A Limited Labor Force is a Strong Labor Force


The struggle for labor rights in the United States has been less of a struggle for equality and more of a struggle for limitation; a limitation of workforce. It distresses me how little progressives know or remember about the labor movement in the United States. The struggle, the fight for a higher living standard, was aimed at limiting the amount of workers in the job market. This has always been the goal of labor. Although Mary Harris Jones (Mother Jones) raised awareness about deplorable working conditions of children, the momentum behind the child labor laws was to limit the amount of workers in the market. An excessive workforce is a benefit to managment, not the worker. A limited work force will push the wages up and improve the standard of living for those who toil for the profit of the business owner. It's the simple law of supply and demand; as there are less workers in the work force the pay is high; as there are more workers in a work force, the pay is lowered. A work force flooded with cheap labor is precisely what the business community desires. A flooded workforce makes a strike, the only real negotiation that a worker owns, very difficult to organize. Who would strike while there are 10 others waiting to take your job for lower pay? A strike is self defeating without a job to return to. A work force brimming with cheap labor pushes wages down and increases worker insecurity. If there are 10 people desperate for the same job, the employer can, and should, lower the wage to benefit his bottom line - profit.

Caesar Chavez , the founder of the United Farm Workers of America and recipient of the Presidental Medal of Freedom, was acutely aware of this fact and took harsh measures against a fluid labor market. Ruben Navarette Jr. writes in the San-Diego Union Tribune, “Despite the fact that Chávez is these days revered among Mexican-American activists, the labor leader in his day was no more tolerant of illegal immigration than the Arizona Minutemen are now. Worried that the hiring of illegal immigrants drove down wages, Chávez – according to numerous historical accounts – instructed union members to call the Immigration and Naturalization Service to report the presence of illegal immigrants in the fields and demand that the agency deport them. UFW officials were even known to picket INS offices to demand a crackdown on illegal immigrants.

There’s been a lot of chatter recently about the immigration issue, specifically with Mexico, as a problem of race. This claim seems to be an attempt by the pro-open borders crowd to muddy the waters of the debate and move the argument from the heart of the issue –- access to labor -- to the shadows -- racism. The argument for a limited workforce is valid. I certainly do not think that Caesar Chavez was a racist, nor would any rational person. What we need to do as a nation is to take a serious look at where we, our work force, wish to be in 10 years. For instance, the construction industry , once a middle-class trade, is spiraling downward on the wage scale. It’s no coincidence that there is %15 to %20 immigrant labor in the field of construction pushing down or stagnating the wages. The natural question beckons, where will the labor flooding end? There are very few industries safe from worker saturation. In fact worker saturation, a byproduct of skyrocketing population growth, is a root of poverty in many third world nations.

As more immigrants enter our country they will move up the pay scale and saturate each job category with inexpensive labor, slowly lowering the standard of living for all of those citizens in a paticular industry. The trend of illegal and cheap labor is expanding. Illegal immigrants are no longer just on the outskirts of migrant farm work; they are building our homes, driving our trucks and repairing our roofs. In fact there is no good reason to believe that they will not move up the payscale to our white collar industries . There are millions of highly trained professionals in South American, many with great adulation for our job markets, who will eagerly come to the U.S. and work for less than scale. The Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) was designed, in part, to facililate the movement of professional workers from South American to the U.S. The main problem with a porous border or a guest worker program is that they will not limit the supply of labor – we will receive a continuous flow of cheap labor, lower wages, and therefore, lower living standards. Do we want to have so many people looking for work in the U.S. that living standard will be equivalent to that of the third world? Or do we want negotiation power in the job market and the ability to demand higher wages due to less worker supply? If it’s the latter, then a limited supply of labor is the true answer. If you support a flooded labor market, lower standard of living for millions, eroded tax base, and weaker labor unions then you should support a guest worker program, or better stated, support the status quo.