Subject: Re: [Homestead] China--the rest of the story, from a rural viewpoint
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 06:59:23 -0800
At 12/21/2004, you wrote:
Rural Exodus for Work Fractures Chinese Family
By JIM YARDLEY
Saipan is a in a common wealth of the United States. As such they can in
many ways set their own laws such as minimum wage. There is very little on
the island to exploit other than tourists. So what they have done is set
the minimum wage to $3.05 an hour and invited in the garment sweat
shops. Hundreds of women, mostly from mainland china come to Saipan to
live in dilapidated barracks, work in conditions that even Dickens would
find deplorable, all for $3.05 an hour with no overtime, minus room and
board with no health coverage. So to help out at home they turn to the
other huge industry, Japanese tourists.
Japanese men seem to look for places of easy sex and the local tourist
board turns a blind eye to garment workers doing a little outside
income. Just don't get caught if you are a woman, Men get sent back to
the hotel but women get sent to jail then back home. And most of those
women are married with a family back home and do this so they can get on
the consumer goods wagon.