Will multinational corporations own us too?

"Will multinational corporations own us too?"

Multinational corporations do own many of us, literally. Brazilian workers (wage-slaves) turned in to slaves, who will be shot if they would dare to leave the mines. If they will work at the mine, they are only allowed to survive on the things the "mine-shop", where things are so expensive they cannot possibly survive on the shitty wage they have. So they have to take up a loan, and when a worker take up a loan, he has essentially no rights, and they will be owned by the corporation for as long as the corporation wish so, or until the slave dies. Many people today are owned by corporations.

 

old news.

 

Not multinationals....though you could argue indirectly.. but these practices are being stamped out.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/14/1047583700980.html


During his visit to the ILO, Mr. Lula da Silva and Mr. Somavia signed a memorandum of understanding pledging cooperation between Brazil and the ILO on establishing a cooperation programme to promote a "decent work" agenda for generating jobs, micro-credit, employment for youth, improving of social security systems, tripartism and social dialogue and combatting child labour and the sexual exploitation of children, forced labour and workplace discrimination.

"These words reflect the humanistic spirit which is the base for national and international mobilization", said Mr. Lula da Silva.

The President was accompanied at the ILO by Celso Amorim, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jacques Wagner, Minister of Labour, Antonio Palocci, Minister of Finance, and Luis Fernando Furlan, Minister of Industry, Development and Foreign Trade.
http://www.ilo.org/public/english/bureau/inf/pr/2003/23.htm


Despite his strong personal mandate and authority within the PT, Mr da Silva will have to work hard to maintain party discipline within the governing coalition. The PT, in power for the first time, traces its origins to trade union struggles against the military regime in the 1970s and early 1980s. The party constitutes a broad political church, embracing individuals whose views range from traditional socialist to more modern social democrat. Mr da Silva himself has undergone a political transformation. Born into a poor family, he worked as a lathe operator before coming to prominence as a radical union leader. Having lost the previous three presidential elections, he moderated his stance, taking the PT to the centre, a policy that paid off in the 2002 election. Part of the modern social democratic wing of the PT, Mr da Silva now espouses a range of pragmatic economic and social policies, and accepts that the market and the private sector have an important role to play in the development of Brazil. These views are not universally accepted within the PT or by some parties in the congressional governing coalition. Consequently, Mr da Silva will have to overcome resistance from his own political supporters to implement his programme of orthodox macroeconomic policy and social reform. At the end of 2003 the government showed its determination to carry through its agenda by expelling from the PT those of its legislators who had voted against the social security reform. Outside Congress, the media, in particular television, play a significant role in forming public opinion. Since the advent of democracy investigative journalism has had a decisive role in politics, notably in the impeachment of Mr Collor in 1992. Elements of the broadcast media have not been well-disposed towards either Mr da Silva or his party in the past, but relations have improved since the election as the president has maintained a prudent policy stance.

[size=-1]Mr da Silva will draw support from another important extra-congressional political constituency, the trade union movement. The main union organisations, the Central Unica dos Trabalhadores and Forca Sindical, have a long history of supporting the PT, and this position is unlikely to change, although the unions are wary about the possibility of the introduction of new labour legislation.

http://www.economist.com/countries/Brazil/profile.cfm?folder=Profile-Political%20Forces
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This cycle is occuring here in the USA as well. For the last 3 decades wages have been stagnate while the cost of living has steadily increased at a higher rate than wages. Incidently the middle class has taken to financing thier standard of living through easy credit. Once in debt upto thier ears, people are forced to stay in crappy jobs they hate both because they need security and because they can not afford to train for better jobs.

 

[size=-1]"In the past three years...shop-happy consumers, cheerfully determined to live beyond their means, leaned a lot more heavily on borrowings ($675 billion of non-mortgage debt) than paychecks ($530 billion) to cover the $1.3 trillion increase in their spending." .Source for charts: Stephanie Pomboy, MacroMavens, via Alan Abelson, Barron's, April 25, 2005; Abelson quoted in http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/ [/size]

http://www.njfac.org/Wage%20report.htm

http://www.bls.gov/

 

US consumers need to curb their spending.