Re: Free trade and wages

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

Is this vast wedge between pay & productivity sustainable?

Doug

Doug Henwood [dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx]
Left Business Observer
212-874-4020 (voice)
212-874-3137 (fax)

PS: I'd like to hear more about your work on SK steel.

On Wed, 26 Jan 1994, Anthony D'Costa wrote:

> Low wages is a challenge, no doubt, especially when combined with high
> productivity.  Harley Shaiken's study on the maquiladoras (1990) and my
> own study of the South Korean steel industry indicate.  Increasingly I
> see the possibility of other products, software for example, to be driven
> by low wages and high productivity.  India is a case in point.  The
> difference with the past low wage driven "new international
> division of labor" by MNCs is that such low wage labor is not raw labor.
> Rather it is quite educated and skilled.  In other words, capitalist
> expansion is taking place based on both absolute and relative surplus
> value.
>
> Anthony D'Costa
> U of Washington, Tacoma
> On Wed, 26 Jan 1994, D Shniad wrote:
>
> > On the issue raised a while back by Nathan Newman, quoting
> > the Economist to the effect that free trade has had little
> > effect on wages, I would strongly recommend Walter Russell
> > Mead's "The Low-Wage Challenge to Global Growth" by way of
> > rebuttal.
> >
> > It's published by the Economic Policy Institute in
> > Washington, D.C.
> >
> > ISBN # 0-044826-21-0
> >
> > Sid Shniad
> >
> > Sid Shniad
> >
> >