Wednesday, May 03, 2006

With Monday in Mind

My friend Saint Me made an interesting post about Monday's boycott of work by immigrants. He said that if they really wanted to make a statement about how much our economy would miss them, they should walk out for more than one day.

I think he's right. In watching the news over the last couple of days, all of the employers have been very supportive (especially McDonalds) of their workers' right to protest. I wonder, however, how many of these businesses would have been as supportive had the walk out gone on for two or three days, or even a week. I have to believe that there would have been some unhappy rich folk on the news, and probably a fair amount of firings as well as attempts to hire new workers.

This leads me to believe that the reason that the owners could take the camera opportunity to say that they supported their workers is because they knew that their companies would be able to get by just fine with only a partial single day's earnings.

It would also seem to make sense that the reason that the walk out could not go on longer is because the workers could probably not afford to lose more than a day's wages, especially with there likely not being a very good union for illegal immigrants. That last bit may seem harsh, but I know that I would have a hard time going without a day's pay.

So, if you'll spare me a possible jump in logic, perhaps Monday's walk out proved just the opposite of what it was intended to prove. Perhaps the U.S. macroeconomy would get along just fine without illegal labor, but the alien's microeconomy just couldn't.

But what do y'all think, my four or five steady readers? Or is my reasoning too specious, and unworthy of consideration? :)

2 comments:

thesmallblondeone said...

I think you've hit on a very good point here. But I'm also one of the Target employees who sat around our break room Monday night discussing how the government could use all the illegal immigrant's protesting children as bait to catch them.

Analyst Catalyst said...

That is also a good point.