Walking in the Park

And while I was walking I got a chance to listen to City Arts and Lectures once again. Today’s show with Eric Schlosser was a killer! The bomb! Sorry, I was getting carried away. Mr. Schlosser is certainly worth listening to, anytime!

His thoughts and words on immigration were right on. I certainly remember the late 60’s and early 70’s as immigrants were encouraged to come north for work. Work that they would be paid less for than American workers. At the time, I was doing a lot of non-union piece work. Why not? I was young and strong and it paid pretty well. I could hang all of the drywall in a house in a day and a half and make $200. Even when I was working a union job, I would sometimes work a weekend, piecing, for the extra money. At the time, union scale was about $60 a day.

Then things changed, slowly but surely. I would get a notice that the price on a house was going to be cut to $150. Then it was $100. And then I started seeing more and more houses being ‘claimed’ ahead. Workers I didn’t know were teaming up to hang and nail a house. Ordinarily it was the work of one person, but now there were 3 or 4 guys working in a house while others were hanging ‘claim sheets’ in houses ahead of schedule so that the lone worker didn’t have a chance of getting new work. Finally the price dropped below $60 and most of the piece workers I knew were desperate to find some hourly work. The new workers were all immigrants. They were from Mexico and Central and South America. I knew quite a few that came from Argentina. It didn’t matter to the contractors, where they came from. They were cheaper to hire and afraid of losing their jobs.

Mad at them? No, I felt sorry for them.