Oh, no, American exceptionalism fallacy again :o
Do consulates pay different rates in different countries to allow their staff to acquire “help” under varying cost conditions?
I’m also still curious how asking an employer to make up legally required back-pay is wrong.
That’s one of the surprising parts of this, to me. If diplomats like Khobragade need domestic help and they plainly cannot afford it, why isn’t India helping them out?
How many times must I say I agree with this? Can I get you to concede even once that the maid would have been worse off if she hadn’t come on this job?
No, because we don’t know what she would have done instead.
How do Indian diplomats afford apartments in New York City given their comparatively low wages?
Do poor maids typically lie, cheat, and steal from powerful well connected people in India with no repercussions? Is such a thing so common that she would think screwing her employer was worth giving up a “great” job? Additionally, if she was being treated well, but just saw an opportunity to exploit her employer, who she allegedly viewed as family, why did she try to negotiate with her initially? Plus, why didn’t she do this to her previous high profile employer? What you are suggesting makes almost no sense. The ONLY reason she and her family are in the position they are in now is because of the greed of her employer, and the attempts to intimidate her family, both things she could not foresee or have any control over.
As we keep responding, we don’t agree on the validity of the comparison, or that it is at all relevant. Being mistreated slightly less in one country is not an justification for mistreatment of any sort, regardless of the location. This has been stated many times in response to your point.
Isn’t that what Americans say about poor illegal Mexican immigrants?
Seriously, at least 10 percent of NYC workforce are illegals and the laws are broken by employers on a daily basis and only for one reason - the reason why immigration reform is stalling - is that once legalized they’d have to be paid minimum wage.
The sheer hypocrisy about Indian diplomat situation astounds me.
Where do Americans get this self-righteousness is beyond me.
American employers are routinely prosecuted for employing illegal immigrants, as is proper.
But that is neither here nor there.
All I’m saying, sometimes, best approach is to get off that high horse politicians and media raise you at.
I’m sorry, I’m not going to buy into allowing ANYONE working in my country to be paid less than minimum wage. No one. We do not have a two-tier system of employment in this country. If you work here you get minimum wage. Period.
Sure, we’ve heard the argument that paying “that much” makes such employees unaffordable… and saw those jobs exported to places like India. The notion of now importing people from other countries to work here at less than minimum wage is seen as utterly intolerable because it will lead to employers importing foreign workers and leaving even more Americans unemployed.
I’m pretty darn sure that the cost of living where she came from is even less than a third of what she was making in NYC even at a criminally low wage. NYC is one of the most expensive cities here, if not the most expensive. If the choice is working as a live-in nanny here in the US at $3/hour and working as a live in nanny in India at $1/hour I’m not entirely convinced that the US deal is inherently better than the one in India.
No, because I’m not convinced that is, in fact, truth. I don’t know that the woman would have remained unemployed if she had not taken the nanny job. I don’t know the cost of living in India or how it relates to any hypothetical salary the woman might have had. “More money” is not always the proper criteria by which to judge… and I speak as someone making 1/5 of what I did 10 years ago so I have some grasp of the potential trade-offs involved when comparing salary, working conditions, and cost of living in a particular location.
Are you for real? :dubious:
Oh, oh, I see… you are from Canada, right? You got to be!
Because this much of obliviousness should be a punishable offence.
I agree.
The maid was employed by an American diplomat in Delhi. So was her husband. She is quite literate as the extract from her diary/letter suggests and familiar with the Internet. She was interviewed and her behavior, including how she handled the children observed for a few days, before Khobargade hired her. It is not as if she was from some Delhi slum or one among thousands of maids that work in umpteen Delhi homes.
The NYC job entailed separation from husband and children who were in India. It is not easy to put a monetary value on this separation.
It is the elite Indian foreign service that says about $500 per month, plus room and board places her in a better situation than she was in India. There are nobody to proclaim what adequate compensation for her would be - that judgement is the maid’s - but the elite in India don’t get it.
If folks in the boss’s position expect maids, and if they’re only paid enough to afford maids at sub-minimum-wage levels, and if the law is enforced, then the Indian government faces a couple of choices:
- Only hire people who are independently wealthy to fill these positions, which is going to reduce the pool of qualified candidates;
- Only hire people who are willing not to be paid enough to afford the amenities they expect, which is going to reduce the pool of qualified candidates; or
- Pay enough that their workers can afford to hire maids, which is going to keep their pool of qualified candidates at current levels, but at increased cost to the government.
Those are the choices India can make. They can absolutely make the choice that leads to the maid’s hiring under legal circumstances. If their consul employees are led to expect maids at illegal prices, the Indian government is failing.
Good question. They are paid their Indian salary, plus allowances, and reimbursements.
It is not a transparent (to the public and the taxpayer) system. All they disclose is the diplomat’s Indian salary. With some search, one can obtain information regarding total (across all employees) expenditure on allowances and reimbursements at a location/office.
My guess is that the rent is paid by the Consulate/Embassy. It appears Khobragade lives in a two floor, 4 bedroom apartment in NYC - the rent would probably be close to $10K per month.
Plus they are given reimbursement for education of children in private schools.
And an entertainment allowance that I have reliably learnt they do not need to spend and is theirs to keep. The $4000 per month figure is likely the allowances Khobargade gets as cash.
All of the above is free from US and Indian tax.
Indian Foreign Service officers are recruited through what is called a civil services examination. So the pool is a given.
It appears that there is some rethink in Delhi at senior levels about what needs to be done now that US attorney has imposed a cost on connivance.
I’m suggesting that fewer folks might be interested in these jobs if the benefits of the job decrease-is this incorrect?
I definitely appreciate the information you bring to the thread, btw!