Mario G and Elizabeth Carvalho have had a dialogue on the issue of Minimum Wages, and how to better organise the Labour Market vs. Mario's view that the unfettered "Free Market" is the best way of ensuring that everyone gets work. (Wages would come down, obviously, but that is more efficient.)
In this intervention, I want to raise our sights from the case of a single person who is trying to hire some daily help for work on his estate (which is mentioned), and focus instead on what has happened and is happening in the USA as a live (and tragic) ongoing Case Study. Thirty or forty years ago in the USA, except for seasonable farm labour (come for harvests, return to Mexico for the slack season) there were very few Mexican-Americans except those in Southern California and western Texas & Arizona - a definite, but small minority. People like the parents of the estimable fascist Attorney General, who came in illegally herself, and later got naturalised. Chinese and East Asian immigration into California was thought a much more serious problem 30, 20, even 15 years ago - and indeed it is, since e.g. Stanford is almost half Chinese- and Japanese and Philipino-Americans. However, this is at the top of the social heirarchy, and these people have blended in. Many of the Chinese have become binational entrepreneurs. Today, virtually all the manual labour, waiting on tables, housekeeping, farm labour, etc not only in Calif but in most of the Western states, and now increasingly all over the country, thanks to the underground network of telephone, internet and such which informs people where jobs are opening up) is done by Latin immigrants, about half of whom are illegal. Those of you who know how difficult it is to get a Green Card and to acquire US citizenship, would realise how impossible it is to live any stretch of time in the USA as an illegal immigrant having, e.g. overstayed one's visa. But there are today over TEN (15?) MILLION ILLEGAL (Mexican mostly) Latin American immigrants. This is because they are willing to work for less money, without union protection, no health, etc.... AND THE EMPLOYERS LOVE IT! They are used in such occupations as Abattoirs, street cleaning, housekeeping, etc. E.g. in the last decade every one of the workers who look after the University buildings (and most of the other buildings, too) in WASHINGTON DC are first-generation immigrants, perhaps 40% of them illegals. In Washington DC, which has a high Black unemployment rate, too.... Under business pressure, Mr. Bush is trying to get through laws which would permit many of the illegals to make it to citizenship - but not too fast, and under conditions that would keep their wages down, and which would, in fact permit even more illegals to come in. At the same time a lot of money will go to big contractors not only to build a show-case 1000 mile Wall, but also to buy a lot of fancy electronics which will supposedly do unmanned scanning in the desert (Ha!). Can you imagine what this will do to the US economy in the next decade, with a huge number of uneducated immigrants, who somehow have to be supported in the public schools and emergency health facilities, additional policing, etc etc. Plus culturally absorbing them! It took the USA 100 years to absorb the Russian, Polish, German immigrants of the 1870-1910s; most of their children and grandchildren speak English and think of themselves in some sense as Americans. But will this happen to the Latin Americans, who will have for at least one and probably 2 generations to live in single-language, single-religion, limited income ghettos, in substandard housing, with little access to social benefits? My reason for going on at this length, is simply to point out that trying to implement a "free market" in labour is socially and economically a suicidal policy for any society. Goa had better wake up and do something about it. J G Krishnayya, Pune (and Betim) === message truncated === _______________________________________________ Goanet mailing list Goanet@lists.goanet.org http://lists.goanet.org/listinfo.cgi/goanet-goanet.org