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  • From: childers.paula AT epamail.epa.gov
  • To: "Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/" <internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [internetworkers] The competitive job market
  • Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2003 15:38:42 -0400





First of all, that ad is utterly frightening, not because the writer is
"an AH," as he himself says, or because it's extreme fantasy, but
because it so clearly defines the truth of the current situation.
Think of this as "The Jungle" rewritten as an employment ad. (for those
who don't know about this book:
http://faculty.uml.edu/sgallagher/jungle.htm )

American (white collar, blue collar, doesn't matter) workers are working
longer with less vacation time (
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16611 ) than in any other
Westernized nation. Meanwhile, "globalization" and "free trade" (meaning
corporations are free to rampage at will) promotes the movement of jobs
to dirt-paid (literally) folks in other "less developed" (meaning more
controllable) countries working even longer hours for even less money
with even fewer safety nets.

Of course, Americans still think they are getting "a deal" when they can
purchase products or services for less, because they are so disconnected
from the consequences of this race to the bottom underlying why those
goods or services are so cheap in the first place. The extra costs are
displaced - into terrorism, global warming, and world wide poverty &
suffering. At what point do we suck so much out of the foundation of
the nation that the top falls in?

Fair trade, not free trade. Think global, buy local. Put your money
where your job is.

Paula





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