Anti Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 675-677

[M]uch of the profits American companies are realizing comes from the firing of their employees.
U.S. Companies Making Record Profits -- Because They Invest in Machines, Not Workers
Steven D
Booman Tribune
Fri Jun 10th, 2011





Companies that are looking for a good
deal aren’t seeing one in new workers.

Workers are getting more expensive while equipment

is getting cheaper, and the combination is encouraging

companies to spend on machines rather than people.
Companies Spend on Equipment, Not Workers
By CATHERINE RAMPELL
New York Times
Published: June 9, 2011

Contractors for Fruit of the Loom, Hanes and Levi’s worked in close concert with the US Embassy when they aggressively moved to block a minimum wage increase for Haitian assembly zone workers, the lowest-paid in the hemisphere, according to secret State Department cables.

The factory owners told the Haitian Parliament that they were willing to give workers a 9-cents-per-hour pay increase to 31 cents per hour to make T-shirts, bras and underwear for US clothing giants like Dockers and Nautica.

But the factory owners refused to pay 62 cents per hour, or $5 per day, as a measure unanimously passed by the Haitian Parliament in June 2009 would have mandated. And they had the vigorous backing of the US Agency for International Development and the US Embassy when they took that stand.
…
In April 2008 Haiti was rocked by the so-called Clorox food riots, named after hunger so painful that it felt like bleach in your stomach.
WikiLeaks Haiti: Let Them Live on $3 a Day

The Nation

Dan Coughlin and Kim Ives

June 1, 2011