sandy… if you go to http://www.cnn.com , they had a list of dead and injured.
No worries. I agree with you. I just want to make sure that we all realize that we are fundamentally biased in favor of our respective nations.
I, for example, am in favor of my nation not acting like an overgrown bully with mood swings, then wondering why people get a little peeved. But hey, I’m biased…
Great. OJ all over the damned keyboard. My God that was freakin funny !!!
Oh. Ok, sorry for the 'jack, now back to your regular scheduled ranting. (Or should I say “ur” ?)
I don’t have a site yet, but my advisor visited Latin America a couple of years ago and testified as to the living conditions down there. Most of the people are living like that because of the US bringing in neo-colonialism and not paying people a decent wage.
YOu know WHY they do it? Money.
Guin, are you referring to American businessses moving their factories south of the border? Or what? Or maybe you should start a thread in GD once you have your facts straight? Or at least let us know what you’re talking about when you say the US is practicing neo-colonialism in Guatemala? And maybe I should stop ending all of my sentences with question marks?
Just a question…
Before the “neo-colonialists” arrived, was someone else paying “the people” a higher wage?
No. However, I’m merely pointing out that the US isn’t exactly helping everyone.
I’ll TRY and get my facts this week. I don’t have my notes with me.
Hell, look at how our soldiers treated people over in Vietnam.
Guin, I think Rysdad is trying to emphasize the grey area involved with paying Third World workers wages.
Paying a Malaysian factory worker $1.00 an hour may sound like a travesty to us, but if the price of food, clothes, and shelter is drastically lower than the US this wage is much more palatable
I don’t agree with much of the politics at my university (Brown University), but last year the students were really active in promoting a living wage for oversease workers and I was impressed with their points.
Guin does have a point though. It’s not all about the $. Sometimes the issue is working conditions. As I understand it, many of these workers have to put in ridiculous hours and are not allowed to break during work hours even to eat or use the bathroom. The conditions are also reputed to be highly dangerous and job stability is nil.
Here is a link 
Student Labor Alliance
Sorry for the hijack…
Guin, this is the Pit, so I hope you don’t mind if I’m blunt. You’re a stupid fuck. You don’t know shit.
What the fuck do you know about decent wages? Your level of understanding of world economy can be fitted on the head of a pin, with room for 10 more CD ROMs.
At one point these fucking idiot activists were complaining that kids in Pakistan were only getting paid $.50 a day or something like that.
Guess what? It’s a 3rd world economy. It’s not like these kids are pulled out of high school and forced to work. There’s probably no school, it’s probably very good wages, and they’re helping their families survive. In a couple of generations things will change, but right now, they’re glad to have the job. There is no infrastructure there, no pensions, no health insurance, no malls. Get it? It’s a different world. Stop being so fuckin naive.
I have a friend from that area. When they build a house, they get a few friends, hire people to put a few walls together, voila, a house. Get it? It’s a different world. Stop being so fuckin naive.
Now those kids are out of a job. Once NIKE starts paying $2 a hour, all the policemen, armymen, and officials are going to throw the kids out and put their friends and relatives in those same jobs. Fuck, NIKE is paying more than the mayor’s salary!
And you stupid fuck. If you were to pay $15 with benefits for assembling toys or footballs, etc. A doll would cost $100; a football, $250; your T-shirt, $55. Go take an economics class before your post your BS again.
I’ve read about that also. But I’m not sure how true those stories are. Frankly, it sounds like an urban legend. I’m from one of those 3rd world countries and it doesn’t sound like a true story.
1)If some local strong arm warlord can get away with something like that, they’d be doing that even without NIKE or other foreign companies. They’d be planting drugs or doing some other illegal stuff which pays more. Think about it, you’re flouting the law on a grand scale, might as well get hung for sheep.
2)There is some law and order. If the country is corrupt, you’ll need to payoff someone and it’s not worth it. If the country is not corrupt, why do it for the little money you’re going to get. Face it, if NIKE was paying the boss big bucks, they wouldn’t be going to a 3rd world country.
3)It’s happening in the States, in NY and such, but that’s because the workers are illegals and can’t get away. Back in the old country, at least some of the workers are going to have relatives or friends in the police or army. The owner of the company can’t take a chance that someone will escape and report it to the authorities.
It just screams Urban Legend to me.
I’ve gotta laugh whenever I hear that old canard about third world wage levels, “it’s good money for ‘them’”. It never seems to come out of the mouths of “them” that are on the receiving end of those supposed good wages.
Personal Experiences, example 1:
I worked as a geologist/technician on a series of exploratory oil wells drilled by a major US-based oil company in Guatemala. This was a so-called camp job, where the crews were boarded on location due to its remoteness. The drilling rigs were supplied by a US-based contractor, and staffed by a mix of American and Guatemalan crews. Generally, the Drillers were American and the floor hands were Guatemalan, but the assistant drillers were mixed, thus allowing a direct comparison of wages. The Americans were flown in from the States on a 28 day on-28 day off rotation, and received approx. $100/day; the Guatemalans worked a 28 day on, 14 day off schedule, for the US equivalent of about $15/day at the same job level. But wait; accommodation, food and laundry services were included for the Americans, while the contracting agent for the Guatemalans actually charged the workers for their meals and laundry, deducted automatically from their salary. This reduced their net by about 1/3 from the above figure.
Example 2:
Worked offshore on a project for a French oil company in the coastal waters of Angola, West Africa. Once again, rig supplied by an Amercian contractor. Here, the crews were mixed American/Filipino. Americans once again worked 28/28 rotation, with board and transport back to the States included. Filipinos working in similar job classifications earned about 1/3 the amount per day of the Americans, and (to my recollection) worked 3 month off/14 day on schedules. As a side note, transport to and from the Philippines actually took up about 5 days of the off period; hardly seemed worth the bother.
Now, no one on-site complained much about these disparities, but what would be the point? There was no union representatin for the workers and no particular local legislation that might protect them. The slightest hint of discord and the offending parties would be run off location immediately.
I think it’s possible to have some understanding of third-world economics and still be disturbed by the above. No matter how apologists for low third-world wages care to paint it, American prosperity is in part delivered to us on the backs of exploited workers elsewhere.
Sorry, for the Filipino example, should have read “3 months ON/14 days OFF”.
Previewed the daman thing 3 times, grumble, grumble…
ROFL… here ya go…
**Correctly Spelling “Potato”
If GH can stand for P as in Hiccough
If OUGH can stand for O as in Dough
If PHTH can stand for T as in Phthisis
If EIGH can stand for A as in Neighbor
If TTE can stand for T as in Gazette
If EAU can stand for O as in Plateau
Then the right way to spell POTATO should be:
"GHOUGHPHTHEIGHTTEEAU"**If I get the math right, and allowing for the 1/3 reduction, I get:
$10 per day x 28 days = $280.00
28 days on + 14 days off = 42 days = 1 work period. There are approximately 8.7 work periods in a year.
8.7 x $280 = 2,436.00 per year. That’s pretty low, or is it?
The following cite from Encyclopedia Britannica lists the 1996 per capita income for the Philippines as $1,160.00.
http://search.britannica.com/search?query=the+philippines
So, it seems that the workers were making about twice the average income.
For that matter, a 28-day on, 14-day off work schedule doesn’t seem too bad to me. I wish I could get 1 day off for every 2 days worked.
I’m not apologizing at all, nor do I grant that the Filipino workers were exploited. Heck, I wish I could be so exploited. By the same standards, I’d make $56,990 per year and have 120+ days off.
What I’m saying here is that, just because foreign workers don’t make “American” wages, that doesn’t mean that they’re exploited.
I agree, but not if they are doing exactly the same job at the same place at the same time. That was the point being made. If the circumstances were as Rocket88 suggests (and they may not have been, the company may have had a mix of workers due to productivity differences) then the difference in wages was solely due to differences in bargaining power.
picmr
Granted that bargaining power affects wages. No dispute there.
The same thing happens in the US all the time. Union vs non-union workers, workers with seniority vs newhires, tenured vs non-tenured…it’s all bargaining power.
Rysdad:
Just to expand a bit on my previous post :
I assume that in your salary comparison you said “Filipino” when you meant “Guatemalan” as that was the example you cited from my previous post.
Firstly, you would be correct in stating that the average Guatemalan floor hand on a drilling rig would make a wage higher than the national average. In general, although such is considered a relatively unskilled job, wages for jobs on exploration drilling rigs tend to be higher than average regardless of location. This is due to a) relative risk of injury b) long hours (typically 12-hour shifts, seven days per week c) relatively harsh operating conditions and remote locations.
28/14 or 28/28 seems sensible to when you remember that the “28” is spent on a muddy location, away from family, performing heavy physical labor in a remote stretch of jungle that may only be accessible by helicopter.
Although my job was of a more technical nature, on that project I worked one stretch of seven weeks on location, five days off, then six more seeks, and I can assure you that one is more than ready to get to the beach by the end of one’s hitch.
In any event, my point had more to do with the idea that people working side-by-side at the same jobs, and exposed to the same risks, were compensated at vastly different levels depending on nationality. While that may be business as usual, it troubles my conscience and is one of the reasons that I got out of the industry.
Fuck, let someone exploit me.
- Let’s get a high GNP country to employ me, say Brunei or Kuwait. Say for example some high up official there makes $200 per hour, and they get complete free medical, free pensions, free university education etc.
- They come over here, hire me for $100 per hour. I have no medical, pension, or free university education.
- Brunei or Kuwaiti activists say “You’re fucking exploiting damn Westerners!”
- Fuck, I’m ready to be exploited. Exploit me.
Oh, and I won’t give a shit if they pay the Kuwaiti or Brunese (?) next to me double what I get. That’s life, I should have been born a Kuwaiti or Brunese. Heck, if I could choose where or who I could have been born, I’d choose to be a Walmart heir or something.