Originally Posted by Dixiedi
Anyone who believes a hospital HAS to pay all nurses the same thing is not "up" on anything.
Any business can change their pay grades tomorrow and exempt current employees. Say, the new grad LPN is making 21.00/hr. Hired today, she/he would make 21. Hired tomorrow, he/she could be making 15. There is nothing against the law there.
This doesn't affect JUST nursing either.... So, they help the nurse come over, pay her/him on the same payscale they've been using for years. This is OK... but what about his/her family? Newbies to the country rarely come alone. They bring the whole family. What about the jobs they will be taking? The regulations can only cover so much, then it fails. That's what we should be worried about. Not the few that come over under a specific program. It's the family that comes with or follows.
I would like to ask the original post 1 question. Why is it you think the Chinese Gov has no respect for human life?
Did I say that I thought all nurses should be paid the same? I don't recall that. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the first sentence of your post. ???
Okay... re: the Chinese gov't: Okay... Here's an excerpt from something RECENT as of April 2004...
Press Associates, Inc. (PAI) -- 4/5/2004
WITNESS: CHINESE WORKERS ROBBED OF WAGES, FORCED TO SUICIDE
By Mark Gruenberg
PAI Staff Writer
WASHINGTON (PAI)--Last October 1 in Beijing, on China'a National Day, Yang Pei Quan poured gasoline on himself in Tienanmen Square and lit a match.
The construction worker from Hubei was broke--because his employer refused to pay him anything at all for months, and he could not return to his rural village in disgrace.
Yang was one of many workers forced to protest their lack of pay last year by committing suicide, a Chinese workers' rights leader said after a Senate Democratic Policy Committee hearing March 29 on China's labor conditions. His self-immolation just happened to be the most publicized case.
"There are hundreds of such cases. They jump off bridges and more often pour gasoline on themselves as a way of protesting," Ciping Huang, Secretary-General of the Overseas Chinese Democracy Coalition, told Press Associates.
And Yang isn't alone, she added: Chinese government policy and police backing of employers produce abominable working conditions in the People's Republic--such as no pay at all.
"The employers worked them and didn't pay them. And when they (workers) protested, the employers were backed up by the government," she explained.
Government and employer practices like that prompted the AFL-CIO on March 16 to file the first-ever labor-conditions trade case under U.S. trade law, against China.
In a wide-ranging, well-documented complaint, the federation showed China not only breaks World Trade Organization rules--which it agreed to several years ago--but its own laws, including its wage laws.
And that Chinese law-breaking in turn costs U.S. workers at least 727,000 jobs, the federation's complaint added.
The complaint, under Section 301 of U.S. trade law, lets the U.S. formally challenge such inhuman working conditions as violations of the WTO trade treaty China signed--if Bush regime officials choose to do so. They have until the end of April to decide whether to probe and protest.
The federation's action, in turn, led Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) to chair the hearing, to put pressure on Bush to probe the Chinese practices.
"The workers of China are grossly underpaid and lack basic protections, such as pensions and health insurance," Ciping Huang testified. "China's export workers earn pitifully low wages--as little as 15 cents to 30 cents an hour--and receive brutal treatment.
"Some had to work up to 12-16 hours a day, 7 days a week" and days off are nonexistent for months and years, Huang said. "And when workers reach their prime age of 40 or 50, they are laid off" without safety nets. For women, the layoff age may be 30, she pointed out.
"There is no competitive labor market, let alone rights of unionization, to ensure that workers' earnings grow with their productivity" or to protect them, she said.
U.S.-based multinationals use those conditions to increase their use of Chinese labor, and their profits, added Columbia Law School Professor Mark Barenberg, who drafted the AFL-CIO's case.
"I was distressed by what I saw during my research in China" for two years, he explained. Barenberg, who is also an economist, met factory managers who were hired by U.S. firms.
They told him, on condition of anonymity, of hazardous working conditions, workers' rights abuses and exposure of workers to toxic chemicals.
The abuses include Chinese government work permits that limit job mobility, mandates that workers pay up to a year's salary in advance to get a permit and "dormitories" where workers, usually young women, are locked in after work hours.
"They become bonded laborers, a form of forced labor under international law," and illegal, he added. Elaborating on Cipuang Huang's comments, Barenberg "talked to workers who were not paid for six months or a year at a stretch, and when they were (his emphasis) paid, they got half of what they were promised. That's routine in China.
(**** This is the end of the excerpt****) Now... we can all go buy something at Wal-mart or Bed, Bath and Beyond or many other billions of places that has a little stamp/sticker on it saying "Made in China." LOOK AT HOW MUCH THESE PEOPLE GET PAID-- IF THEY EVEN GET PAID AT ALL-- WHY DO YOU THINK THINGS ARE SO CHEAP AT WAL-MART, ETC??? IT'S BECAUSE THEY ARE MADE OS BY PEOPLE MAYBE PAID A FEW CENTS/HR. OF COURSE IT WILL BE CHEAP FOR US HERE TO BUY IT.
My heart goes out to the poor people in China. Would anything at ALL like this be allowed in the U.S. or any other country that is NOT communist and obsessed with ruling the whole damned world??? The Chinese gov't has NO regard for human life OR it's people. It's all about money, money, money. Yes, there are corporations/people like this in the U.S. but we are a FREE country and I happen to be proud of that. I wish China were free. It's very, very sad.
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