Re: Losing the American dream

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 08/07/01 17:14 -1000, you wrote:


> http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/top/features/documents/01701322.htm


> IT IS ONE of the bitterest ironies of globalization: immigrant workers,
> having come to this country in search of a better life, left unemployed as
> their coveted American jobs are relocated to the countries from which they
> fled.
>
> At the Power-One International electronics factory in Allston, hundreds of
> assembly-line workers ? most of them Chinese immigrants earning between $7
> and $10 per hour ? face this very reality. Last May, Power-One ? a
> California-based conglomerate that ranks as the world?s sixth-largest
> manufacturer of power-conversion equipment ? announced plans to close the
> Allston shop in September and send its 265 manufacturing jobs overseas.
> Some positions will go to the company?s factory in San Luis, Mexico; most
> will move to China.


This illustrates how the reserve army of labour is now a global phenomenon.
Migrants who come to work in super-exploited industries for marginal wages,
are exchangeable for any of the over one billion workers in the developing
world whose wages may be one thirtieth that of workers in the metropolitan
capitalist countries.

Chris Burford