Working Life

Did anyone else cringe when she or he saw the subtitle of the new Captain America movie: “The Winter Soldier”. From what I’ve seen floating around, the movie is a deep-dive into violence, warfare and triumphant patriotism (please correct me if I’m wrong), the very impulses and emotions that just mire us in bloody crisis after bloody crisis. And that is the precise opposite of a more recent historic meaning of “The Winter Soldier”.

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It’s not surprising that a growing number of workers around the globe are losing faith in political leaders. After all, the economic debate often seems completely divorced from the realities of workers’ lives, whether it’s blaming workers for national budget squeezes actually caused by bankers or CEOs imposing mass layoffs to cover up obscene executive compensation at the heart of bottom-line revenue shortfalls. The debate in the United States is a good example.

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Yesterday, I wrote about how the decline of U.S. wages has made workers here cheaper to hire than workers in India, at least in the call center industry. Today, the news hails from Asia where workers are rising up against poverty-level wages.   From the Financial Times (and, as a side observation, the FT gives […]

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    We learn from The Wall Street Journal today that Vietnam is growing as a country of choice when it comes to outsourcing jobs. Why? No surprise:     Industrial land here is cheaper than in China. Wages are about a third lower than in China’s industrial coastal regions. And with a population of almost 90 […]

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