I was tear-gassed protesting free trade. Now that Trump’s tariffs may signal the beginning of the end of globalization, do I get to say, “I told you so?"
As for labor standards, consider the last few strikes the Canadian government broke instead of staying out, or leaning in favor of labor. Or the nursing wage freezes for years and years in Ontario, including the bill that curbed ability to strike which needed the notwithstanding clause. The state of our labor protection is not the worst in the world but it is nowhere near the best, and more importantly, it’s not where it needs to be in order to curb the trend or rising inequality.
E: BTW, as that article says, 996 has been ruled illegal in China. Whether and how that is enforced today and in the future is an open question. That said I recently looked at wages in China and they’ve been growing at 8-10% per year, every year since the 80s. The average wage is currently sitting at a bit over US $15K per year. Adjusted for purchase power, it’s equivalent to $55K in the US. I was shocked, but that explains the great number of Chinese tourists I saw in Italy last summer. The Chinese worker today is getting much more than they did just 5 or 10 years ago and the trend has been like this for a long time. Another angle you could use to cross check this is their Gini index. It’s peaked at 44 at in 2010. The last number I can see is 35.7 from 2021. That means inequality is falling and therefore more of the economic growth is going towards the majority. That’s congruent with the rising wages. For context, this unadjusted wage is about the same as the poorest country in the EU, Bulgaria. However adjusted for PPP, Bulgaria’s wage is equivalent to US $30K. That means economically, the average Chinese worker seems significantly better off than the average Bulgarian worker, while their absolute incomes are about the same. Again this is simply the wage side of things, ignoring other working conditions like hours, safety and so on. I don’t have enough information about those other than the common things people say.
lol. Ty. Lemmy has a problem with the disagree button. 😂
As for labor standards…
You raise good points. I feel like Canada has decent regulations, and when they’re enforced, it’s probably better than most of the places we’ve exported jobs to. I don’t have anything backing that up.
However, our governments definitely don’t take the side of workers in strikes. I’m not sure how that stacks up overall. If workers (generally) can’t be forced into overtime, how does that stack up to the feds enacting back to work legislation for trail workers?
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I didn’t downvote.
As for labor standards, consider the last few strikes the Canadian government broke instead of staying out, or leaning in favor of labor. Or the nursing wage freezes for years and years in Ontario, including the bill that curbed ability to strike which needed the notwithstanding clause. The state of our labor protection is not the worst in the world but it is nowhere near the best, and more importantly, it’s not where it needs to be in order to curb the trend or rising inequality.
E: BTW, as that article says, 996 has been ruled illegal in China. Whether and how that is enforced today and in the future is an open question. That said I recently looked at wages in China and they’ve been growing at 8-10% per year, every year since the 80s. The average wage is currently sitting at a bit over US $15K per year. Adjusted for purchase power, it’s equivalent to $55K in the US. I was shocked, but that explains the great number of Chinese tourists I saw in Italy last summer. The Chinese worker today is getting much more than they did just 5 or 10 years ago and the trend has been like this for a long time. Another angle you could use to cross check this is their Gini index. It’s peaked at 44 at in 2010. The last number I can see is 35.7 from 2021. That means inequality is falling and therefore more of the economic growth is going towards the majority. That’s congruent with the rising wages. For context, this unadjusted wage is about the same as the poorest country in the EU, Bulgaria. However adjusted for PPP, Bulgaria’s wage is equivalent to US $30K. That means economically, the average Chinese worker seems significantly better off than the average Bulgarian worker, while their absolute incomes are about the same. Again this is simply the wage side of things, ignoring other working conditions like hours, safety and so on. I don’t have enough information about those other than the common things people say.
lol. Ty. Lemmy has a problem with the disagree button. 😂
You raise good points. I feel like Canada has decent regulations, and when they’re enforced, it’s probably better than most of the places we’ve exported jobs to. I don’t have anything backing that up.
However, our governments definitely don’t take the side of workers in strikes. I’m not sure how that stacks up overall. If workers (generally) can’t be forced into overtime, how does that stack up to the feds enacting back to work legislation for trail workers?
Googling around, it seems like 996 may still be a thing, and court rulings are inconsistent and enforcement is lax.