Minimum Wage -- International relevance

[6155GUASTELL@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Another thought on the global aspect of the minimum wage question...

Let's see what's going on in the LDCs... The story that is most
vivid in my mind is the one aboutlast Dominican Republic sugar workers.
Right now [as of last summer] the workers were being paid about $1
a day. Since that nation does not have a welfare program and workers
can't manage their lives on so little, their employers give them *loans*
to make up the difference. How will those "loans" ever be repaid?
Sounds like a new mechanism for indentured servitude to me. [There's
a road to serfdom in there somewhere, no?]

In light of the increased globalization of everything, the relative
immobility of labor versus capital, I think an international initiative
is needed for some kind of an International Minimum Wage. The coordination
of such an initiative would be formidable, and would have to be mediated
or instigated by a national labor movement. Hence my whimsical post
last week about Jimmy Hoffa Jr.

--Stephen Guastello