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'When I read that a coyote referred to the migrant he was smuggling as a
“package,” I was immediately reminded of the Atlantic slave trade, with
its human “cargo.” It has always seemed reasonable to me to
conceptualize the Atlantic Slave Trade — the triangular trade — as a
supply chain'..A human supply chain. This would have the advantage, by
focusing on the international working class as a whole, of avoiding
siloed victimology narratives[2] like “forced labor” — what, exactly, is
not forced about the global norm of wage labor?
...they consider the workers as inputs to the global supply chain of
manufactured goods, and do not consider the supply of those human inputs
(“cargo,” “packages”) as constituting a supply chain in and of itself.
Hence they can only think in contractual, and not class terms. (It’s a
bit like trying to dope out the supply chain for the iPhone by examining
bills of lading.)
...a strategy of asking questions about human capital requirements that
borrows from the questions supply chain managers typically ask, such as
“Do we have the right parts in stock?” or, “Do we know where to get
these parts when we need them?” and, “Does it cost a lot of money to
carry inventory?”
...a deep bench in a supply chain is a costly way of preparing for
demand. “The same applies to traditional succession management—you’re
paying people to essentially ‘sit on the shelf,’
In its “workforce optimization” initiative, IBM is taking a supply chain
management approach to solving these problems, cataloging skill sets as
human inventory and applying the same supply chain technology used for
the company’s hardware to respond quickly to short-term needs and plan
for long-term demands. This approach makes sense, says Bruce Richardson,
chief research officer at AMR Research. “As happens in a supply chain,
you can find you have too much of one ‘product’ and not enough of
another in the labor chain,” he says.
'Transnational migration is a market, of course: labor supply (made up
of migrants) fills the labor demand of employers. In a functioning
marketplace, demand and supply meet and reach an agreement on price (in
this case, wages, benefits and working conditions) within the guidelines
of the law and other contexts, such as collective bargaining agreements.'
...employers’ recruitment of would-be migrants from other countries,
unlike their use of undocumented workers already in the United States,
creates a transnational network of labor intermediaries—the 'human
supply chain'—whose operation undermines the rule of law in the
workplace, benefiting U.S. companies by reducing labor costs while
creating distributional harms for U.S. workers, and placing temporary
migrant workers in situations of severe subordination. It identifies the
human supply chain as a key structure of the global economy, a close
analog to the more familiar product supply chains through which U.S.
companies manufacture products abroad.
B. WHERE HUMAN AND PRODUCT SUPPLY CHAINS MEET: AN EXAMPLE
Apple Fresh is a (fictitious) apple cider maker in Washington State….
Like all employers, Apple Fresh is responsible for ensuring that its
employees’ wages, benefits, and working conditions comport with legal
and contractual minimums. It must also pay social-security premiums on
its employees’ behalf and cover their unemployment and workers’
compensation insurance. … As part of its effort to meet those demands,
Apple Fresh decides to outsource its apple pressing to one of several
food processors in the market, Presser Inc., which can produce the cider
more cheaply and efficiently. Once it signs a contract with Presser,
Apple Fresh is released from responsibility for the social insurance and
many of the working conditions of the workers who press its apples,
because it is no longer their employer. Presser now bears those
obligations. …
In year two of the contract, Presser decides to try to decrease turnover
and increase its profit margin by using temporary migrant workers to
staff its plant. Its owner had been contacted not long before by the
U.S. agent of a labor-recruitment firm in Mexico City…
[Read rent-seeking intermediaries, including the types of 'outsourcing,'
variously described in John Smith's Imperialism in the 21st Century]
… to discuss the advantages of contracting the firm to hire H-2B
migrants, including lower costs and a steady supply of uncomplaining
workers. Presser’s human-resources department calls the agent and asks
him to begin the recruitment process. The agent in turn contacts the
firm in Mexico City, which has sub-agents in a Mexican state capital,
who work with brokers in rural areas to sign up would-be migrants. As
the migrants travel up this chain, each of the agents demands a side
payment from them, on top of the cost of the visa and travel expenses.
By the time the workers arrive at Presser’s plant, they owe
high-interest lenders over three months’ salary to pay back the loans
they took out to cover the charges. These fees are all in violation of
Mexican law, but none of Presser’s recruiters has been penalized, both
because the law is rarely enforced, and because the principal
recruitment firm blames “unauthorized individuals” for the violations.
The migrants are well aware that to make good on their loans and begin
to earn the money that their families back home are expecting they must
not displease their supervisors at Presser. If the migrant workers do
complain, and are fired, they are immediately subject to deportation,
because their visas are valid exclusively to work for Presser. In that
sense, Presser can rely on U.S. government enforcement of immigration
law as an additional mechanism of control over its labor force, whether
it or the recruiter makes the call to the government….
When the law releases Presser from liability for the actions of labor
recruiters that provide it with indebted workers, liability that Presser
would have borne if it recruited the workers directly, it allows
Presser—and Apple Fresh and the retailers that purchase its cider—to
shed costs and (potentially) increase profits without paying the price
for the means through which these benefits come to them. Their lack of
responsibility is a legal fiction. In fact, both Presser and Apple Fresh
have actively chosen to subcontract aspects of their business because
the combination of private contracting arrangements and public laws
about immigration control and liability for the treatment of migrants
and workers allows them to benefit from the decision to outsource a firm
function without bearing the true cost. Neither, however, is likely to
benefit much from this decision, beyond the ability to stay in
business…. The degree to which Presser and other actors profit depends
on how much cost pressure there is from above them in the supply chain.
If the top firm in the supply chain is demanding much lower prices from
them, the move to using temporary migrant labor may just allow them to
stay afloat."
Full:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/07/labor-migration-human-supply-chain.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29
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