Farmworkers Dare Americans to "Take Our Jobs"

United Farm Workers and Stephen Colbert have teamed up to call for a new discussion of immigration reform by reminding Americans just what those jobs they say immigrants are stealing entail. On the Take Our Jobs website, people can sign up for fieldwork training and placement in California, Florida, and several other states. After all, as Bonnie Azab-Powell puts it on Grist:

What American doesn't want a back-breaking, hot, dangerous (workers get enslaved, poisoned by pesticides, and die from heat stroke) job with no health benefits, paid vacation, or even a living wage? Federal overtime provisions don't apply to farmworkers, nor do minimum-wage laws, the AP reminds would-be applicants.

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Such working conditions, along with those in other immigrant-heavy, underpaid food sectors such as slaughterhouses, are the basis for our cheap-food system. Without them, the 99-cent hamburger would not exist. "We are a nation in denial about our food supply," says the UAW campaign.

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The Colbert Report will air a feature about Take Our Jobs on July 8. Read the full post at Grist.

Image courtesy of Grist.