Iepilei
20th December 2002, 21:33
I recently picked up a copy of his book, "There is nothing on the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos" - and I must say I'm very impressed. The book is a beautiful series attacks on globalisation and the 'free'-market system... all from the mind of a good `ol Texan.
Here is an excerpt from the Introduction:
Outside the gates of a modern but now-closed plant on the suburban edge of Atlanta, Anna Harris talked with the lawmakers about how she and 1000 people like her had been kicked off the edge of the global economy by Lucent Technologies, a 26 Billion-A-Year company that makes telephones and other products. For 25 years she worked for Lucent, gradually working her way into America's middle class, earning 15.59 per hour, or roughtly 31k a year. She and her coworkers were highly skilled, efficient, cooperative, and loyal workers. Quality. Just like the phones the made.
Still, Lucent's executives constantly messed with them, saying Mexico beckoned. Ms Harris and the others were told in the early nineties to take a pay cut...or else. They did: "I went to 13 an hour," she told the lawmakers. "I'm a single parent. I took a cut in pay to keep my job." That reduction sliced 5,000 a year off her middle class life.
Even this giveback did not appease the wanderlust of Lucent, however. Shortly after Clinton and Congress rammed NAFTA into law in 93, the corporate honchos hitched up the wagons in Atlanta and hauled Anna Harris' job to Reynosa, Mexico. In this poverty-stricken border town, only a stone's throw across the river from Texas, the company pays it's mexican hires a subpoverty wage of 1 dollar an hour. They get no benefits, unless you count the daily ration of one breakfast burrito supervisors hand out to each worker. Lucent uses their labor; then, thanks to NAFTA, the company merrily trucks the mexican-made phones right across the bridge into the US, delievering them to a store near you without paying any tariff or honoring any quota.
Now in her early fifties, Ms. Harris finally landed another job months after being abruptly abandoned by the globally wayward Lucent. She got one of those "14 million new jobs" that a crowing Bill Clinto tells us his economic policies have created. Hers is at a Target store, working for 7.50 an hour, though it's only part-time, so she has fallen plumb out of the middle class back into poverty. Ironically, in her job at Target, she sells the phones she once made. When Ohio Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur asked her if the price is any lower on those phones now that Lucent pays 1 buck an hour to Mexican workers rather than the 13 she earned, Anna Harris's eyes turned steel cold and she said: "There's no difference in price. They're selling them for $80 to $90."
Welcome to the New World Order.
Here is an excerpt from the Introduction:
Outside the gates of a modern but now-closed plant on the suburban edge of Atlanta, Anna Harris talked with the lawmakers about how she and 1000 people like her had been kicked off the edge of the global economy by Lucent Technologies, a 26 Billion-A-Year company that makes telephones and other products. For 25 years she worked for Lucent, gradually working her way into America's middle class, earning 15.59 per hour, or roughtly 31k a year. She and her coworkers were highly skilled, efficient, cooperative, and loyal workers. Quality. Just like the phones the made.
Still, Lucent's executives constantly messed with them, saying Mexico beckoned. Ms Harris and the others were told in the early nineties to take a pay cut...or else. They did: "I went to 13 an hour," she told the lawmakers. "I'm a single parent. I took a cut in pay to keep my job." That reduction sliced 5,000 a year off her middle class life.
Even this giveback did not appease the wanderlust of Lucent, however. Shortly after Clinton and Congress rammed NAFTA into law in 93, the corporate honchos hitched up the wagons in Atlanta and hauled Anna Harris' job to Reynosa, Mexico. In this poverty-stricken border town, only a stone's throw across the river from Texas, the company pays it's mexican hires a subpoverty wage of 1 dollar an hour. They get no benefits, unless you count the daily ration of one breakfast burrito supervisors hand out to each worker. Lucent uses their labor; then, thanks to NAFTA, the company merrily trucks the mexican-made phones right across the bridge into the US, delievering them to a store near you without paying any tariff or honoring any quota.
Now in her early fifties, Ms. Harris finally landed another job months after being abruptly abandoned by the globally wayward Lucent. She got one of those "14 million new jobs" that a crowing Bill Clinto tells us his economic policies have created. Hers is at a Target store, working for 7.50 an hour, though it's only part-time, so she has fallen plumb out of the middle class back into poverty. Ironically, in her job at Target, she sells the phones she once made. When Ohio Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur asked her if the price is any lower on those phones now that Lucent pays 1 buck an hour to Mexican workers rather than the 13 she earned, Anna Harris's eyes turned steel cold and she said: "There's no difference in price. They're selling them for $80 to $90."
Welcome to the New World Order.