Hundreds of Workers in Juarez Mexico Fired by US Company for Asking for $7...a day

by Nomad

Start giving Mexicans workers a living wage and the first thing you know there won't be an immigration problem at all.

"Hundreds of workers at the Lexmark plant in Juarez have been fired after they walked off the job last week, asking for raises, the right to unionize as well as other demands.

According to the Spanish-language website sinembargo, the labor dispute started back in early November, after workers asked for a raise of six pesos, or roughly .34 cents a day.

Lexmark, an international company producing printer cartridges, now pays workers a maximum of 70.10 pesos per day, or $4.03 daily."

Betraying Our Values Abroad: How Western Corporations in China Lobbied Against Workers' Rights

by Nomad

Western corporations and economists regularly promote the idea that trade with China has had, and will have, a civilizing effect on the institutions there. As adjunct scholar Stuart Anderson writes

“U.S. corporations act as a liberalizing force, helping to strengthen the private sector, establishing alternative centers of power, and creating subtle but important pressures for democratic reforms. They also tend to raise wages and labor standards in the countries in which they operate.”

Regardless of the merits of the statement, Anderson as a former director at the Cato Institute is hardly an unbiased scholar. The Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. by Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the oil conglomerate Koch Industries, Inc.