“The Democrats had abandoned their working-class
base to chase what they pretended was a racial group
when what they were actually chasing was the
momentum of unlimited migration”. DANIEL
GREENFIELD
Slaughterhouse Owner Sentenced 18 Months For Employing Illegal Aliens, Avoiding Millions In Taxes
Source: AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin,
The USA Today reports that James Brantley, age 62, employed hundreds of illegal immigrants over the past 20 years and dodged more than $2.5 million in taxes. Brantley also underpaid his employees at Southeastern Provision in Bean Station, Tennessee. He also avoided overtime wages because he paid these foreign nationals under the table.
In April 2018, ICE conducted the largest single-site raid in decades and apprehended 97 men and 1 woman from the meatpacking plant. In September, Brantley pleaded guilty to tax fraud, employment fraud, and paying illegal aliens.
On Wednesday, Senior U.S. District Judge Ronnie Greer said that he could not just "impose a probationary sentence in this case" because "to do so would undermine respect for our court system and create a situation where people would draw the conclusion that a certain class of people are treated more leniently than others."
This is an offense made even more serious in my view because of the political climate of today," Greer added. "The impact has been quite severe for many (of the plant's former workers). Many of them have been separated from their wives, their husbands, their children. Some of them have gone to jail."
"The slaughterhouse's floor supervisors, Carl and Jason Kinser, were sentenced to three years each on probation in June," USA Today reports.
Brantley transferred ownership of the plant to his wife, Pamela.
6:55
Sen. Cory Booker called for more low-skilled immigration Wednesday night as he tried to cut down Joe Biden in the Democrats’ 2020 race.
“I heard the vice president say that if you got a PhD., you can come right into this country,” Booker said, adding:
Well that’s playing into what the Republicans want, to pit some immigrants against other immigrants. We need to reform this whole immigration system and begin to be the country that says everyone has worth and dignity and this should be a country that honors everyone.
If implemented, Booker’s call for more low-skilled immigration would increase competition for blue-collar jobs and cheap apartments in New Jersey, so imposing additional economic pain on lower-skilled Americans in Booker’s home state. More migration would also add to the divide-and-rule diversity which hinders Americans from periodically uniting to curb the elites’ self-serving policies.
Republicans want to pit some immigrants against others. But we need to reform this whole immigration system and begin to be the country that says, “Everyone has worth and dignity, and this should be a country that honors everyone.” #DemDebate
Booker’s call for un-skilled immigration got plaudits from advocates for “diverse” immigration into the United States.
“That was solid immigration talk from Booker,” said Alex Merced, the “Latinx Vice Chair” of the Libertarian Party. “Merit based immigration is condescending and presumes government can determine our individual potential, I sure as hell don’t trust government to do that.”
“Booker speaking truth again on immigration,” tweeted Jonathan Capeheart, a member of the Washington Post‘s editorial board.
But Booker’s call for more unskilled immigration also got him a shout-out from Todd Schulte, who runs FWD.us, a cheap labor lobby shop for Mark Zuckerberg and other West Coast investors.
“Appreciate @CoryBooker,” said a tweet from Schulte. “Pointing out that this [immigration] section of the debate is being dominated by poor assumptions, bad framing and a lack of focus on many of the most critical aspects of immigration — not cutesy gotcha stuff that misses huge aspects of the debate.”
Schulte’s donors employ many foreign graduates, including both visa workers and immigrants. But his donors also have coherent economic reasons to oppose any cutbacks to the immigration of unskilled workers and family chain migrants, as urged by President Donald Trump’s 2018 “Four Pillars” plan.
Unskilled migrants serve as both cheap workers, extra consumers, and predictable renters. Their multi-sided value for investors is spotlighted by FWD.us’ support for DoorDash, which hires people to deliver food by auto, scooters, and bikes. In a September 2018 statement, the FWD.us investors denounced Trump’s plan to cut unskilled immigration into the United States, saying it would reduce immigrant-driven economic growth:
Immigration powers the American economy, and ensuring that immigrant families living here today can thrive means greater benefits for all U.S. residents and our children in the future. The earning potential of immigrants and their contributions to the labor-force and economy grows over time and over generations …Tony Xu, the founder of DoorDash, embodies this story … in 2013 Tony founded DoorDash, an incredibly successful meal delivery service. Today, DoorDash is valued at $4 billion, using recent investment to expand into 1,200 new cities and to hire 250 new employees, in addition to over 100,000 part-time gigs already created for delivery drivers across the country.
DoorDash’s investors in FWD.us funders include Sequoia Capital, KPCB, SV Angel, CRV, and Y Combinator. In June 2019, Schulte’s group also helped persuade New York’s legislature to grant drivers’ licenses to illegals — so freeing many to join the labor force of delivery drivers.
The demand by investors for endless migrant labor has created a new thing: The US-India Outsourcing Economy. This no-regulation zone redirects new wealth into a few cities & a small elite. Elites want to expand it, so US college-grads get #HR1044. bit.ly/2LpqAmx
Booker’s televised support for low-skilled immigration also sought to paint an elitist gloss on Biden’s call for higher-skilled migration.
But there is little or no evidence that a President Biden would want to reduce lower-skilled immigration. During the TV debate, for example, Biden described Americans’ homeland as “a country of immigrants.” He continued by crediting immigrants — not skilled immigrants — with creating America, not Americans:
We should … [and] I proposed, significantly increasing the number of legal immigrants who are able to come. This country can tolerate a heck of a lot more people. And the reason we’re the country we are is we’ve been able to cherry-pick from the best of every culture. Immigrants built this country.…Some here came against their will; others came because they in fact thought they could fundamentally change their lives … That’s what made us great.
Also, Biden strongly supported the 2013 “Gang of Eight” bill, which would have amnestied all illegals. It would also have doubled legal immigration to two million a year — or one migrant for every two American births. That resulting flood of labor would have shifted more of the nation’s new wealth from employees over to investors, according to a 2013 study of the bill by the Congressional Budget Office. “The rate of return on capital would be higher [than on labor] under the legislation than under current law throughout the next two decades,” says the report, titled “The Economic Impact of S. 744.”
Immigration Numbers
Each year, roughly four million young Americans join the workforce after graduating from high school or university. This total includes roughly 800,000 Americans who graduate with skilled degrees in business or healthcare, engineering or science, software or statistics.
But the federal government then imports about 1.1 million legal immigrants and refreshes a resident population of roughly 1.5 million white-collar visa workers — including approximately 1 million H-1B workers and spouses —plus roughly 500,000 blue-collar visa workers.
The government also prints out more than one million work permits for foreigners, tolerates about eight million illegal workers, and does not punish companies for employing the hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants who sneak across the border or overstay their legal visas each year.
This policy of inflating the labor supply boosts economic growth for investors because it transfers wages to investors and ensures that employers do not have to compete for American workers by offering higher wages and better working conditions.
This policy of flooding the market with cheap, foreign, white-collar graduates and blue-collar labor also shifts enormous wealth from young employees towards older investors, even as it also widens wealth gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, and hurts children’s schools and college educations.
The cheap-labor economic strategy also pushes Americans away from high-tech careers and sidelines millions of marginalized Americans, including many who are now struggling with fentanyl addictions.
The labor policy also moves business investment and wealth from the heartland to the coastal cities, explodes rents and housing costs, shrivels real estate values in the Midwest, and rewards investors for creating low-tech, labor-intensive workplaces.
“If there is a growing flood of foreign labor, the American middle class is no longer going to exist, and Republicans will not have a constituency,” said Hilarie Gamm, a co-cofounder of the American Workers Coalition.
More than 150,000 healthcare and grocery workers could strike in California and other states
Over 80,000 workers employed by the Kaiser Permanente Health Maintenance Organization are taking a strike vote this week. Nurses, x-ray technicians, phone operators, janitors and other workers, belonging to eleven different unions (under the umbrella Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions), are demanding higher wages, decent health benefits and increased staffing.
Kaiser is the largest managed healthcare organization in the US, with 12 million members in nine states and Washington, DC, and 217,000 employees. Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals had $79.7 billion in operating revenues in 2018.
Kaiser workers in California point out that emergency rooms are overcrowded, putting patients at risk, and that they are forced to perform two or three jobs.
Voting in the states where Kaiser operates, California, Colorado, Maryland, Oregon, Virginia, Washington and the District of Columbia will take place during the month of August and into September.
The union coalition has offered no explanation of why it will take six weeks for all workers to vote. If a strike were to take place in all the Kaiser clinics and hospitals, it would occur in October, two months after the voting began.
A walkout against the mammoth Kaiser Permanente system would involve the most workers since the 1997 United Parcel strike by 197,000 workers.
The healthcare giant, which claims to be a non-profit institution, collected over $3.2 billion in income during the first quarter of this year, an increase of 127% relative to $1.4 billion in the first three months of 2018, from a combination of 150,000 more subscribers and lower costs from a weak 2019 flu season. In 2018, the hospital and healthcare plan made $2.5 billion in income.
Kaiser, like other HMOs, profits by limiting the provision of medical services, which have been pre-paid by health insurance; it uses a variety of techniques, such as deductibles and out-of-pocket charges, to manage and lower demand. Its doctors are pressured and encouraged through profit-sharing schemes to limit their time with patients.
The issues being raised by Kaiser health workers are long-standing.
Beginning in 2003, Kaiser turned to technology design firms to study how healthcare workers interact with each other and with patients in order to reduce time spent on so-called “high value activities,” such as dispensing medications.
Kaiser workers have been without a contract since last September. There is no doubt that they are ready to fight. The biggest obstacle, however, are the unions that claim to represent them, which have done everything to prevent a unified and sustained struggle against the healthcare giant. Instead the unions have called isolated protests, largely public relations stunts, and isolated and made impotent strikes of short duration.
In March 2018, 18,000 Kaiser registered nurses voted overwhelmingly to strike at California hospitals and clinics to protest eroding patient care standards and increased workloads.
In December 2018, Kaiser mental health workers held a five-day strike, protesting long delays in the provision of mental health care, and calling for the formation of crisis teams to respond to health emergencies.
In June 2019, Kaiser unions called off a strike by 4,000 California health workers, clinical social workers, therapists, psychologists, nurses and others, claiming that there had been “progress at the bargaining table in recent weeks.”
Whatever was meant by “progress” turned out to be insignificant. Mental health workers report that the same issues over which the strike was called still persist today.
Undoubtedly, the present prolonged voting procedure that postpones any possible strike action until October at the earliest, is just another means saddling Kaiser workers with a contract worked out behind their backs.
Supermarket workers
At the same time, California supermarket workers overwhelmingly approved a strike on June 24 and 25. The strike by 60,000 grocery workers would target four chains: Vons/Safeway, Albertsons, Pavilions and Ralphs/Kroger. Over 10,000 supermarket workers in Oregon also voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike.
The chains are offering less than one percent annual wage increases coupled with givebacks in health benefits. Management claims that these four chains need to keep labor costs down because of increased competition from non-union chains, such as Walmart.
This would be the first strike since the four-month walkout of 2003 and 2004, which resulted in a sell-out by the United Food and Commercial Workers aided by the national AFL-CIO and its President Richard Trumka.
In that struggle, the unions did nothing to stop the supermarkets from hiring scab labor at stores and distribution centers. The union allowed health benefits to expire; it then slashed already inadequate strike benefits. In the meantime, it worked out a deal that saved the supermarket chains over $400 million in the course of the contract.
The 2004 betrayal became a model for similar sellout deals elsewhere, dismantling health benefits and worsening working conditions for new hires in Washington, DC, Baltimore and other cities.
The AFL-CIO and other unions are doing everything to prevent a strike by 150,000 healthcare and supermarket workers, along with another 150,000 GM, Ford and Fiat Chrysler workers whose contracts expire in mid-September. Tied to the Democratic Party and the defense of American capitalism, the unions have sought to suppress every expression of resistance of the working class in order to keep wage increases at or below the rate of inflation and continue the expansion of the stock market bubble.
The AFL-CIO is particularly concerned that a strike would quickly evolve into a political confrontation between the working class and California Governor Gavin Newsom, Washington Governor Jay Inslee and other Democrats who are posturing as supposed friends of workers for the 2020 presidential elections.
The union executives whose salaries put them in the top five percent of income earners or higher live in a different universe than healthcare and supermarket workers who are barely scraping by in cities that have some of the highest cost of living in the US. UFCW International President Anthony Perrone, for example, pocketed $341,398 in salary and union disbursements last year, nearly 20 times what a “courtesy associate” makes at a Vons supermarket in southern California.
In the first six months of the year, there have been 15 major work stoppages in the US, compared to 20 all last year, with teachers and healthcare workers leading the fight against years of stagnant and declining real wages. This is part of a resurgence of the class struggle internationally against austerity and social inequality.
In this fight, workers are increasingly coming into conflict with unions. That is why Kaiser Permanente and supermarket workers must take these struggles out of the hands of the trade unions by forming rank-and-file committees to prepare a nationwide strike. At the same time these committees must reach out to workers and youth in their communities and link up their struggles with the autoworkers and other workers across the US and Puerto Rico, in Mexico and around the world.
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