Jobs For Life

These agreements have one universal goal although it is certainly not the theme that is presented to the world when the "benefits" and glories of the pacts are being flouted: they have as their simple overwhelming aim the degradation of the costs of labour. Behind every one of these agreements is the solid and immutable goal of driving the costs of all labour to the lowest levels possible. That should be readily apparent to anyone who has decried the transfer of their jobs to some offshore haven where workers are only paid to ensure they can eat enough to stand up for another day. In those countries, workers are the least valuable commodity in the manufacturing process and they are as expendable as used toilet paper. Meanwhile, the more jobs are offloaded to those countries, the more the standard of living in the so-called civilized nations is threatened because of massive unemployment. While the humane answer to this problem is the raising of standards in those countries rather than the diminution of standards in the richer countries, that isn't going to happen without some sort of working class revolt. The globalization movement is rolling along over top of us all and it is already making vast inroads in the effort to degrade the cost of labour. A recently noticed trend in the United States makes clear that the commodification and disposability of American workers is rapidly becoming reality. And like so many aspects of American society, there is an apparent clear distinction along racial lines. In this highly polarized nation, the Blacks no longer find themselves at the bottom of the caste system; now, it is the Mexicans (the term is usually applied to every Spanish-speaking American regardless of their actual origin but for the purposes of this article, it truly is Mexicans that we are discussing). The phrase "jobs for life" is taking on a whole new meaning. Over the years, working has become less hazardous for American labourers. Increasingly strict health and safety standards have forced employers to consider the well-being of their workforce with the simple premise that everyone has the right to leave work at the end of the day in the same condition as they arrived at the beginning. Government organizations have promoted the notion of "zero tolerance" for accidents with the result that U.S. workplaces have become safer overall. But not for Mexicans. Most of them are lured north because of the promise of employment and they are willing to perform almost any jobs. They don't ask questions about whether it is safe to do something, they are often provided with less than adequate personal protective equipment (PPE), and they often take the most hazardous jobs. The result is that, on average, at least one Mexican worker dies on the job in the United States every day. And statistics show clearly that Mexicans are more likely than other workers to be killed doing the same work. Worse, the statistics show that the death rate among Mexicans is on the rise - in the mid-1990s a Mexican was 30% more likely to die on the job than a U.S.-born worker but that number has now blossomed to about 80%. Mexicans comprise slightly more than 4% of the U.S. workforce but more than 7% of the workplace fatalities. The numbers for non-fatal injuries are similar. As you might expect, the highest concentration of Mexican workers is found in the southwestern states and, in that area, a Mexican is four times more likely to die on the job than the average U.S.-born worker. Studies also show that these deaths are almost always preventable and they tend to be some of the more gruesome fatalities like impaling, buried alive, drowning in grain elevators or liquid manure pits, shredded by machinery, etc. Now before we start assuming that these people are more accident prone because they are immigrants or just "lazy Mexicans", think again. The numbers reveal that immigrant workers do tend to have higher rates of injury than U.S.-born workers and common wisdom attributes that to language barriers impeding their ability to properly understand safety training. But the death rate among Mexicans is double the rate of all other immigrants and that leads safety experts and government bodies such as the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) to wonder why. Their studies and the figures supplied by the U.S. Bureau of Statistics suggest a disturbing reality: for many American companies, Mexican workers are disposable. There is evidence to suggest that some companies hire Mexicans just because they know they can avoid the expense of trying to keep these workers alive. Health and safety is seen as an expensive part of doing business and while some employers have little regard for any of their employees, there is an obvious suggestion underlying the statistics that they care even less about Mexican workers. They know there are plenty more where they came from. Federal and state officials are trying to grapple with the problem by providing additional printed training materials in Spanish and through their website. But, astoundingly, OSHA has placed some of the blame on the Mexicans themselves. Joe Reina, who is the second highest-ranking OSHA official in Texas, says that Mexican workers are partly responsible for this situation because "they just don't know that they have rights and responsibilities," including the ability to complain against employers. So, if OSHA fails to educate workers, it is the workers' fault for failing to be educated. Hmmm. To be fair, OSHA's policies lead them to practice enforcement and punitive action after a safety violation. One could hardly expect that a safety administration might actually be concerned about the prevention of accidents in the first place, because the issuing of fines and work orders is a far more satisfying exercise. It is often the case that Mexicans are hired to work cheap and they are discouraged from asking questions. They are sometimes thrown into jobs without adequate PPE or training and if they happen to be "illegal aliens", they will almost surely be silent about any perceived risks. They didn't arrive in American hoping to die on the job; they came looking for the touted promised land and a piece of the rich pie that free trade agreements were supposed to give to us all. In all of this there remains that specter of why so many of these deaths are occurring in the first place. It is because the forces of globalization are beginning to nip at the workforce in the United States and encourage American employers to cut corners as a method of competing against all those Third World sweat shops. It is only a matter of time before the degradation of labour moves higher up the food chain. For Mexicans, at least, the idea of a "job for life" is becoming a reality thanks to their lives ending early, simply because they showed up for work.