Tag: illegal immigrants

OM in the News: Child Labor Abuse in the U.S.

Throughout our text, we offer chapter-by-chapter Ethical Dilemmas. What would you do in the case of underage workers at a subcontractor’s plant in Viet Nam? Slave laborers making your Nikes in China? But in a New York Times (Feb, 26, 2023) expose, the headline reads “Brutal Jobs Common for Migrant Kids. Well Known Brands Use Vulnerable Labor Force.” 

Migrant children gather on a school day to find roofing, landscaping or other work in Florida.

Except the article is about manufacturers in the U.S. It opens: “The factory in Michigan was full of underage workers who had crossed the southern border by themselves and were now spending late hours bent over hazardous machinery, in violation of child labor laws.”  In L.A., children stitch “Made in America” tags into J. Crew shirts. They bake dinner rolls sold at Walmart and Target, process milk used in Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, and help debone chicken for Whole Foods. Middle-schoolers make Fruit of the Loom socks in Alabama. In Michigan, children make auto parts for Ford and GM. Girls as young as 13 wash hotel sheets in Virginia, 12 year old roofers work in Florida and Tennessee and other underage workers are employed by slaughterhouses in Delaware, Mississippi and N. Carolina.

Migrant child labor benefits both under-the-table operations and global corporations. The workers are part of a new economy of exploitation: Migrant children, who have been coming into the U.S. without their parents in record numbers. This shadow workforce flouts child labor laws that have been in place for nearly a century.

The number of unaccompanied minors entering the U.S. climbed to 1/4 million in the last 2 years – three times what it was 5 years earlier. Nearly half are coming from Guatemala, where poverty is fueling a wave of migration. Parents know that they would be turned away at the border or quickly deported, so they send their children in hopes that remittances will come back.

But as more and more children have arrived, the White House has ramped up demands to move the children quickly out of shelters and release them to adults who will agree to house them. Caseworkers say they rush through vetting sponsors, and the government lost contact with 1/3 of migrant children. Caseworkers complained that the U.S. regularly ignored obvious signs of labor exploitation.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. As a hotel operator, what do you do when you find 13 year-olds working for you?
  2. What is the solution?

OM in the News: Illegal Immigrants Vacate Jobs that Americans Find Undesireable

When I was a young child, my dad proudly took me for a tour one Saturday morning of the meat processing plant, Dubuque Packing (home of the famous Dubuque ham), where he worked. Decades later, I still recall the stench, the noise from cows being slaughtered, and the massive cold and damp rooms. Jobs in slaughter houses, as are field-hand picking jobs, are unpleasant, with low pay and skimpy benefits.  As our US population has become better-educated, we seek office and manufacturing  jobs that have set hours, higher pay, and safer conditions–things we take for granted. Businessweek (Nov.10-17, 2011) tackles a tough issue of how illegal immigrants have taken over many of the dirty jobs Americans no longer aspire to.

In particular, this lengthy article deals with Alabama, which in September passed a law making it almost impossible to employ illegal immigrants, mostly Hispanic and heavily Guatemalan (the Hispanic population had grown from 1% in 1990 to 4% today). The law follows an anti-immigration sentiment throughout the country that has accompanied the recession. With 211,000 residents out of work and high unemployment rates (18% in some rural counties), the state’s ruling has resulted in an exodus of 1,000’s of  immigrant field hands, hotel housekeepers, dishwashers, and chicken plant employees.

The result:  employers trying to fill a massive number of vacant positions with Americans. But Americans are not interested in these jobs, and it’s not just because of the hard work and low pay. We have come to think of these jobs as beneath us, says a Princeton prof. “It doesn’t have anything to do with the job itself. In other countries, citizens refuse to take jobs Americans compete for. In Europe, auto manufacturing is an immigrant job category”.

Furious employers have bombarded their legislators with complaints of unpicked tomatoes, unmade beds, and uncleaned fish. This is a thoughtful article that you may want your students to read as you teach Chapter 10.

Discussion questions:

1. Why is this an important OM issue?

2. Should illegal immigrants be hired to do the jobs Americans don’t want?