Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Hiring illegal immigrants is an unethical business practice

The mantra of industries that hire a large number of illegal immigrants is that the work they need done is not something Americans are willing to do. Product and Service pricing is set by many factors that most economists would boil down into supply and demand. What no one in these industries will admit is that labor rates are set by a very similar set of factors that also boils down to supply and demand. If you demand labor (employees) and you do not get enough candidates then you must increase the compensation offered or make other changes to attract more potential employees. The same way you lower or raise prices to create demand for products or services.

A representative of the landscaping industry was on WGST Atlanta the other morning with Tom Hughes and explained that American children are not raised to do this kind of work. He also explained that the average wage in his industry was good at $9.50 an hour. And from his perspective, with unemployment at 5% there just are not enough workers available.

First lest talk about American Children and how they are "raised".
In 1999 (the latest year I could find data on)
62.9% of high school graduates enrolled in a college.
70.6% of the 17 year old population was high school graduates.
46.6$ of students completed a 4 year BA/BS degree
(Data on college completion rates is for the prior period, BA degree complete in 1995-1996)

The available labor pool for industries like landscaping would seem to be fairly significant.
For every 100 seventeen year olds in 1999 there were
30 without a high school diploma
26 with high school diploma that did not go on to college

I looked at over a dozen landscape labor job postings and almost none listed any qualifications required. Here are the requirements for one landscaping job listed on the web
Job Requirements
Required Qualifications:
Skills Requirements:
GENERAL LABOR, landscape

Note that a high school diploma does not seem to be required and so the labor pool of 56 out of every 100 seventeen year olds would be available for these jobs. The Landscaping industry must now compete for these employees with other companies and industries. This is where supply and demand starts to set labor rates for an industry like landscaping.

"Wal-Mart claims an hourly wage of $9.68 an hour is its national average" While some independent research indicates this amount is lower I will use both what Wal-Mart claims and what the landscaping industry representative have said as fact for this discussion.

It does not take a rocket scientist to realize that the average 18 year old would rather work in a low stress air conditioned Wal-Mart then doing the more grueling work involved with landscaping, FOR THE SAME WAGE. So what does a landscaping company need to do if it is going to run an ethical business? They need to increase their compensation to attract employees away from employers like Wal-Mart. This is the capitalist system. Yes this will raise their costs and prices and will lead to a thinning of the heard as far as landscaping companies go but that is legal, ethical, and natural business in a capitalist system.

Employing illegal immigrants artificially manipulates the labor side of supply and demand. It brings in a labor pool that under legal circumstances would be just as happy to work for Wal-Mart but cannot do so easily. The advantage to the landscaping industry is lower wages, reduced costs and increased profits. If this industry played by the rules it would create higher paying jobs that folks from Wal-Mart could move to in order to improve their situations. Because illegal immigrants are so heavily used this opportunity has been eliminated for citizens of America.

Consider that a fulltime worker at $9.50 an hour is ending up with about $15,000 in their pocket (80% of gross income). If the industry played by the rules the compensation they provide would have to increase to attract enough laborers. To keep costs down the industry would have to become more efficient in other ways. This is how our system is supposed to work.

Keeping costs and prices down is not a valid justification for employing illegal immigrants and so the industry tries to hide behind the fallacy that "this is work Americans are unwilling to do". Shame on any industry that wants the sales side to play by the rules of supply and demand but refuses to allow the labor side of business to play by those same rules, unethical business practices are never justifiable. Remember the goal of a capitalist system is NOT to keep you in business.

Final note: Tom Hughes indicated his wife hires a couple women to do their landscaping on a regular basis while the person across the street has a crew of potentially illegal immigrants show up and do his landscaping. Tom is paying more money for his service and lamented that he is a fool for paying more. I strongly disagree and I applaud Tom for playing by the rules and insisting his contractor do the same when it comes to employment.

Friday, April 21, 2006

Protecting my Xbox 360 investment

Well it happened to me, my Xbox 360 died a horrible "internal software error" death. The unit was still under warranty so it is being repaired/replaced for free. This experience has me thinking more about protecting my huge investment in this system and the associated games. I plan on being on this platform for at least the next four years and really don't want to run into more trouble.

Let me say here and now that the unit has run perfectly until this event and I have no complaints about the unit at all.

So what am I to do if I want to protect my investment. Well I am going to do three things to protect this investment.

1. I will purchase the extended warranty, the price is reasonable for two years and gives me peace of mind.

2. I have not had any indication of heat problems BUT you can never keep technology like the Xbox 360 too cool, and the cooler you keep high tech devices the longer their life in my opinion. I am buying an accessory to help keep the unit cooler. The cooler I have chosen is the Nyko Intercooler 360. The unit was only $20 and every review I could find from users were very positive.

3. Because the 360 allows the covers to be removed (for replacing with cool skins) I will be diligently blowing the unit clean with compressed air on a quarterly basis to avoid a dust build up.

I believe this combination of things will help to avoid any problems related to heat as well as give me a comfortable back stop if the unit should up and die again on me.