Posts
Those Pedros, Sitis and François
I was having a heated conversation with a French about purchasing power. I told him that I enjoyed a higher purchasing power when I was living in Austin with an example that hubby and me were going out for restaurant 3-4 times a week. Here in France, except for lunch with co-workers (with restaurant ticket), we hardly go to restaurant since they are expensive. He immediately replied that restaurants in the USA are cheaper because they exploit those Pedros from Mexico and pay them peanuts. Ok, personally, I didn’t go to the kitchen to check whether there was any immigrant each time I dine in a restaurant. His comment just made me think of some examples I read in the newspaper and a story written by a professor from Taiwan.
Story from a Taiwanese professor:
I was a kid whose daily activity is to wander around the street. My parents had no job so they couldn't afford to send me and my sibling to school. One day, there came a bunch of people with fancy cars and clothes. They built a factory here and hired my parents and other villages as workers. With our parents' salary, we were able to go to the school. I enjoyed learning and playing with my classmates. However, this didn't last long. One day, a bunch of people came to our village. They said they are humanist. They said the factory exploited our parents. Eventually the factory was closed and our parents were once again out of job. I was back to the street. I want to ask:"Why? Why do these humanist made our parents out of job and made me and my siblings withdrew from the school? Who are they?"
A real story from Siti, one of our Indonesian maid:
Siti is from Indonesia and she is currently working as a house maid in Malaysia. She works 15 hours a day, 7 days a week for a peanut salary. She is married and has two kids. I asked her why she wanted to work so far away from her country. She told me that she would never earn this kind of salary in her country as a maid. With her sacrifice, she can now send her kids to school, she will be able to buy a house after several years of work. She just need to continue working for some times and she will be able to change the future, if not hers, the one of her children.
Stories from French newspaper:
François was working in a factory which was a supplier for a car maker. He was laid off recently due to the recent crisis in the car industry. The unemployment agency ANPE suggested him to apply to three job, to which he refused. According to him, two of the jobs are located 100km from his house and this is just too much for him. He doesn't want to sacrifice his family time on traveling to work. The other job was not in his current line and he was not motivated for it.
Françoise was participating in a demonstration in front of her factory. She worked only during the weekend but recently the factory didn't call them to work during the weekend. Her and her coworkers discovered that the management was actually asking the weekly shift (Monday - Friday) workers to work during the weekend to compensate those who only work 3 days a week due to the slow down in demand. The management offered those weekend shift workers to change to weekly shift workers but she refused. She said:"I don't want to do this as I live 50km away from here. I can do it for two days but 5 days is simply too much. Those weekly shifts people shouldn't steal our job!"
Ok, I do not personally know any Mexican in Austin. One of my classmates was from Argentina and he told me that he worked part time delivering pizza and he was earning USD40k a year. "People pay me generous tips, a very big part of my pay". With this part time, he was able to pay off his school fees. He is now an accountant.
Now back to the comment of my French friend who talked about worker exploitation. For him, any job that is not paying minimum wage and has no holiday is considered exploitation. So, why, knowing that being exploited, these Sitis and Pedros are still willing to travel thousand kilometers away from home? For me, yes they are being exploited, but at the same time they are fighting for a better future. Without being exploited, these Pedros, Sitis might still live in poverty and will stay poor for the next couple of generations. They are not as lucky as those French who can simply refuse to travel to work and still receive government help. I just think that French shouldn't use their standard to judge other countries (just like the humanist who closed the factory with a good reason but eventually didn't change the life of the villagers there).
