Jim Deivne wrote:
Does anyone on this list know of research indicating that the percentage of
workers employed in the "primary sectors" of good jobs and relative job
security has been shrinking relative to the total?
Writing from Bolivia, Tom Kruse asks the appropriate question: In what country?
I was asking about the US, though of course it would be interesting to hear
if this is happening in other countries. It probably is.
Tom responds:
I'll drum up some figgers in a minute or two -- maybe more like a week,
honestly. I do know this, though, and the forthcoming figures will show it
for Bolivia:
- work in the "primary sector" is getting more precarious both at the level
of the individual's conditions (salary, contracts, etc.) and the ability to
pursue organizing, collective baragining, etc.
- the number of people in the "primary sector" is getting smaller
- the resultant surplus of economically active population is "absobed" in
largest part by the "informal sector"
- "absorbed" in quotes, because though they find "work" there, they often
don't get anything near the kind of employment that puts food on the table
("underemploymetn"), that is, a salary that covers the cost of the
reproduction of the labor force
- meanwhile, the profitability of informal sector enterprises -- those
thousand points of micro-entrepreneurial light -- dives as competition increases
- thus giving lie to the notion that somehow micro-enterprises will save the
world from "poverty", etc.
- and all this in an economy where the wage bill is a very small part of the
costs of production. Productivity in "primary sector" mfgr., according to
the ILO, has increased 6.5%/year since 1990, while remunderation to has
declined 0.9%/year in the same period. And now businesses say labor must be
made more flexible to compete.
Tom
Tom Kruse / Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia
Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
