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Title: Thats Capitalism (WS43) Author: Workers Solidarity Movement Date: 1994 Language: en Topics: capitalism, Workers Solidarity Source: Retrieved on 18th November 2021 from http://struggle.ws/ws94/capitl43.html Notes: Published in Workers Solidarity No. 43 — Autumn 1994.
In 1977 part-time women workers in Britain earned 83% of the full-time
hourly rate for women. By 1992 they earned only 73% of the hourly rate.
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In the Indonesian archipelago only 7% of land has a clear owner. Most is
communally owned and administered by villages and families. That’s no
good for capitalism says the World Bank. they are working with the
Indonesian Government to change things by compiling a register of land
owners. In the next 25 years they hope to register 54 million parcels of
land.
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If you are 17 or under in the U.S.A. you cannot go out at night alter
11pm. (midnight at the weekends). Those are the curfew regulations being
adopted by a growing number of American cities in order to “fight”
crime. So far Baltimore, Santa Monica, Phoenix, Dallas and Atlanta have
adopted the idea. New Orleans and Washington are considering.
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When Mary Robinson went to India last year she hailed the economic
changes there. Speaking on our behalf she praised the move “to
liberalise and globalise its economy” declaring it to be one of the
“most auspicious development of recent years.” The changes she said
would release “the energies and skills of its people”. What these new
economic changes are all about was underlined by India’s budget in
February. The Corporate tax rate was cut from 58% to 44% and the top
individual tax band was also from 45% to 40%. The IMF applauded the
budget.
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A survey of earnings in Los Angles in 1993 showed that the average wage
for an actor was just $12,500. A far cry from money commanded by the
likes of Julia Roberts or Robert DeNiro. But there was an even bigger
difference. The head of Disney, Michael Eisner, earned $203,950,000 in
the same year. That’s 16,316 times the wage of the average actor.
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Costa Rican plantation workers have filed suits in the USA against Shell
Oil, Dow Chemicals, Standard Fruit and the owners of Chiquita brand
bananas on foot of sterility problems encountered by workers picking
bananas sprayed with a pesticide banned in the US in 1979. Over 16,000
workers are affected not just in Costa Rica but also Nicaragua,
Guatemala, Honduras and the Philippines. The workers have proof that the
chemicals in question, marketed as Nemagon or Fumazone, were shipped for
use outside the US after the ban there in 1979. No health hazard
warnings were ever included with the shipments despite the ban in the
US. The workers were never warned of the dangers.
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The Drug Enforcement Agency in the USA netted a ring of cocaine money
launders in Florida earlier this year. Among those arrested were the
vice-president of Merril Lynch in Panama and another senior executive
from the same company.
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Russian bosses are catching on fast. The independent miners union in
Vorkuta, on the Arctic circle, recently highlighted some novel ways of
doing business. The coal being mined by the workers was sold to a local
company, owned by the mine director, for just $3 a tonne. The mine
director sold it abroad for $30 a tonne. All legal and above board.
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The number of empty homes in Britain has risen by 30% in ten years,
reports the Empty Homes Agency, a charity. The number of homeless
families has more than doubled over the same period.
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According to the Roman Catholic development agency, Trocaire, 16,442
Brazilian workers were actually in slavery in 1992.