On a recent episode of “1819 News: The Podcast,” host Bryan Dawson and U.S. Senate candidate Rodney Walker discussed how to solve the “tension” between needing to rid the country of illegal aliens and boosting America’s workforce.
Walker said too many able-bodied people are choosing not to work, creating staffing issues, particularly for undesirable, but necessary, jobs.
“The Department of Labor in the State of Alabama reports that there are 48% of able-bodied Alabamians that could be working, that choose not to work,” Walker said. “They're on some type of check system, are getting some type of money, or either they're not working, and they are able-bodied… You're never going to get all those people to work.”
“It might not be the popular opinion, but nobody wants to go and pick up chickens in a chicken house at 2 a.m. in the morning," he continued. "Nobody wants to work in a chicken house, gutting chickens so that we can have chicken McNuggets or boneless chicken from the grocery store. We have got to have people that want to go to Sand Mountain and pick tomatoes, that want to work in the chicken factory. As far as that goes, even nailing on shingles on houses and everything."
“In my opinion, as long as people come here the right way on a visa, and that system is broken and needs to be fixed and everything, but we have got to have labor to do certain things that, weirdly enough and strangely enough, just Americans don't really want to do," Walker added.
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Walker said it was not simply a matter of paying more money or “living wage.”
“Everybody wants to make a good wage. But I just tell you, on my farm and at my stores, we don't have anybody that makes seven dollars an hour. We have people that makes 15 and 18 and 20 and more, and that type of thing," he explained, adding, “If you want to know how come prices are so high, you add in the labor and everything like that from McDonald's and the grocery store and all this type of thing. It all comes back into the cost of your hamburger.”
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