[Marxism] do the bosses use immigrants to drive down wages?

[Andrew Pollack <acpollack2@xxxxxxxxx>]

I'm glad Dave confirmed my recollection of the sequence of events in  
meatpacking, i.e. unionbusting first, then widespread use of immigrants.
  In the meantime I refreshed my memory about a similar (more prolonged)  
sequence in garment. Herbert Hill's dissection of the ILGWU's racism in  
Jacobson's "The Negro and the American Labor Movement" shows how the  mostly 
Jewish and Italian leadership of the ILG allowed the bosses to  drastically 
lower wages and benefits once the union membership had  become predominantly 
Black and Puerto Rican. He also details the  undemocratic structures hindering 
fightback against this (despite some  valiant efforts). The long-term result 
was the eventual pushing out of  Blacks and Puerto Ricans from the industry and 
their replacement with  Chinese and newer Latino groups. That is, once the 
bosses had changed  what had been the highest-paying manufacturing jobs in the 
country  (hard to believe, huh?) into poor-paying, they were emboldened to take 
 the next step, to turn them into subminimum-wage jobs.

  I believe this overlapped in time with the increasing export of garment jobs, 
but forget when that began in earnest.

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