Diversity and Its Discontents

1. Diversity and Its Discontents

2. Sources of Conflict Cultural differences Gender Expectations of work Language Competition between groups

3. Gender Asian and Latino attitudes toward gender roles Women as peers Women as supervisors

4. Third World Orientationtoward Work Work rules Authority

5. Language Dominance of one language group in a work section

6. Competition Between Euro-Americans, African Americans, and immigrant groups

7. Competition between African Americans and Immigrant Groups Especially challenging for low skilled African Americans No net effect on African Americans as a whole

8. Low skilled African Americans squeezed into shrinking segment of labor market Where pay and benefits

9. Immigration Reform President Bush�s 2004 temporary worker proposal

10. Employers must Not hire undocumented workers

11. Current undocumented workers pay one-time fee to register for the program Temporary workers expected to return to native country after work period expired Retirement plan

12. Increase limits on number of immigrants allowed permanent residence

13. U.S. History of Guest Worker Programs The Bracero program was the US' first big experiment in using guest workers.

14. Recruited at centers in Mexico. County grower associations parceled the workers out among various local ranchers.

15. If they complained or tried to strike or stop work, they were sent back to Mexico.

16. Since then former braceros in the US and Mexico have been trying to force the Mexican government to pay the money owed them.

17. The record shows that even when there are minimal standards for pay, overtime, housing and other requirements, employers violate them with impunity. Although workers do have some legal recourse on paper, they are unable to use the legal process effectively in practice.

18. Supporters of Bush�s Immigration Plan Contend It Will: 1. Patricia Corcoran, director of staffing for Hyatt Hotels. "We cannot survive without this type of workforce."

19. 2. "That would be very good," said Isela Sandoval, 37, a truck driver who came to Colorado 15 years ago from Juarez, Mexico, and received government approval to become a permanent resident three years later. Sandoval predicted that the change would allow five of her brothers � and other illegal immigrants � to obtain driver's licenses, buy homes and send their children to college while working in the USA.

20. Jasmin Torrecillas, 24, a retail worker at J.C. Penney in Denver, said she hopes the new policies will save lives by reducing dangerous border crossings. "It will stop all the deaths," she said. "People coming in trailers � it's terrible."

21. Critics of the Plan Argue: 1. The plan amounts to amnesty for lawbreakers.

22. 2. Will lead to greater abuse of immigrant workers.

23. Current Guest Worker Program Examples of abuse: According to Bill Chandler, executive director of the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance, �workers were hired in India by a labor recruiter sent by Signal. They had to pay exorbitant amounts to the company, to the recruiter and to the attorney who did the labor certification for them.�

24. Signal put the Indian guest workers to work in the yard alongside US workers doing the same job � welding and fitting. The company claims it pays workers from India the same wages as domestic employees. The guest workers say they were promised $18 an hour, but many were paid only half that, after the company said they were unqualified. Marler explained some workers were reclassified from first to second class welders, and their wages reduced.

25. Out of their wages, workers pay an additional $35 per day to stay in a labor camp Signal set up inside the yard. �The conditions are very bad here for the H2B workers,� Joseph said bitterly. �Twenty-four of us live in a small room in a barracks that measures 12 feet by 18 feet, sleeping on bunk beds. There are two toilets for all of us and only four sinks. We have to get up at 3:30 in the morning, just so all of us have time to use the bathroom before going to work

26. Six were told they were completely incapable, and Signal announced it was sending them back to India immediately.

27. John Wilhelm, president of UNITE HERE, who heads the AFL-CIO's immigration committee, says, "I don't think it's possible to have labor protections for contract workers."

28. 4. Impact of guest worker programs on the jobs and wages of other workers.

29. Impact of the Bracero Program Cesar Chavez. Organized campaigns in Oxnard, California, and other barrios to prove that growers were not trying to hire workers from local communities, even when there was high unemployment. Chavez later said he could never have organized the United Farm Workers until growers could no longer hire braceros during strikes. The great 5-year grape strike in which the UFW was born began the year after the bracero program ended. Chavez believed agribusiness' chief farm labor strategy for decades was maintaining a surplus labor supply to keep wages and benefits depressed, and fight unionization.

30. 3. Increase their dependence on the employer, increase their powerlessness.

31. 4. Guest workers are likely to be young unaccompanied men. Impact on sending communities. Villages become places for idle recreation and retirement, rather than domestic production. Inflation of land prices makes land unavailable to residents who stay behind and seek work in their native areas.

32. Impact on receiving communities

33. 5. Undermine civic loyalty of guest workers to U.S.

34. Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee proposes a legalization program that would allow undocumented immigrants to normalize their status if they've lived in the US for five years, and gain some knowledge of English. This proposal is like the legalization provision passed by Congress in 1986, and signed into law by President Ronald Reagan. The Jackson Lee bill does not contain a guest worker program, and increases the enforcement of immigrant rights, rather than the enforcement of employer sanctions.