Farmworkers Dare Americans to ‘Take Our Jobs!’: United Farm Workers and Stephen Colbert have teamed up to call for a new discussion of immigration reform by reminding Americans just what those jobs they say immigrants are stealing, entail.
What American doesn’t want a back-breaking, hot, dangerous (workers get enslaved, poisoned by pesticides, and die from heat stroke) job with no health benefits, paid vacation, or even a living wage? Federal overtime provisions don’t apply to farmworkers, nor do minimum-wage laws, the AP reminds would-be applicants.
Such working conditions, along with those in other immigrant-heavy, underpaid food sectors such as slaughterhouses, are the basis for our cheap-food system. Without them, the 99-cent hamburger would not exist.
“We are a nation in denial about our food supply,” says the UAW campaign. - Gist
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