Yahoo News carries an Associated Press story about ICE busting 114 illegal immigrants at an Ohio landscaping business. In the greater scheme of things, this is no big story.
It, however, reminds me of a landscaper we hired in CA in the late 1980s. He was an Anglo but his entire crew turned out to be wiry little hard-working guys from one poor village somewhere in rural Mexico.
We asked the owner about it and his reply was telling: "It's hard work and Americans don't want to do it. I've tried 'em and had them cheat me, steal from me, and disappear without a backward glance. These little guys work their butts off and go home each winter when there isn't much work. When they're here I take care of them, have a place for them to live, food for them to eat, uniforms to wear, and take 'em to the doc if they're sick. If I need a couple more guys, I let the crew know and a week or two later a cousin or brother-in-law shows up grinning."
The other DrC and I marveled at it, their relationship was unlike anything I, as a business school prof, ever taught. It was positively feudal, very much "You give me your loyalty and work, I'll care for and protect you." John was the patron and they were happy workers, very much volunteers. I believe there was genuine liking and trust in both directions.
What the owner had done, largely by trial and error, was conform his business practices to their culture. It worked. Am I defending the practice of hiring illegals? No. But as someone who studied and taught employer-employee relations, how he operated was an eye-opener, a look at another way of organizing work, very paternalistic.
What's more, I'll bet there are tens of thousands of illegals working for landscapers all over the country. They, and meat-packing plants are probably some of the biggest employers of the undocumented.
