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Summer Wine
Joined: 20 Mar 2005
Location: Next to a River
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 Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 4:36 pm Post subject: A view about migrant workers |
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I read this article about migrant workers and the following section jumped out at me as being something that I could relate too. It puts our position as teachers in an interesting perspective.
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In temporary migrant worker schemes, migrant workers are commodities, pure and simple, temporary labour units to be recruited, utilized and sent away again as employers require, tied to a specific employer, and therefore often stuck with worse conditions with little recourse to improve them. In this context, discrimination and exploitation because of race, immigration status, class, and gender play out together. Women migrant workers are particularly impacted, comprising the majority in sectors with the least protections, lowest wages and most demeaning conditions. Typically, guestworkers are not allowed to join unions, so have no collective bargaining power. Sometimes they are not paid on time or maybe not paid at all, may endure unsafe and unhealthy working conditions, and receive wages far below the average paid to local workers for equivalent work, toiling long hours, and perhaps be more willing to accept this situation because of the relatively short duration of their employment abroad, and are subject to abuse from employers. The labour of international migrants is systematically devalued. Skilled migrants frequently leave their countries only to find their qualifications and experience are not valued in the new country, so are locked into low-skilled jobs .
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http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0806/S00213.htm |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 4:40 pm Post subject: |
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| Doesn't that describe all workers? We have one thing to sell. Our labor and our skills. |
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Summer Wine
Joined: 20 Mar 2005
Location: Next to a River
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| Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 9:22 pm Post subject: |
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Not really.
It was the point about how our visa status can be utilised to determine our working conditions and treatment that I found relevent to me.
I have felt for the last few years that being able to gain longer visa than 1 year and being able to control my own visa would be better for me.
I have worked a few jobs that would have been better for me if I controlled my own visa and the fact that my current PS job believes that they own me because they own my visa is also a reason that I would like to have my own control of a visa.
Though what clicked was that all the desire by foriegn teachers to control their visa may be superseded by the desire of the employers to prevent it so that they can always havea rope around our necks.
That it may be less to do with immigration requirements and more about employer/employee relations. Therefore what I always considered a side issue may infact be a defining issue in regards to the employers always having the power to control and make it more likely that we accept the abuse that they can heap upon us. |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2008 3:12 am Post subject: |
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| Summer Wine wrote: |
Not really.
It was the point about how our visa status can be utilised to determine our working conditions and treatment that I found relevent to me.
I have felt for the last few years that being able to gain longer visa than 1 year and being able to control my own visa would be better for me. |
Indeed. Although most economic migrants don't have the ability to jump on a plane when their school decides to turn off their hot water and return to a nice life in the west. One should not feel too much kinship in their real plight. Surely you were here and remain here by pure choice, not because horrible economic and social conditions back at home forced you abroad. Right? I think one does a disservice to their real plight. If the world decides to take pity on the plight of 25 year old white males with university degrees from western industrialized nations and decides they need limited resources to protect... If a university degree hasn't prepared a western 25 year old to deal with what Korea throws at him, then I fear our whole educational system is in dire need of repair, long before Korea needs to repair its visa system.
The migrants in Korea have won a great number of rights but they did so by really demanding those rights. They protested, they staged sit ins, they got their heads cracked open by Korean cops. If you want those rights, follow in their foot steps. Or bring to bear simple economics: remove you labor. |
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Summer Wine
Joined: 20 Mar 2005
Location: Next to a River
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| Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2008 1:39 am Post subject: |
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| Surely you were here and remain here by pure choice, not because horrible economic and social conditions back at home forced you abroad. Right? |
No, not right.
I came for the same reasons others came.
There is work here and it pays me a wage. Those who come here aren't refugees.
My conditions in my country were unacceptable to me and I made a change, just like they did.
If we get treated badly, others get treated worse, if we get treated ok, others get treated badly. By asking for better conditions, others also benefit. |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2008 4:11 am Post subject: |
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| Summer Wine wrote: |
| There is work here and it pays me a wage. Those who come here aren't refugees. |
There are no decent paying jobs for you back at home and no possibility of career advancement? Is that what you're saying?
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My conditions in my country were unacceptable to me and I made a change, just like they did.
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Define unacceptable.
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| If we get treated badly, others get treated worse, if we get treated ok, others get treated badly. By asking for better conditions, others also benefit. |
Like I say, the real migrant workers didn't like their treatment and did something about it in Korea. They protested. They did sit ins. They got their heads beaten in by Korean cops. They eventually got something they wanted from the Korean government.
Yes, yes, we white, western university educated teachers are treated just horribly. It's amazing. We're paid better wages than the Korea teacher sitting next to us, we're given a free apartment, we're given loads of hand holding, we work shorter hours. What you say, you're having a contract dispute with a crooked small business man? What you say, nothing in your university education ever equipped you to handle it? Me, if I ever felt badly treated, I'd simply get on a plane and leave and go back to a nice life in Canada. I did. Many teachers here. That we're not doing sit ins and protesting in front of city hall is indicative that we ESL teachers have other viable choices. Namely go home.
Not your case at all? |
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Fishead soup
Joined: 24 Jun 2007
Location: Korea
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| Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2008 6:45 pm Post subject: |
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Once you get north of Uijeombu you see these awful outdoor containers that they house Filipino, Bangladeshi and Pakistani and Thais.
Must be brutal. They usually try to house at least two people in these things. |
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Bramble
Joined: 26 Jan 2007
Location: National treasures need homes
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| Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2008 8:30 pm Post subject: |
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| The comparison seems like a stretch. Most of us have more choices and enjoy better working conditions than people in DDD jobs. |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 3:41 am Post subject: |
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| Bramble wrote: |
| The comparison seems like a stretch. Most of us have more choices and enjoy better working conditions than people in DDD jobs. |
It's a bit like the OP trying to argue he and a starving man both "wanted" a hamburger and therefore are equal in need.
I read a report about migrant farm workers in my home town, migrants who work in the fields, and I had to chuckle a bit that their complaints were somewhat similar to ESL teachers. But just as you working a day and skipping lunch and being really hungry for dinner and the starving man both can be said to want a hamburger, you need to drink deep from the well of reality and realize there's another dimension to their lives and yours. |
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