College tuition and expenses are no longer 1980s prices. Its okay for people to work hourly jobs. Truly.
Some times this DCUM bubble is hilarious and sometimes it's frightening how out of touch some of you are with life outside the beltway.

What's your point? Like really, what is your point?

What is yours?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meatpacking used to be a stable, middle-class union job, with multiple generations of families working at the same plant. In 1960, the industry was 95% unionized, paying wages that were comparable to those in the auto and steel industries. Meatpacking was skilled labor. A meatpacker was trained like an old-fashioned butcher to take an animal from slaughter to final cuts.

In the 1960s, a company called IBP (Iowa Beef Packers) figured out that you didn't need skilled labor if you didn't care about your workers. Instead of workers doing a variety of jobs, IBP had workers do one cut all day long, maybe separate the hind quarter from the carcass, or slice a single cut of steak.

Meatpacking wages across the industry stayed high through the early 1980s, but then started to fall, as more companies adopted the IBP method. After all, anyone could be trained to do a single cut. By the mid-80s, wages had plunged and unions were disappearing. It was a race to the bottom and meatpacking was quickly becoming the worst job in America.

One reason it was now so awful, was that the IBP method resulted in a huge rise in repetitive stress injuries and debilitating knife cuts caused by inattention and fatigue. Doing one cut all day long on a speeding factory line was good for corporate profits but disastrously bad for actual humans.

Today, Places like Tyson Chicken and Smithfield Ham need an endless supply of 3rd world immigrants to keep wages low and unions busted, but also because it's a job that destroys the human body and spirit. Even if you're not injured, the work is so grueling that most immigrants can only do it for a couple of years before they move on. That's why you'll see that the ethnic composition of rural meatpacking towns goes through successive waves of foreigners-- Mexicans, Somalis, Sudanese, Guatemalans, Haitians-- as each group gets brought in and burned out, while management goes looking for another group of suckers.

Shutting down the immigration pipeline and deporting the illegals will go a long way to restoring the balance between workers and corporations. Likewise, we need to go back to a system with lots of small-scale regional meat processors staffed by skilled workers, something that will require breaking up these abusive corporations and overhauling the USDA inspection program.

Yes, prices of meat will certainly rise, but you already shouldn't be eating factory-farmed meat and you shouldn't be patronizing corporations that are actively wrecking America.

There’s no plan for any of that except deportations. The meat industry isn’t going to police itself, and Republicans will protect them. That’s why we need bipartisan effort and compromise.

That's why they need American kids to go work there, so they can burn thru them. And there will be an large supply of unwanted American kids in red states with strict abortion and birth control laws.

Republicans want to go back to the late 1800s.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are no doubt many poor, dysfunctional families who are excited by the prospect of being able to sell their children off to fuel their own addictions and laziness.

I worked as a child (14+), and saw how unscrupulous employers would exploit my peers who were more vulnerable. They knew better than to try their crap on a white LMC girl, but my friend who was the daughter of immigrants was working 8-10 hours every day at 15 for $5/hr. Her family was happy for the money and didn’t care one bit about what it was doing to her. After all, weren’t things worse where she came from? She was smart and had a ton of potential which she never did get a chance to realize.

At the same place, the owner’s 21 year old son knocked up the 16-year old front end manager. After she dropped out of school to have the baby and work full time, they fired her. And defamed her as a slut. And the owner’s son now runs the place.

I could keep going but let’s just say employers like hiring kids because they are cheap and can’t defend themselves. Last place any caring parent would want to see their precious child end up.

If we limited the overwhelming immigration, business would not be able to exploit labor.

And yet Democrats expand H1B, expand OPT, expand H4EAD.

Just ask Sen Durbin.

Democrats will continue to lose until they put US workers first.

And now they are all voting against tariffs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are no doubt many poor, dysfunctional families who are excited by the prospect of being able to sell their children off to fuel their own addictions and laziness.

I worked as a child (14+), and saw how unscrupulous employers would exploit my peers who were more vulnerable. They knew better than to try their crap on a white LMC girl, but my friend who was the daughter of immigrants was working 8-10 hours every day at 15 for $5/hr. Her family was happy for the money and didn’t care one bit about what it was doing to her. After all, weren’t things worse where she came from? She was smart and had a ton of potential which she never did get a chance to realize.

At the same place, the owner’s 21 year old son knocked up the 16-year old front end manager. After she dropped out of school to have the baby and work full time, they fired her. And defamed her as a slut. And the owner’s son now runs the place.

I could keep going but let’s just say employers like hiring kids because they are cheap and can’t defend themselves. Last place any caring parent would want to see their precious child end up.

If we limited the overwhelming immigration, business would not be able to exploit labor.

And yet Democrats expand H1B, expand OPT, expand H4EAD.

Just ask Sen Durbin.

Democrats will continue to lose until they put US workers first.

Read the post again. With the exception of the one US citizen born to immigrant parents, we were all broke white girls. They exploited us because we were children. What Republicans want to do now - exploit children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are no doubt many poor, dysfunctional families who are excited by the prospect of being able to sell their children off to fuel their own addictions and laziness.

I worked as a child (14+), and saw how unscrupulous employers would exploit my peers who were more vulnerable. They knew better than to try their crap on a white LMC girl, but my friend who was the daughter of immigrants was working 8-10 hours every day at 15 for $5/hr. Her family was happy for the money and didn’t care one bit about what it was doing to her. After all, weren’t things worse where she came from? She was smart and had a ton of potential which she never did get a chance to realize.

At the same place, the owner’s 21 year old son knocked up the 16-year old front end manager. After she dropped out of school to have the baby and work full time, they fired her. And defamed her as a slut. And the owner’s son now runs the place.

I could keep going but let’s just say employers like hiring kids because they are cheap and can’t defend themselves. Last place any caring parent would want to see their precious child end up.

If we limited the overwhelming immigration, business would not be able to exploit labor.

And yet Democrats expand H1B, expand OPT, expand H4EAD.

Just ask Sen Durbin.

Democrats will continue to lose until they put US workers first.

Read the post again. With the exception of the one US citizen born to immigrant parents, we were all broke white girls. They exploited us because we were children. What Republicans want to do now - exploit children.

And Republicans specifically want to exploit American children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are no doubt many poor, dysfunctional families who are excited by the prospect of being able to sell their children off to fuel their own addictions and laziness.

I worked as a child (14+), and saw how unscrupulous employers would exploit my peers who were more vulnerable. They knew better than to try their crap on a white LMC girl, but my friend who was the daughter of immigrants was working 8-10 hours every day at 15 for $5/hr. Her family was happy for the money and didn’t care one bit about what it was doing to her. After all, weren’t things worse where she came from? She was smart and had a ton of potential which she never did get a chance to realize.

At the same place, the owner’s 21 year old son knocked up the 16-year old front end manager. After she dropped out of school to have the baby and work full time, they fired her. And defamed her as a slut. And the owner’s son now runs the place.

I could keep going but let’s just say employers like hiring kids because they are cheap and can’t defend themselves. Last place any caring parent would want to see their precious child end up.

If we limited the overwhelming immigration, business would not be able to exploit labor.

And yet Democrats expand H1B, expand OPT, expand H4EAD.

Just ask Sen Durbin.

Democrats will continue to lose until they put US workers first.

Read the post again. With the exception of the one US citizen born to immigrant parents, we were all broke white girls. They exploited us because we were children. What Republicans want to do now - exploit children.

And Republicans specifically want to exploit American children.

And Republicans specifically want to exploit POOR American children. Keep poor kids in hourly jobs, and maybe one day working up to hourly management. No need to go to college, or try to enter the corporate world. If a GED was good enough in 1970, a GED is good enough today.

All of this really just restarts old philosophies that keep poor people poor, rich people rich.

[Anonymous]

I was a poor kid who started working at 14. For $5.25 per hour (this was the 90s) I worked all day Saturdays and Sundays, plus three days after school 4-9pm.

They had me on the schedule Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, NYE, New Year’s Day. I have scars from minor on-the-job injuries. I was 14! I’d smoke weed and cigarettes in the back alley with the old man coworkers. They’d buy me booze. My best work bud was a Newport-smoking high school dropout named Gina. She was fun and liked a drink and she’s worked her way up to $6.25 an hour! I watched people faint because it was so hot during the summer months. One guy would smuggle supplies and equipment out the back door for who knows what.

Kids should not be doing this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My teen wanted to work over the summer, but foreign Eastern European temp workers took all the jobs.

Your teen sounds like veal if they were not able to figure out how to land one. Or did they ask for every weekend off? Never more than 2 days in a row?

Guessing your teen lacked the work ethic of the "foreign Eastern European temp workers."

Well, there are going to be a lot of open jobs this year because smart Europeans aren't coming over here.