Working on the Railroad

This is coolbert:

From the Chicago Tribune today:

"Nation and World"

"Decades, later, back pay due"

"Cash was withheld from Mexicans who toiled in U.S. during WWII."

"By the numbers."

"2.5 million"

"The estimated number of braceros who worked in the U.S. from 1942 to 1964, largely in agriculture." [this number includes all those working in all industries, and NOT confined to the war years alone!]

"10 %"

"The portion of pay withheld from workers from 1942 to 1946 and sent to the Mexican government"

"Ramon Ibarra remembers his backbreaking days repairing railroads in the American Southwest, a contract job for which he left Mexico in 1942 as part of a guest-worker program. More than 60 years later, he’s looking forward to the rest of his paycheck."

"Now 86, Ibarra was one of the hundreds of thousand of Mexican laborers, or braceros , who helped the U.S. meet it labor demands during World War II.Now they can apply for money that was withheld from their paychecks in the 1940’s and sent to the Mexican government as an incentive for them to return home."

[sent to the Mexican government and deposited in a Mexican bank for "safekeeping"]

"Many never saw the money again."

"Ibarra, of Chicago, and others like him are entitled to about $3,500 each, according to a judge’s preliminary approval last week of a multi-million dollar lawsuit settlement in San Francisco."

Collecting this money, what there is of it, is not going to easy. To collect, an entitled person must:

* Present original paperwork.
* Present original identification.
* Must be living in the U.S. [if you present you claim at the Mexican embassy in D.C.]

I remember this quite well when originally reported and becoming an issue. Workers, from Mexico, replacing American men drafted and taken into the military during WW2, were primarily used as railway road gangs. Doing maintenance-of-way [MoW] operations Repairing and maintaining sections of railroad track. Intensive, hard, backbreaking, pick and shovel manual labor of the worst sort. Replacing broken or damaged rail or ties, driving spikes, shoveling ballast, etc. All done before the advent of modern machinery.

KEEPING THOSE RAILROAD TRACKS IN GOOD WORKING ORDER WAS VITAL TO THE WAR EFFORT. EVERY FOUR SECONDS, A TRAIN SOMEWHERE IN THE U.S. LEFT A DEPOT CARRYING EITHER TROOPS OR WAR MUNITIONS!

Persons - - bracero laborers - - CHEATED OUT THEIR MONEY!! Money, 10 % of their wages [and these guys probably did not get paid much to begin with!], deposited in Mexican banks and simply disappearing!!

Consider this figure. Prior to 1945, as many as 400,000 laborers were employed nation-wide in the capacity of MoW crews! Today - - the number of MoW laborers is about 40,000 [maybe less?], such has the industry changed!

Just one section of rail - - weighs about a TON [2,000 pounds]. Calculate how many men are needed to manually lift just one section of rail and you easily can understand why it was necessary to import contract laborers to the U.S. during WW2.

There just cannot be that many of the WW2 contract workers alive! Only about 18 % of American WW2 veterans are still living. A similar percentage of Mexican contract workers still survive?

And those amounts of money persons such as Ramon are entitled to? That works out to about a dollar a week for a period of over sixty years! NOT A WHOLE LOT!

And let us be absolutely clear here. The Mexican government and banks CHEATED Ramon and his compatriots, NOT U.S. concerns.

I guess symbolism is most important in this instance?

coolbert.