Taking Note
FR
The Age of Discipline It has been a growing source of concern among many of the defenders of Latin America's neoliberal model that the decade's most touted economic recoveries have done so...
...As the powerfully organized U.S...
...That's the beauty of privatization...
...Neoliberalism has speeded the growth of a global and casual labor force, willing to work hard for low wages in terribly insecure conditions...
...Since security and insecurity cannot exist simultaneously, they tend to undercut one another and hence dominate alternating historical periods...
...Instead, these contradictory needs do battle in the political arena...
...borders so they can boost the lean efficiency of a big public agency, and the profits of a large private airline...
...right continues to point out, an alienated workforce needs the disciplinary whip of hunger to work hard and cheap...
...The Age of Discipline It has been a growing source of concern among many of the defenders of Latin America's neoliberal model that the decade's most touted economic recoveries have done so little for the region's working populations...
...Beyond declining currency values, both countries have seen an unambiguous growth in poverty during their most recent periods of economic growth-although, needless to say, Mexican conditions are a good deal worse...
...It now takes five and a half minimum wages to afford that minimal basket-up from just under two...
...citizens now live below the governmentdefined poverty line, up from just over 10% in 1974...
...Over 15% of U.S...
...Continental, which rents space at Newark from the New York Port authority, was not a target of the investigation, and according to a Port Authority spokesperson, the airport is not legally responsible for the airlines that rent space in its terminals...
...In its heart of hearts, that's what neoliberalismas ideology and structural reformis all about...
...Maldonado's commitment to New York's Puerto Rican community, his creative use of music and art to mobilize the community, and his personal courage will be sorely missed...
...In a lightning sweep, the agency arrested 112 of Lisbon's employees, eventually holding 74...
...And beyond the workplace, as both J. M. Keynes and Henry Ford pointed out over 60 years ago, a low wage bill may do wonders for the profits of an individual firm, but it's not so great for the purchasing power of an entire economy...
...It's Continental's call," said the spokesperson...
...This concern seems somewhat disingenuous since job insecurity is the very basis of the neoliberal model of growth and development...
...n early April a story appeared in the New York Times under the headline, "112 Cleaners Are Arrested At Airport...
...In the long run, it needs to be fit and motivated to be productive...
...Manny Maldonado, founder of Musica Against Drugs [see "Musica Against Drugs," Sept/Oct, 1994], died on February 23 of AIDS...
...Bill Clinton's United States now finds itself with a good deal in common with the Mexico that those two presidents built...
...Insecurity, in the form of labor discipline, is now hard upon us...
...The dispensible Lisbon Cleaners may face fines for knowingly hiring illegal aliens...
...The beauty of privatization" is that no one except a marginal subcontracting firm need feel any responsibility for the status of desperate, insecure immigrant workers from Mexico, El Salvador or Portugal who have been allowed through porous U.S...
...But a capitalist economy cannot be reproduced by insecurity alone...
...Declining real wages and vanishing job security have accompanied modest-tostrong recoveries in Chile, Argentina, Peru and Mexico-as well as the United States...
...Lisbon Cleaners contracts with Continental Airlines to clean planes and hangars at Newark Airport...
...In 1993, 66% of the Mexican population could not afford to purchase a minimally necessary basket of goods for economic survival-up from an already dismal 48% in 1981...
...In Mexico, according to the calculations of economist Julio Boltvinik, poverty has dramatically grown over the past decade...
...Under the class relations of capitalism, too much security undercuts productivity and profitability...
...Real wages in the United States have been shrinking since the mid1970s...
...Economists and policymakers seldom acknowledge this strange simultaneous necessity of security and insecurity...
...But even if that small business is displaced by, say, Cairo Cleaners, Continental and the Port Authority will continue to enjoy the benefits of a low-cost, hard-working, undemanding workforce...
...It seems that the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) had reason to suspect that a small New Jersey-based cleaning service called Lisbon Cleaners had illegal immigrants on its payroll...
...That same workforce needs minimal levels of social security to stick around and do the job tomorrow...
...It is precisely this insecurity-this global labor discipline-that has weakened the region's trade-union movements, and created the conditions for the profitable streamlining of production and trade...
...As a coherent package-with national variations-it made its appearance in the late 1970s and early 1980s in Thatcher's England, Pinochet's Chile, Reagan's United States, and-by the mid-1980s-in the Mexico of President Miguel de la Madrid and his successor, Carlos Salinas de Gortari...
...Neoliberalism calls for privatization, deregulation, cuts in social spending, the replacement of institutional entitlements with a "residual" social policy, free capital flows and free trade...
Vol. 28 • May 1995 • No. 6
