The passage I found was on pg.90 and titled, Sure Beats the Farm, and it read: "Like their sisters in time, textile and clothing workers in China today have low pay, long hours, and poor working conditions. Living quarters are cramped and rights limited, the work is boring, the air is dusty, and the noise is brain numbing. The food is bad, the fences are high, and the curfews inviolate. As generations of mill girls and seamstresses from Europe, America, and Asisa are bound together by this common sweatshop experience - controlled, exploited, overworked, and underpaid - they are bound together too by one absolute certainty, shared across both oceans and centuries: This beats the hell out of life on the farm.
Besides the horrible working conditions in China, I found an article in the NY Times explaining a protest in Harare, Zimbabwe where doctors and nurses are walking the streets demonstrating for better pay and working conditions in the hospital. Working in healthcare institutions, these doctors and nurses are forced to work without the essentials such as drugs, adequate water and sanitation, medical equipment, and safe clothing gear. Basic medicines are absent here in Harare and a new cholera epidemic has struck the country with 565 dead already, and over 12,500 infected. I don't understand how these kinds of conditions could be better than life on the farm? Yes I understand the workers on the farm had to work long hours day after day in horrible heat waves, but these people today working in healthcare facilities don't even have the basic medical supplies to do their jobs. At least the farmers had the tools they needed to complete the tasks at hand. In Zimbabwe, there isn't even clean drinking water; the water is only helping the spread of cholera which used to be an unknown diseases in this country, until now. Cholera is preventable too, but the government cannot even supply the chemicals to purify the drinking water, let alone provide hospitals with equipment to save innocent lives. I think it is safe to say that life on the farm was tough, but things in factories and other working facilities have only gotten tougher for the workers.
Today we constantly hear of laborers in factories in third world countries who work in unsanitary conditions and get beaten for not completing the work. Life on the farm was not the ideal job but at least most of the workers were given tools to work with, some sort of nourishment, and back then there were not as many things to go wrong. Life is more complex these days because our knowledge and technology has grown, giving the opportunity for more people to live without less. We keep developing new medicines and technological devices to make our lives easier, but only few countries can afford these things. Farmers all had the same tools and there weren't many different options as to how the job could get done. I think that the more things we develop and create, the more people have to live without. Zimbabwe doesn't have the basic medicines to cure a disease that is preventable; this must be so frustrating for the doctors and nurses to see people dying day after day knowing that their lives can be saved if the country was only lucky enough to be provided with these medicines and safe drinking water!
It is sad to think that although the world has grown so much since life on the farm that working conditions have still not improved in some countries and that things only get worse for countries, while countries like the United States gets is privileged to have every new development to better our lives even more.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/world/africa/04zimbabwe.html
For the most part, I agree with Cory when she says that life in bad factory conditions is much worse than what life working on a farm would be like. She's right, tools are provided on a farm and it's the environment[ climate, heat, precipitation conditions] that workers on a farm are more stressed about than the actual work sometimes. However, I do want to play devil's advocate and I think it would be safe to say that some factory jobs perhaps are better than certain farming jobs. It comes down to each individual person at different factories in different regions of Asia. Not ALL factories are bad [ yes, the majority are and the reputation is horrible], but as mind-numbing as some factory jobs could be, they are shielded from rain as they are indoors and are sometimes are sitting all day and moving their hands where a farm hand is constantly moving and exhausting themself.
ReplyDeleteI like how she brought up the comparison of bad working conditions in Zimbabwe for medical doctors and nurses. Medical professions probably do not get thought about as quickly as factory/farm jobs when it comes to the bad working conditions. I could only imagine the unpleasantness of having to perform my job and have it directly affect someone's life in a negative way. To watch a patient die simply due to lack of resources would be a horrible failure to endure. The risks that these doctors/nurses take are just as great if not greater than those in a factory. With quickly spreading diseases and make-shift ways of treating the sick, doctors and nurses in poverty stricken countries risk their own lives day after day to help the greater good. This is amazing seeing as how their own governnment either can't afford or doesn't care enough about their own citizens to make a change to help stop the spread of disease.
I agree with Kayla. We're lucky we aren't put in a position where we would have to work in such industries but I definitely would rather be working a factory then out on a farm, because like you said Kayla, not all factories are bad. Just as not all farms are bad too, however I would rather be working inside and not subject to harsh weather conditions and demanding physical labor.
ReplyDeleteI also just don't understand how certain countries can be so impoverished while others are so wealthy. Granted the economy is not as strong as it used to be, there are still countries that are thriving and flourishing while others are diminishing like you said Cori, with Zimbabwe and their lack of drinking water. I talked about in my blog how lack of water on a southern california farm is 1 of the reasons they are out of business, could water shortage be a potential global problem?
ReplyDeleteCory you make a great point. I've been so closed minded about the cotton farms and textile factories that I haven't thought about other working conditions. I know how bad the working conditions are and were for the cotton farmers and for people working in textile factories but I never thought about doctors offices and hospitals. I was amazed when I read your paragraph about the hospitals in Zimbabwe. It is one thing to put people in bad working conditions while they are out on the job. It is another thing to have bad conditions and minimal resources in a hospital where people are supposed to be safe and healthy.
ReplyDeleteAnother good point that you brought up that I never thought about was how life, work, factories, etc. has gotten so much more complex over the years. Cotton farmers needed a basket and some tools; so although the working conditions were tough the workers still has what they needed. Nowadays the tools and resources people need in order to keep up with "life" is endless. I think that's a reason why so many places have horrible working conditions. I wonder how those places could be better if they stopped wanting better and tried to just utilize and make better what they have? That may be a long shot but I have never asked myself that before.