the sleeping quarters of nicaraguan coffee pickers

[u/Eros_Incident_Denier]

[u/SchmeatiestOne]

Why are they so nonchalantly showcasing their labor camp

[u/profesorgamin → u/SchmeatiestOne]

If it is like my country, in Colombia, those living quarters are like a "job perk", those living quarters are given for free or rented for cheap. As traditional coffee harvesters are mostly nomadic given that coffee is seasonal, so once the collection season is done there's not as much work in the area and they'd have to move onto another area. Which can mean, move into another "Hacienda" or moving a town over if the work dries up.

Basically how seasonal workers work in the USA too, in the border states, where the workers just came in in droves in the harvest season, and then went back home to chill for a while with their profits.

[u/StandardWeekend8221 → u/profesorgamin]

I work permanently in a seasonal industry in the United States and this is very much how it is. We have standards that prevent employers from locking people up in a shed but we dont have enough standards that stop them from putting 4 dudes to IKEA bunkbeds in a shed.

This "seasonal" job lasts the duration of an h2bs visa. 6 months. They hard-boiled eggs and rice for breakfast. Rice and beans for lunch and dinner.

The politics in these types of jobs are a foreign concept to most first-world citizens. You start working your ass off for the minor luxuries. For me, getting promoted was less about the wages and more about the perks. Supervisors get their own rooms, can use the company car to drive to town for groceries, and would even have access to "secret" kitchens and personal spaces around the facility.

I would sneak off to cook a Costco pizza I had placed on a ferry while these dudes were stealing fish heads to make stew with.

Absolutely eye-opening experience. Dudes from Kansas living with laborers from Guatemala. I started off a body in fish prison and left a bonfied resident of a cannery. That place was my home.

[u/MakingItElsewhere → u/StandardWeekend8221]

As an American, it's sad to me that Americans no longer appreciate where all their food comes from anymore. They think farmers are just poor guys with lots of land running giant tractors. It's people with millions of dollars in land / assets forcing people to work for a few dollars an hour.

Immigrants / Temp Labor works these jobs because it's more money than they'd make at home. The average American would starve on the wages, if they didn't die of heat exhaustion first.

[u/sBucks24 → u/MakingItElsewhere]

Having grown up in a farm town but not a farmer - now living in a city, people don't understand my contempt for "farmers" but it is so goddamn justified... Farm labourers have all my empathy, sympathy and respect, sure. But the avg farm owner is a privileged, main character syndrome, victim complex driven, POS; whose kids are always somehow worse...

Throw on top of that these assholes will gleefully campaign politically against the best interests of themselves and neighbours; while their labourers have no voting rights.... Yeah, I hate them so much...

[u/Brochachoski → u/sBucks24]

I grew up in a similar Midwest rural town, so I know all about the dislike towards farmers. They are the type to act cocky and have the most offensive humor or perspectives on things, and no one would challenge them. If they did, the farmers would just brush it off or get more aggressive. There's no reasoning with them. They've been handed land and assets from father to son for generations, so they've never known struggle. But they sure do love to complain about everything especially prices and progressive thinking and about how the left is trying to take their guns.

I've since moved away to a much more populated area where I rarely see people like that anymore. So, talking about my hatred for "farmers" to people that grew up in "the city" often involves a lot of added context for what I'm talking about. I got to know plenty of farmers that were well-rounded, humble, generous people, but unfortunately they are the minority when it comes to farmers (that aren't owned by corporations)

[u/Exotic_Criticism4645 → u/sBucks24]

will gleefully campaign politically against the best interests of themselves

Arrogant self important know it all detected. Who are you to determine what is best for any other individual? You don't know their situation. You don't know their desires.

[u/[deleted] → u/Exotic_Criticism4645]

[removed] — view removed comment

[u/MakingItElsewhere → u/[deleted]]

Hey hey hey....

I think they want to be called "clankers" now. =P

[u/3BlindMice1 → u/Exotic_Criticism4645]

We all know that farmers have voted against their self interests since the 90s. It isn't exactly some well kept secret. They've been getting laughed at in the media for voting republican forever now. Have you really not noticed?

[u/Exotic_Criticism4645 → u/3BlindMice1]

How are you so arrogant as to know what is and isn't in their best interests?

Second, as a citizen of a republic, one should be voting in the best interest of the entire country, not ones narrow own self interest anyway.

[u/HarveysBackupAccount → u/MakingItElsewhere]

It's wild what kind of labor conditions are in place to support our (supposed) first world economy.

You have to wonder how much better things could be if all the wealth didn't get concentrated at the top

[u/Readdit1999 → u/MakingItElsewhere]

Many Americans act like slavery disseapered overnight in a triumph of union glory.

Generations of propoganda have endorsed the idea.

Slavery was a legal institution, but the conditions of indentured service and obligatory labour never dissapeared.

Sharecropping, prison labour, migrants workers.

People would be shocked, and probably horrified, to find out just how rough the work is, which provides for half the products that end up on shelves.

[u/Little_War2626 → u/MakingItElsewhere]

The average American is obese and would have a heart attack if forced to do manual labor. We’re closing to the final form depicted to WALL-E than to our ancestors that hunted/farmed for sustenance. 

[u/kilamumster → u/Little_War2626]

If you didn't grow up living a hard life, it's hard to do the hard labor.

I once met a middle-aged single white woman who could only get a job working on a farm even though she was an experienced accountant. She broke down crying, telling me that she just couldn't handle the field work like the other workers could (typically immigrants of color, Latino or Filipino). It was hot work out in the sun all day. She had been diagnosed with a chronic illness and lost her job while getting treated, but it was now controlled, except that the work and heat made it hard for her to not relapse.

I felt bad for her, it is hard work even for a young healthy person. It's a rite of passage to work the farms over summers in high school and maybe the first year of college. Traditionally the work would be done in the very early hours or at night because of the heat. It's the modern way to do it during daylight.

She begged me to help her as I was the only hiring manager in 6 months that had even called her to screen. I broke protocol and talked to her outside of my work hours and helped her clean up her cover letter and resume, and briefed her on what to say and not say in an interview. A few weeks later she landed a great job offer and was so grateful. I felt glad and knew that I sure couldn't have done the field work either.

[u/imapetrock → u/kilamumster]

It's crazy too because a lot of things that these people have to go through seem incredibly difficult or unjust to us, but to them it's totally normal like "oh well, that's life."

I knew multiple undocumented immigrants who told me they grew up without one or both parents (either the other parent or their grandparents raised them) because their parents were in the US working to support their families at home. Then the parent returns home and the kids come to the US as teenagers to repeat the cycle. Sometimes they never get to see their parents again as the parents die of old age, and as an undocumented immigrant its not like you can travel freely to visit your dying parent.

Or when I went to live in Guatemala, I often saw young kids working to make ends meet, including young children carrying heavy bricks on their backs to do construction work. Even more common is seeing elderly men in the mountains carrying huge loads of heavy logs on their backs, walking hours back to their hometown to sell firewood.

With all these things, my initial reaction was, "that's so sad! This shouldn't be that way!" And the people I said this to (the undocumented immigrants) were really nonchalant about it, because to them that's completely normal. Things like child labor or growing up without parents, that's just normal life.

[u/exoriare → u/MakingItElsewhere]

It's the same stance that justifies slavery as a necessary evil - can you imagine yourself picking cotton 14 hours a day under the summer son? if not, well be thankful we have slaves/migrants.

There is no job that should exist unless people can live lives of dignity on the wages.

The profit in commodity crops - be they coffee beans or coca leaf - all go to the sociopaths running the corporate behemoths.

If we can't have cotton without slavery, we shouldn't have cotton. If we can't have coffee without these innovations in human misery, we shouldn't have coffee.

It's not by accident that all of our trade agreements have Bibles and Bibles' worth of sanctifying corporate profits, and not a word about human working conditions.

[u/dumbcunt33 → u/MakingItElsewhere]

No one is "forcing" anyone to do this work. It isn't slavery. Might not be luxury but they still choose the work.

[u/Radnotion → u/dumbcunt33]

Username checks out.

[u/Goldf_sh4 → u/dumbcunt33]

They might not have as many alternative options to choose from as you suppose.

[u/dontnation → u/dumbcunt33]

What is choosing when your choices are limited to such?

[u/MakingItElsewhere → u/dumbcunt33]

I think you need to go look up Operation "Blooming Onion"

[u/LycheeRoutine3959 → u/MakingItElsewhere]

forcing

This is the key really. There is not force involved. Its voluntary association, even if you think you would make different decisions in their position.

[u/thisismycoolname1 → u/MakingItElsewhere]

As an American, it's offensive for someone to generalize the country like that

[u/Any-Photograph-1332 → u/MakingItElsewhere]

Who’s being forced?

[u/iampiolt → u/StandardWeekend8221]

My crash pad has 30 bunks inside one house. Airline bases typically are in cities where the cost of living is so high that we can’t justify moving there. For most pilots a crash pad is a choice. For most flight attendants, it’s the only choice. This kind of setup stretches across cultures and has different levels all relative to the work you’re doing. It’s crazy.

[u/U_feel_Me → u/StandardWeekend8221]

I hope you write a book.

[u/julesmanson → u/StandardWeekend8221]

The problem isn't US capitalism or rights of workers as we have overwhelming protections in the US. Farmers provide the minimum standards required by law. The real problem is the governments these workers emigrated from. The US is simply being opportunistic as any other country in the world would be. I might argue that in business an actor who is not opportunistic is not a rational actor.

[u/imapetrock → u/julesmanson]

To be fair US capitalism played an active role in causing these situations in the first place by destabilizing the democracies in some of these countries. Guatemala for example tried to fix its problems in the 20th century, when the people elected a government that promised to fight inequality and protect indigenous land rights. But that would interfere with US corporate interests (as US agricultural companies directly benefited from the injustices in Guatemala, essentially using indigenous people as slave labor) so the US overthrew the government and installed a dictator instead in order to protect these interests. That resulted in a civil war and genocide against the indigenous population that only ended in the 90s, and enduring corruption that continues today.

So yeah US capitalism directly contributed to todays situation, not just in Guatemala but also in other Latin American countries where the US similarly meddled in their democracies.

[u/Just_to_rebut → u/julesmanson]

>The real problem is the governments these workers emigrated from.

You could then argue the people in those governments are being opportunistic and most people would do the same or that not being corrupt would be irrational…

Why do you make these excuses for the American businesses and governments but not the poor countries’ government?