Monthly Archives: September 2011

Working in Retail in the USA: More Work for Less

25 Sunday Sep 2011

Posted by in United States, Working Life

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Source: Article Profits Before People by Stephanie Rogers, earthfirst.com

When my two sons and I arrived in Los  Angeles in October 2003, the State of California was bankrupt. Grocery workers at three major supermarket chains were on strike or locked out, clamoring for health care and an end to corporate greed. A week later, the mechanics of the Los Angeles Metro bus service also went on strike, leaving us without public transport. Then, before the month ended, my sister warned us of the firestorm raging across the San Bernardino
Valley not far from where we lived at the time. We had arrived in Los Angeles at a bad time.

My plans for starting up an import-export business with Brazil did not materialize. So when an opportunity arose to work in a retail store in West Hollywood, I took it. A fascinating workplace. I overheard conversations in diverse languages, unknown to my ears. American youth boasted tattoos of artistic skill and beauty. Some colored their hair purple and green. Gay men crossed paths with Jewish women and girls covered in cloth from neck to wrists to ankles.

As a former international trade professional, I was impressed by the corporation’s efficient and steady flow of goods from US and overseas suppliers to their stores throughout the USA. The retail store was an end-line in the export-import process: putting goods in the hands of the consumer.

But all was not well at the store-front. Time was crucial in the execution of our duties. Even the cash registers rated the speed at which we checked out each customer. But when there are only a few team-members on a shift, how do you help customers to find what they seek, keep the floor tidy, stock shelves, attend to telephone enquiries, and assist at the cash registers during peek hours? As workers, we were mere tools for getting the job done with maximum profit for the corporation. Our annual wage increases for job performance were measured out in quarters (25 cents). More work for less.

To compete with the slave-labor prices offered by America’s leading multi-national retailer and private employer, other retailers and supermarkets have to find ways to cut costs in order to compete and still maintain their profit margins. Like the renegade leader, they must also import goods produced at lower costs overseas and chop theirUS labor costs. The ripple effect.

To stuff us with their products, our corporations brainwash us with slogans of empty promises. Save money, live better. Expect more, pay less. They have made us believe that we can have whatever we want at little cost. We have yet to fully realize the real cost of our indulgences.

If workers want to live better, we have to stop expecting more for less and focus on what really matters.

Corruption in the Brazilian Workplace

18 Sunday Sep 2011

Posted by in Brazil, Working Life

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Source: Protests against Corruption throughout Brazil during Independence Celebrations, RondoniaVip, Brazil, 7 September 2011

Corruption has many faces.  Our governments are corrupt when they sell arms to dictatorship governments that serve the interests of their nations. Our
governments are also corrupt when they rig elections in order to stay in power.
Our elected politicians are corrupt when they abuse the power invested in them
for their own interests. Our corporate executives and business owners are corrupt when they lavish politicians with luxury gifts or large sums of money to have them pass laws that will benefit their business enterprises. We, as individuals, are corrupt when we pay bribes to government officials for personal benefits.

Having lived for 28 years under a dictatorship government, I was well aware of the abuses of political power in stealing public funds and foreign aid for personal enrichment, and in silencing political rivals and opposition activists. To survive, I was complicit with my silent acceptance of corruption.

Nevertheless, when I started working in Brazil, I was not prepared for the endemic government corruption that had trickled down into the workplace and sprouted roots. This went far beyond the workers’ silent complicity. This was participation in corrupt activities for survival within a corrupt society – a society of glaring socio-economic inequality between the minority super-rich elites and the majority working class. (During the period 1987 to 2003 when I lived in Brazil, the middle class was insignificant in number.)

The sluggish, heavy-weight Brazilian bureaucracy fed corruption. Burocracia brasileira was a bad-word bounced around the workplace like a soccer ball. Bureaucracy forced many entrepreneurs and corporate executives to bribe government employees (a lifetime position) at all levels to do their jobs in processing the myriad documents required for starting up and operating a business, and, for importers and exporters, obtaining an import license or clearing your goods at the port.

Government auditors inspecting your company’s accounts could find discrepancies that required the payment of high fines – errors that could disappear with a bribe of a much smaller sum.

To reduce the heavy burden of countless taxes at all levels of production and commercialization that stifle the growth of small and medium-sized businesses, many business owners resort to maintaining two separate ledgers – Caixa 1 and Caixa 2 – one with the correct values; the other for taxation and auditing.

Impunity of top government officials, corrupt attorneys, and a comatose judicial system make it difficult to curb corruption. Whistleblowers and witnesses can be neutralized or eliminated. Court documents can disappear.

Newly-elected President Dilma Rousseff has taken a courageous suicidal step in trying to scourge corruption from her government. The growing middle class has joined her in public protests for an end to corruption. But the cancerous cells of corruption cannot be destroyed overnight. It is a painful, slow process towards recovery and transparency.

11 September 2001: United in Horror and Grief

11 Sunday Sep 2011

Posted by in United States

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11 September 2001 - Survivors of Attack on WTC NYPhoto Credit: Island Crisis Network

 

Around ten o’clock on 11 September 2001, on another dry, hot day in Cascavel, Ceará, Brazil, I was seated in the Meeting Room of the cut-and-sew factory of the finished cow-leather industrial complex. Chairing the meeting with the manager and division supervisors was our Italian Commercial Director. Our discussions were interrupted when his cell phone rang. This was not unusual. Rising from his seat at the head of the table, he backed us to answer the call.

After pacing the floor while he jabbered in Italian, he turned to face us. In broken Portuguese, he spurted in disbelief: “Two airplanes crash into the World Trade Center in New York.” He looked at the factory manager. “We need to watch the news.”

The meeting came to an abrupt halt while the two men went to the Administrative Building in search of a TV set. While the Brazilian staff expressed concern about relatives and friends living in New York, I thought of Guyanese relatives and friends who had left our native land over the years. Time and distance had frayed the bond between us. Not knowing how to contact them, I could only pray for their safety.

At home later that evening, as I watched the news reports and live footage of the terrorist attacks on the USA, I feared that this would be the beginning of a dreaded Third World War when we would obliterate each other with our nuclear bombs.

Twenty-five Guyanese-Americans and three Brazilian-Americans died in the collapse of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. More than ninety other nations also lost loved ones that day. Horror and grief united Americans with nations across the globe.

Ten years after Americans lost their sense of security in a violent world, let us remember the lessons that we learned that day and in the years that followed:

    • United with compassion and generosity, we can overcome;
    • Others risked and gave their lives to save our loved ones;
    • We can never be safe when hatred consumes us;
    • We are equal in death and grief;
    • Fighting evil with evil generates more evil;
    • Through our loss and grief, we can better appreciate the gifts of love and life.

I leave you with the last verse of the poem “After One Year” by Guyanese poet, Martin Carter (1927-1997):

Rude citizen! Think you I do not know
that love is stammered, hate is shouted out
in every human city in this world?
Men murder men, as men must murder men,
to build their shining governments of the damned.

Time to think outside the banks

04 Sunday Sep 2011

Posted by in Economy and Finance, Guyana, United States, Working Life

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Source: Seer Press, 28 December 2010

My working life began as a bank clerk with an international bank in Georgetown, the capital and chief port of Guyana. The training I received there provided me with the organizational and methodical skills, business practices, and work ethics that served me well throughout my professional life.

Confidentiality and integrity were key traits in handling the financial affairs of our clients. Working daily with large sums of cash required an acute awareness that the money passing through my hands was not mine to covet or to gamble with. Dual-control, daily balancing of accounts, and regular internal and external audits curtailed petty theft and embezzlement.

At eighteen, I observed that money deposited by working people – many of them illiterate rice farmers from the countryside – funded the overdraft facilities and loans for individuals and businesses, large and small. Our loan managers assumed responsibility for minimizing risks by obtaining the necessary collateral.

Working in the Foreign Exchange Department, I was introduced to the bank’s role in international trade. I prepared bank drafts, bills negotiable, international money orders, letters of credit, and other related trade documents.

It became clear to me then that banks played an important role in the economic prosperity of our young independent nation. As a bank clerk, I was proud to contribute towards our country’s development.

In the naivety and innocence of my youth, I was unaware of the growing tentacles of international banks in amassing wealth and influence through indebtedness and investment products.

Today, banks are more complex institutions than they were in my youth. Credit cards and Internet banking are now an integral part of our lives. Banks have changed the way we live, run our businesses, and trade with other nations.

Some of these developments have not been good for us. To our demise, our banks have betrayed our trust by gambling with our savings and retirement funds – ignoring the risks to engorge their paychecks. Their lack of integrity and their covetousness resulted in the 2008 collapse of the American economy as well as nations worldwide.

Believing that our American banks were too big to fail, we put them back on their feet by sacrificing our future and the future of our children and grandchildren. Three years have passed since their crime against humanity, yet the CEOs and other top executives of these American banks remain unpunished; free to amass more wealth; free to create more havoc. They are the new Untouchables.

Holding our banks accountable is not enough. We, the people, must also do our part. We must stop thinking that our credit cards and home equity loans entitle us to all the money held by our banks. We must learn to live within our means. We must learn to set realistic and attainable goals.

The time has come to free ourselves from our addiction to easy money and think outside the banks.