This article making the case for the globalization of labor appeared in Salon and is archived below.
May 1, 2006
The Case For Globalized Labor
It is economically and morally wrong for the world’s poor immigrants to be locked out of work in the richest countries.By Stephan Faris
My house in Nairobi had four large bedrooms and big windows that overlooked the cascading terraces of my garden. I had a nanny for my son, and a maid who cleaned the floors daily. She washed my laundry in a plastic tub. A watchman patrolled the grounds from sunset until dawn, and a daytime gardener tended to a vegetable patch and rows of tropical flowers. I afforded all this on a freelance journalist’s budget, paying each one of my four workers about $110 a month. When I went out for dinner, I often spent more on my main course than on my staff’s combined daily pay.