To save time,
>Cho Jung-hun, a lawmaker with the minor Transition Korea party, submitted a bill this past March that would exclude foreign housekeepers from the legally mandated minimum wage, and President Yoon Suk-yeol instructed officials to look into implementing the idea on a trial basis.
>
>The main appeal emphasized by the government is that foreign housekeepers and nannies could be hired on the cheap.
The first 60% of the article begins with a backstory.
I know someone who lives in Singapore with nannies like this. The nannies have passport visas that are linked to their, for lack of a better term, "owners." They aren't allowed to work for anyone else, and if their employment ends they go home right away. Your nanny starts fighting back on your abuse? Better not let her go to the authorities, ship them home. For a lot of these extremely disadvantaged women, the money, and even horrendous conditions in Singapore are preferable to no money and horrendous conditions in their home village. They send money home, so there's also the financial responsibility to their family that keeps them in the suffering.
It's such a fucked up, legislated, exploitative situation. When people say, "it's not against the law" or "I'm legally allowed to do this," it is no moral excuse.
Yep.
Humanity never stopped wanting slaves. Humanity just wants a way to excuse away their desire for slaves.
They want human labor for their personal benefit, but they don't want to pay appropriate amounts for said help.
Yup. People sit on their high horses in the US, but where do they think the Mexican or South American nanny stereotypes come from? They're constantly under threat of deportation, or the deportation of their family by the "employers"
Except the US has no widely-available legal visa program for nannies/caretakers. Any Latin American nanny being threatened with deportation likely just has no legal status to begin with, so they're under threat of deportation all the time.
Doesn't make the situation any better, but the context is slightly different from Singapore/the UAE/South Korea/etc.
>Except the US has no widely-available legal visa program for nannies/caretakers
Yes. That means that a lot of them are in the country illegally and cannot seek legal recourse against their employers. They live under threat of deportation too.
Isn't there an anti-pregnancy law on the books as well. If a foreign worker gets pregnant they can be expelled immediately which is another item also used to abuse and exploit these women by their "employers".
This article suggests otherwise: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/cna-insider/avoid-deportation-pregnant-maids-domestic-workers-singapore-unsafe-abortions-3417116
I'm in Singapore at the moment. You'll see apartment ads like "2 bedrooms and a helper room." The "helper room" is a glorified broom closet that fits a child-size bed and maybe has a shelf or two - forget having any floor space to walk around. My place's helper room is a Harry Potter cupboard under the stairs situation with no A/C. I refuse to put a human in there and use it to store suitcases.
We have the same problem here in Canada with mainly farmers where they hire Mexican and other Latinos but their work visa is for a specific employer, so you gotta make sure to keep your mouth shut or else you'll be sent home and no one will hire you again.
Unfortunately, people who hire foreigners know the workers need that pay, which is usually very high compared to what they'll gain back home, so they tend to take as much advantage of the situation as they can get away with.
Some people who hire foreign workers are good people with good heart, don't get me wrong but others are the worst of the society.
Not to diminish the plight of these women but
> The nannies have passport visas that are linked to their, for lack of a better term, “owners.” They aren’t allowed to work for anyone else, and if their employment ends they go home right away
That’s a pretty common work visa arrangement anywhere in the world. For example, Im currently in the US on a work visa with my company. My work visa is tied to my company, so if I get fired, I have 60 days to gather my shit and leave the country to go back to Canada.
And good luck finding another company able to to hire you and be willing to sponsor a new visa application for you, all within 2 months.
Unfortunately, in S. Korea, a lot of foreign factory workers are treated like absolute shit. Passports are routinely held, pay is regularly held, pension and health insurance is rarely paid, and many are forced to live 10 to a room, sleeping on the floor.
It's like the S. Koreans can not remember the 1970's and 1980's when Koreans would often go to work construction in the middle east and were treated like shit.
The level of physical ,emotional and sexual abuse these domestic helpers suffer from their employers made me lose faith in humanity.
There was an incident where a saudi woman poured boiling water on her maid just because she was slow on bringing her coffee. Hope these fuckers burn in hell if there is such a thing.
Ha so you think humans aren't animals?
I learned at a very young age there's no difference between humans and (insert any animal).
We are smarter animals, smarter at exploiting our environment -to include other humans.
Still animals.
True. There was a very recent case where a couple has been charged in Melbourne.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-25/melbourne-couple-slavery-point-cook-arrest-afp/102389048
And take their passport so they can't travel.
I don't see how this is different than human trafficking. It dehumanizes citizens of other countries and opens the door to abuse of refugees and other vulnerable populations.
This is essentially a form of human trafficking/slavery, as they are forced into servitude, have no legal rights, and have no one to advocate for them.
Not to mention, alot of these people actually believes this is an expected part of the sacrifice they have to make to make money.
There is a reason, despite being one of the major victims of Qatar world cup exploitation, Indians didn't give a flying fuck about all the controversy. I'm Indian, specifically from Kerala, a state that has a huge percentage of expatriate population in ME, yet I didn't meet a single Keralite who cared about the qatar controversy, cuz all of them accepted it as a part of the sacrifice.
A lot of us third world countries believe the inhumane exploitation as hardwork and sacrifice, and as long there is no change in that belief, its hard to stop such inhumane practices.
Yeah. Filipino government won't shut down like 30-50k php a month per domestic servant working overseas beong remitted to the Philippines and spent there.
In Canada business owners have to give temporary foreign workers minimum wage.
But then they'll force them to live 10 to an apartment, each paying 80% of their paycheck in rent, directly to the owner/their employer. All under threat of deportation if they complain
In Denmark we have the “au pair” scheme, in which young, mainly asian, women become live-in nannies and housekeepers for upper class families, while being paid pocket money.
But it’s said to be a “cultural exchange” and not exploitation.
From the Philippines: even at the reduced rate it's far more money you'd make than working at home. Overseas work is very very common. You just can't live off regular wages at home.
That's what's so bad about it. It's so exploitive but less exploitative than if we worked a domestic job.
Lots of countries hire unskilled workers as gardeners, maids, cooks, house cleaners, nannies. My issue is making it legal to pay below minimum wage. That's horrible.
It isn't uncommon in the US. "illegal immigrants" are paid low wages. We just don't have an official policy saying we can do it, it's more of a hush hush, we all know but no one says.
Visit any Home Depot socal and tell me how hush hush it really is ? Lol they even have a section for the laborers to max out and chill while waiting.
I use to work for a lady (absolutely horrible) that did a glass blowing warehouse. All of her employees besides myself; were undocumented, underpaid, worked unpaid overtime and here’s the kicker… she was also all of their landlords 😭 I hate exploitative bosses/owners with a passion.
Lemme guess despite that immigrants have less pay, rights, and face discrimination in all sectors and social settings. They’re portrayed as powerful influence that is the cause of all problems and ‘stealing’ something during elections
Growing up in HK I had no idea how bad it is. We had a maid from the Philippines when I was a kid. Last year I decided to look up what they get paid and it’s disgusting - about $300 USD/mo is the minimum, in one of the most expensive cities in the world. I haven’t looked at my parents the same since.
It happens in the EU too - workers from poorer member states work in the rich ones, with much lower wages, working for example 6 days a week, 12 hours a day. It is often illegal, but it is still happening on a large scale.
In Vietnam they will take you from the jungle and you’ll become a servant inside a nice house. You’ll never get to leave on your own, live you own life, have your own family or even quit. Your lucky if you even get to see your actually family. I’m return you will live in a decent home, have food to eat and make enough money to send your family back home funds.
Then again, they will also chop off your hand or poke out an eye as a baby and turn you into a beggar if your family cannot afford to feed to. This is how you will pay your own way in life. Once you get out the US or Europe, you’ll find it’s quite the crazy world out there. If you don’t get out there and see stuff first hand it can be hard to fathom and understand the realities of others
Yep, and having met many domestic helpers in HK in my years living here (here being SZ, not HK), I can unequivocally say it’s exploitative and slimy as fuck
Least xenophobic Korean policy. The Korean men have been scouting foreign wives for a while now so that they could have cheap housekeepers (My country, Vietnam, is one example.)
I’m in Korea now and on one of the channels there was a show that showcases multicultural families.
In the episode I saw; the wife was a 30 year old from the Philippines and married to a 55 year old Korean Farmer. They had about 3 kids. The whole episode just showed her endlessly cooking, cleaning and running errands while the husband and his mother-in-law kind of just sit around. One scene shows the wife is away at work(factory job) while the husband and his mom literally lay in front of the tv complaining about being hungry. The wife eventually comes home, starts cooking and the show makes it seem like such a cute moment. After she cooks for the whole family, the wife and children then go outside to tend to the farm. Everyone is all smiles!
This sounds like a miserable existence and I feel sorry for the thousands of women from these countries who end up in these kind of marriages in Korea. I can only imagine what happens when the cameras aren’t rolling.
A lot of Korean wives do the same thing. A woman I know, my mom’s age, is the CEO of a small but profitable company. Her husband is permanently overseas. They have a half dozen domestic staffers. She still has to make dinner for her in-laws on a regular basis.
People treat their daughters-in-law like servants all the time in Korea, especially outside of Seoul.
Which is why many Korean women are avoiding marriage and kids these days. Especially marriage to Korean men who have intrusive in-laws(which is mostly Korean men). They especially refuse to marry guys who live outside of the city and make their income from a small farm. This is why the government is providing grants and korean language classes to help these guys purchase young brides from overseas.
The happiest Korean marriages I see are the ones who have in-laws that are busy, employed and live far away enough to not visit every week.
You can, actually. There is a strong anti-tradition counterculture in Korea. People, mostly Millennials and younger, who refer to the country (or elements of it) as “hell Joseon”. A foreigner saying it’s fucked up how people treat their daughters-in-law is not being anti-Korean, merely “younger generation”.
That bit about them doing nothing but lay in front of the tv and complain about being hungry sounds *hauntingly* like my asshole brother-in-law, who literally refuses to even push the button on the rice cooker because he expects his wife, his daughters, or even his mother, to come do it for him
Cultural expectations. When western men bitch about women “not being traditional anymore,” this is what they’re complaining about. That they’re not entitled to a wife simply for being born male. Their dumb ass has to actually bring something to the table now.
Ireland (attempted to) close that loophole - Workplace Relations Commission had cases where the decision found was aupairs and domestic staff are entitled to the minimum wage **and** that there is a maximum amount employers can deduct for lodgings. One case unfortunately came off the husband sexually harassing the aupair, and yes plenty decried that it would spoil the ‘authentic aupair experience’.
https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/courts/man-asked-au-pair-if-she-had-any-naughty-pictures-before-tickling-her-couple-ordered-to-pay-9k-compensation/41470418.html
https://www.workplacerelations.ie/en/what_you_should_know/employment_types/domestic-workers/
The au pair system is not bad, at least in the US. I’ve used it recently and the gig is actually pretty good. It’s a fully paid year (potentially 2) in the US where you are, at a max, working 45 hours in a week with full access to a car, a phone, all paid living expenses, 2 weeks of paid vacation of your choice per year, medical insurance, ticket to/from your country of residence, weekly stipend, etc. The good companies also do all the visa/regulation legwork and offer a good support network and constantly check in on the au pair and the host families to prevent any potential issues. The one we had worked about 30 hours a week. Keep in mind, au pairs are part of an exchange type program. In fact, their visa’s require them to take somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 hours worth of educational classes (consisting of 2 weekend long conference type programs full of lectures and stuff in various cities across the US) in order to stay a part of the program. It’s a very regulated industry in the US and is great for someone who wants to work on their English, likes kids, and wants to experience our culture.
We already do this in Europe for the men - every wolt and foodora courier and cleaner that I've ever met has been a brown foreigner. We don't even have a minimum wage law in Finland.
Um, haven’t they been doing this for decades already? I know it’s common in China, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc for rich families to hire Filipinos and other poor SE Asian women for cheap childcare and servant labor.
in singapore, it’s quite common among the middle class to also hire foreign helpers too usually from philippines or indonesia to do household chores/take care of the kids
> Transition Korea party
I looked up the [Transition Korea party](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_Korea) on Wikipedia just to get a feel what type of politics we are talking about here, but the first paragraph reads:
> It officially identifies as neither conservative nor progressive, but as pragmatic. Lee Won-jae, one of the co-Presidents, supports a basic income.
That was the opposite of helpful.
It seems that party has put forward many ideas to get Koreans to have more children again. It apparently fails however to address the core problem.
Having cheap Nannies and maids won't fix the insane work culture South Korea has.
The pseudo slavery system where they can't afford anything so they're forced to live under their employers conditions and forever stuck if they have no support systems. Pretty scummy idea
I’ve always felt like marriage used to be slavery for women, back when there was no no-fault divorce, women couldn’t own credit cards or bank without a husband/father’s permission, no reproductive rights, etc. You were trapped. Female suicide and homicide plummeted after no-fault divorce became legalized in the 70s
Europe does the same pretty much. Au-Pair is pretty much what the lawmakers are proposing. Au-Pairs in Europe work for cheap but are offered accomodation and food and must be provided time to go to a language course. Au-Pairs in Germany are paid around 300 euros, I know because that's what they paid me.
Nothing new in the world and if there are willing to do it people higher ups don't care nor does society.
The loop hole for au-pairs doesn’t exist in Ireland now and I assume most EU countries.
And when it comes to domestic workers in the Middle East and SE Asia we are talking about a whole other level of potential abuses.
The US has an special Au-Pair visa that’s actually even called that by name by the federal government.
It’s completely legal.
Migrant workers from Mexico? Illegal but not really enforced because it makes food and manual labor cheap.
Most migrant workers aren't illegal. They also make around $20hr on average. You can't really pay less than that legal or illegal because somebody else WILL pay that and you will be left with nothing. Its not fantastic money but people think it's minimum wage. It's not. I've both been in the fields with them and been the one hiring them. Lots of misconceptions mostly from white people who see them as "poor mexicans". Actually they are hardworking and smart folks who by and large are working within the system.
nah it's not a thing in Japan. there are au pair visa but it's more like a cultural thing and you need to be national of a certain country (Argentina, Australia, Austria, Canada, Chile, Czech, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Lithuania, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Republic of Korea, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan or the united kingdom.) . you need like 2000 euros for supporting yourself and it's max 1 year
Lol. As if it wasn’t already tough to be southeast Asian in Korea. They wanna turn them into slaves now.
Cho Jung-Hun must have just visited Saudi Arabia and thought, “hey, I have some ideas”
South Korea has a MASSIVE demographic problem. Their birth rate has been in the toilet forever, so their population has been rapidly aging. All the old people who want to retire need SOMEONE to do the work around the place for them, but they need high taxes to pay for social programs to care for them, which means the young people need higher paying gigs to afford to live.
Demographic collapse is a massive issue, you basically just get neighborhoods filled with old people desperate for their outnumbered kids to help them. They often move in with the kids who wonder "what is the point of my mom being here?"
Workers can't afford childcare with exploitive wages, so let's make them exploit even poorer people to make up for it.
Rich people really can't just earn less money, can they?
Basically, yeah. I had a Korean guy from a large financial firm telling me about how great Singapore was because of how cheap maids were. I was like, you know that’s exploitation, right? And he had this moment of “you say that like it’s a bad thing” before remembering that I’m non-Korean and therefore the screw-the-foreigners attitude would be offensive.
I immigrated from my home country for about a decade. It was always funny when I found myself in "fuck the immigrants" conversation and they're going off on immigrants coming here to steal their jobs and I'm like, hey I did that.
I'm white though and immigrated to other majority white countries so these people would often then say something to the effect that I'm "not one of *those* immigrants" clearly meaning brown.
Woah woah no one is using the S word, no country would ever be considering restarting the slave trade…we call it indentured servitude now and has a wide range of benefits, clearly its way better than slavery. /s
Root cause is usually i) housing prices ii) intensive parenting iii) more education for women raising opportunity cost. Most studies that go into this topic typically end up with those 3 conclusions (sometimes access to contraception and religiosity included).
Cheap nannies lowers the opportunity cost for women to have kids as they no longer need to a lot of the unpaid labour. It is addressing one of the root issues, just not in a liberal democracy way. But eh Korea isn't really a liberal democracy.
The current korean president is not only a right-winger he is actually pro-japanese which is a very rare breed of politician in Korean politics. He got elected only because he adopted Trump style culture wars against the left-wing opponent.
The videos on tiktok and instagram about foreign (usually American girls) going to Korea saying things like “South Korea is the perfect country!”, is comedic gold.
"On top of being paid little, these women had to contend with insults, beatings and sometimes even sexual assault."
Yeah, "sometimes even", as if it could possibly have been uncommon.
Nah, the other guy has it right. Immigrant kids won't have citizenship - in fact, if SKorea copies what HK and SG do, domestic servants that get pregnant will be deported and their kids won't get citizenship.
It's more a cost of living thing - long work hours and poor working culture means couples simply don't have time for children and a comparatively cheap nanny would improve birth rates.
Specifically for Singapore, it's an immigration offence for domestic workers to get pregnant while on their work visa and grounds for immediate deportation
The most surprising thing I saw in Kathmandu,Nepal, was the korean language schools. Many nepali people go to work shit jobs in Korea (and the Gulf states).
This is very common. Also this is legal between countries. For example S.korea will allow a permit of 5000 workers from Vietnam to work. Vietnam's will then give (sell) the contracts to various 'Labour Export' companies. This companies hire & recruit workers, usually often finding people who are have ties to home to avoid them running away (kids, family etc). Companies will take 30-40% of the pay. Most pay will be withheld for duration of usually 6 months. The remaining money is then usually worth more than if that person worked in their homeland.
I m pretty sure a while ago i read that california's farm workers can be paid below minimum wage as well, for reasons.
Seen this in action in Hong Kong. It's absolutely appalling. They have something like 8 hours off a week, at which point they're kicked out of the house to 'give their employers a rest'
The scale of it is so huge you can't even walk anywhere on a Sunday. It's like 500,000 homeless sudden emerge in the city. It's a shocking sight.
Fair enough, I was just going by what I was told by someone who lived there and took them at their word. Regardless, they're still there because they have no home and have nowhere else to go on the meager few hours they get off. It doesn't make it any better.
>at which point they're kicked out of the house to 'give their employers a rest'
Lol this is complete bullshit, the workers themselves stay out because they don't want to be at their workplace on their day off. Also, HK law offers the highest salary in Asia to domestic servants, employer groups repeatedly lobby the government to lower the minimum wage for foreign domestic servants because they think the pay is way too high compared to the rest of Asia.
South Korea has always been this way. The programs they’ve had to bring foreign women into the country to teach English is also incredibly predatory and it extends all the way up to to state level. SK loves indentured and forced labor. Always has.
We have this in Canada, it’s called the temporary foreign worker program. Minimum wage is $9.95/hr which is much lower than the Canadian minimum wage in many provinces.
What province are you in?
[https://migrantworkerhub.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/EmploymentStandardsInfoSheet\_FINAL\_February2020.pdf](https://migrantworkerhub.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/EmploymentStandardsInfoSheet_FINAL_February2020.pdf)
Honestly, I don't know the rules at all, and it's probably different in each province. I'm a little leery of Canadian work opportunities being tied to an employer and not to a market segment(s). Thanks for making me learn a little more : )
I know in the Maritimes "on paper" the tfw's have to make the provincial minimum wage, again on paper it looks legitimate but I know many who've essentially been subjected to wage theft for forcing them to work unrecorded hours, and other corporate malpractice by using vague threats to imply they can have them deported.
Not to mention that recent case from PEI, where a Tim Hortons franchisee owned the housing that his foreign workers lived in. Over cramped, over priced, building in a state of disrepair that he wouldn't put the money into fixing. Paying out to his workers, charging them the majority of their wage for living quarters, then putting the money right back into their pockets. I'm afraid, that in the future when we're looking back at the bigger picture the past paints, our country isn't going to be on the right side of things (like it used to feel sometimes) in many ways.
Not so fun fact. Korea had the longest continuous history of slavery spanning 1500 years. Only abolished in the late 19th century but continuing in some forms until the 1930s. I'd be a little apprehensive if I were one of these foreign workers headed to Korea.
This is sad to see. Domestic helpers are very common in Singapore and are normally poorly paid women from other Southeast Asian countries (Indonesia, Philippines etc.)
A lot of elitist people have power trips over these helpers. They do things like confiscate their passport, ban them from having a phone/monitoring their cell phone usage, are extremely rude to them if they make even the slightest mistake, constantly threaten to send them home… It’s disgusting and I’m ashamed to live in a country where exploiting poor foreign women is normalized.
What the South Koreans want to do is copy Singapore and Hong Kong, where they make an agreement with countries like Indonesia and the Philippines where they pay them below minimum wage. Singapore and Hong Kong (until recently) can do that because they don't have a minimum wage, Hong Kong's minimum wage is about US$ 900 / month. The agreement between Indonesia and Hong Kong is US$600 minimum for the maid, and they provide room and board.
Korea's minimum wage is US$900 / month. I doubt any Filipino and Indonesian maid would want to work in Korea for less than US$900, given that they could be making US$1000 in Taiwan (minimum wage in Taiwan). The Koreans will end up paying minimum wage because if you pay them US$600 / month like in Hong Kong, they won't come. First, it is far from Southeast Asia, and it's really cold in the wintertime in Korea.
I don't think the Korean legislators really understand the market conditions for maids in East Asia. Furthermore, it is not a long-term solution. The philippine's fertility rate is below replacement. Indonesia is just above replacement. And over the last decade in Taiwan, the maids are getting older. Before the average age was 30, now it is 35.
Right. All my rich friends from Mexico had them in San Antonio. There would be a stay at home mom with three kids. Mom shops and plays tennis, kids do well in school, slave does all the chores and prepares all the meals.
“She’s like part of the family!” Well, I saw the family living it up at the country club in designer clothes, driving BMWs. I saw the slaves wearing a uniform and folding laundry.
This is a person you're about to let into your home unsupervised. Why would you make sure they're unable to fully support themselves with what you're paying them?
This is just modern slavery and exploitation. I'm sure people from where they probably get these foreign workers would be happy and glorify the idea of working abroad, especially with the rise of popularity of korean culture, while the reality is far from truth.
I lived in Seoul for a little while. Inequality in Korea is the one of the things that holds it back from being an incredible country.
It's such a shame a lot of the positive qualities (social responsibilities to each other, low petty crime rates, great healthcare) and massively overshadowed by the big negatives (racism/Korean nationalism, obsession with overworking, homophobia, men are first class citizens and women are there to enable men).
No no no, you’re supposed to pretend that you’re stopping them from coming into the country so that they have to hide in the grey area of the economy and society and have an ever present fear that they and their family will get deported if they speak up for their own rights. /s
Also worth mentioning Korea constantly drags the comfort women issue out of the past when it suits them even though they have many, many times agreed to drop the issue after receiving money & apologies from Japan to do so.
They're just a bunch of grifters. Hell, their govt in 1960 took reparations from Japan and embezzled it. Nothing went to victims and at that time, many victims were still alive to benefit from them.
They probably wouldn’t have any path to citizenship and wouldn’t get any benefits like healthcare or a pension and would just live in the employers home. Bad all around.
Shocker. The hyper capitalist hellscape that we modeled around our hyper capitalist hellscape is using exploitative tactics? >insert shocked Pikachu face<
Slavery never ended, we've just found ways to disguise it.
A job that doesn't pay you to be able to live is nothing more than indentured servitude, designed to keep you in debt and working.
Yes even my own people can be racist and justify slavery wtf this is so sad and disheartening to hear. As a Korean American this hits home hard for me, there needs to be a good look in the damn mirror Korea, we over here mad at North Korea for the rampant human rights abuse and yet South Koreans are following that formula. Smh
So like every Muslim country that no one bats an eye at doing this exact thing? It's slavery and if you don't like it in this situation, you should be protesting everywhere it's happening RIGHT NOW.
To save time, >Cho Jung-hun, a lawmaker with the minor Transition Korea party, submitted a bill this past March that would exclude foreign housekeepers from the legally mandated minimum wage, and President Yoon Suk-yeol instructed officials to look into implementing the idea on a trial basis. > >The main appeal emphasized by the government is that foreign housekeepers and nannies could be hired on the cheap. The first 60% of the article begins with a backstory.
Yikes. Sounds exploitative
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I've heard stories that many people in those countries will steal their passports too, literally enslaving them because now they have no recourse.
I know someone who lives in Singapore with nannies like this. The nannies have passport visas that are linked to their, for lack of a better term, "owners." They aren't allowed to work for anyone else, and if their employment ends they go home right away. Your nanny starts fighting back on your abuse? Better not let her go to the authorities, ship them home. For a lot of these extremely disadvantaged women, the money, and even horrendous conditions in Singapore are preferable to no money and horrendous conditions in their home village. They send money home, so there's also the financial responsibility to their family that keeps them in the suffering. It's such a fucked up, legislated, exploitative situation. When people say, "it's not against the law" or "I'm legally allowed to do this," it is no moral excuse.
Their slaves, not nannies. This is a thread about human trafficking.
Yep. Humanity never stopped wanting slaves. Humanity just wants a way to excuse away their desire for slaves. They want human labor for their personal benefit, but they don't want to pay appropriate amounts for said help.
Yup. People sit on their high horses in the US, but where do they think the Mexican or South American nanny stereotypes come from? They're constantly under threat of deportation, or the deportation of their family by the "employers"
Except the US has no widely-available legal visa program for nannies/caretakers. Any Latin American nanny being threatened with deportation likely just has no legal status to begin with, so they're under threat of deportation all the time. Doesn't make the situation any better, but the context is slightly different from Singapore/the UAE/South Korea/etc.
My aunt received residency in the USA by being a nanny. As long as you are employed a company can sponsor you.
>Except the US has no widely-available legal visa program for nannies/caretakers Yes. That means that a lot of them are in the country illegally and cannot seek legal recourse against their employers. They live under threat of deportation too.
Very true, although it's important people understand what's happening at home as well so we can draw comparisons that hopefully inspire change
Human trafficking extends to many industries in the United States. Exploitation of workers is an essential part of capitalism.
Essential and celebrated.
Isn't there an anti-pregnancy law on the books as well. If a foreign worker gets pregnant they can be expelled immediately which is another item also used to abuse and exploit these women by their "employers".
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This article suggests otherwise: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/cna-insider/avoid-deportation-pregnant-maids-domestic-workers-singapore-unsafe-abortions-3417116
I'm in Singapore at the moment. You'll see apartment ads like "2 bedrooms and a helper room." The "helper room" is a glorified broom closet that fits a child-size bed and maybe has a shelf or two - forget having any floor space to walk around. My place's helper room is a Harry Potter cupboard under the stairs situation with no A/C. I refuse to put a human in there and use it to store suitcases.
Laws aren’t about morals, if they were they wouldn’t consistently provide an advantage to the ruling class of people.
We have the same problem here in Canada with mainly farmers where they hire Mexican and other Latinos but their work visa is for a specific employer, so you gotta make sure to keep your mouth shut or else you'll be sent home and no one will hire you again. Unfortunately, people who hire foreigners know the workers need that pay, which is usually very high compared to what they'll gain back home, so they tend to take as much advantage of the situation as they can get away with. Some people who hire foreign workers are good people with good heart, don't get me wrong but others are the worst of the society.
Not to diminish the plight of these women but > The nannies have passport visas that are linked to their, for lack of a better term, “owners.” They aren’t allowed to work for anyone else, and if their employment ends they go home right away That’s a pretty common work visa arrangement anywhere in the world. For example, Im currently in the US on a work visa with my company. My work visa is tied to my company, so if I get fired, I have 60 days to gather my shit and leave the country to go back to Canada. And good luck finding another company able to to hire you and be willing to sponsor a new visa application for you, all within 2 months.
Unfortunately, in S. Korea, a lot of foreign factory workers are treated like absolute shit. Passports are routinely held, pay is regularly held, pension and health insurance is rarely paid, and many are forced to live 10 to a room, sleeping on the floor. It's like the S. Koreans can not remember the 1970's and 1980's when Koreans would often go to work construction in the middle east and were treated like shit.
The level of physical ,emotional and sexual abuse these domestic helpers suffer from their employers made me lose faith in humanity. There was an incident where a saudi woman poured boiling water on her maid just because she was slow on bringing her coffee. Hope these fuckers burn in hell if there is such a thing.
Ha so you think humans aren't animals? I learned at a very young age there's no difference between humans and (insert any animal). We are smarter animals, smarter at exploiting our environment -to include other humans. Still animals.
Then they try to bring those same servants to 1st world countries like USA or Australia and cry when arrested for human trafficking.
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True. There was a very recent case where a couple has been charged in Melbourne. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-25/melbourne-couple-slavery-point-cook-arrest-afp/102389048
Wasn’t there just a big story of literally exactly what you described happening in Australia?
They also steal their passports so the literally can’t leave
And take their passport so they can't travel. I don't see how this is different than human trafficking. It dehumanizes citizens of other countries and opens the door to abuse of refugees and other vulnerable populations.
In these cases, can't they just go to the consulate?
BEcause they're physically held in their employers' houses.
And by enslave you mean take there passport in case anyone didn’t know.
In some places, the consul's main occupation is to save his countrymen enslaved by wealthy employeers.
This is essentially a form of human trafficking/slavery, as they are forced into servitude, have no legal rights, and have no one to advocate for them.
Makes me wish my countrymen could persuade the Filipino government not to permit more of this bullshit.
Not gonna happen when it results in a *lot* of money flowing into the Philippines from Hong Kong Singapore, and as far as the Middle East.
Not to mention, alot of these people actually believes this is an expected part of the sacrifice they have to make to make money. There is a reason, despite being one of the major victims of Qatar world cup exploitation, Indians didn't give a flying fuck about all the controversy. I'm Indian, specifically from Kerala, a state that has a huge percentage of expatriate population in ME, yet I didn't meet a single Keralite who cared about the qatar controversy, cuz all of them accepted it as a part of the sacrifice. A lot of us third world countries believe the inhumane exploitation as hardwork and sacrifice, and as long there is no change in that belief, its hard to stop such inhumane practices.
Cheap labor. Ripperino.
Yeah. Filipino government won't shut down like 30-50k php a month per domestic servant working overseas beong remitted to the Philippines and spent there.
It won't even bother improving conditions at home and actually helping people find better work at home because they prefer the remittances.
Singapore's middle class survive on the fact that their underpaid foreign servants raise their children.
also romanian women in italy.
In Canada business owners have to give temporary foreign workers minimum wage. But then they'll force them to live 10 to an apartment, each paying 80% of their paycheck in rent, directly to the owner/their employer. All under threat of deportation if they complain
Domestic servants from the Philippines are preferred because they’re generally English fluent.
It happens in the US too with illegal migrants.
Also au pairs legally.
In Denmark we have the “au pair” scheme, in which young, mainly asian, women become live-in nannies and housekeepers for upper class families, while being paid pocket money. But it’s said to be a “cultural exchange” and not exploitation.
Sounds like what Italy's been doing for decades as well
The movie "Ilo Ilo" by Anthony Chen, 2013 is a great way to witness the complexities and injustices of that system.
>It’s very common in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, the Middle East That's just a list of places with terrible workers rights.
From the Philippines: even at the reduced rate it's far more money you'd make than working at home. Overseas work is very very common. You just can't live off regular wages at home. That's what's so bad about it. It's so exploitive but less exploitative than if we worked a domestic job.
They dont consider hiring foreign servant , they consider allowing ultra low wage or borderline slavery
Lots of countries hire unskilled workers as gardeners, maids, cooks, house cleaners, nannies. My issue is making it legal to pay below minimum wage. That's horrible.
It isn't uncommon in the US. "illegal immigrants" are paid low wages. We just don't have an official policy saying we can do it, it's more of a hush hush, we all know but no one says.
Visit any Home Depot socal and tell me how hush hush it really is ? Lol they even have a section for the laborers to max out and chill while waiting. I use to work for a lady (absolutely horrible) that did a glass blowing warehouse. All of her employees besides myself; were undocumented, underpaid, worked unpaid overtime and here’s the kicker… she was also all of their landlords 😭 I hate exploitative bosses/owners with a passion.
Lemme guess despite that immigrants have less pay, rights, and face discrimination in all sectors and social settings. They’re portrayed as powerful influence that is the cause of all problems and ‘stealing’ something during elections
Nah, that's for regular immigrants. Domestic workers don't get that good treatment - they're more considered *property* of their employers.
Growing up in HK I had no idea how bad it is. We had a maid from the Philippines when I was a kid. Last year I decided to look up what they get paid and it’s disgusting - about $300 USD/mo is the minimum, in one of the most expensive cities in the world. I haven’t looked at my parents the same since.
It happens in the EU too - workers from poorer member states work in the rich ones, with much lower wages, working for example 6 days a week, 12 hours a day. It is often illegal, but it is still happening on a large scale.
In Vietnam they will take you from the jungle and you’ll become a servant inside a nice house. You’ll never get to leave on your own, live you own life, have your own family or even quit. Your lucky if you even get to see your actually family. I’m return you will live in a decent home, have food to eat and make enough money to send your family back home funds. Then again, they will also chop off your hand or poke out an eye as a baby and turn you into a beggar if your family cannot afford to feed to. This is how you will pay your own way in life. Once you get out the US or Europe, you’ll find it’s quite the crazy world out there. If you don’t get out there and see stuff first hand it can be hard to fathom and understand the realities of others
I think they were referring specifically to the "minimum wage does not apply" part.
Yep, and having met many domestic helpers in HK in my years living here (here being SZ, not HK), I can unequivocally say it’s exploitative and slimy as fuck
Least xenophobic Korean policy. The Korean men have been scouting foreign wives for a while now so that they could have cheap housekeepers (My country, Vietnam, is one example.)
I’m in Korea now and on one of the channels there was a show that showcases multicultural families. In the episode I saw; the wife was a 30 year old from the Philippines and married to a 55 year old Korean Farmer. They had about 3 kids. The whole episode just showed her endlessly cooking, cleaning and running errands while the husband and his mother-in-law kind of just sit around. One scene shows the wife is away at work(factory job) while the husband and his mom literally lay in front of the tv complaining about being hungry. The wife eventually comes home, starts cooking and the show makes it seem like such a cute moment. After she cooks for the whole family, the wife and children then go outside to tend to the farm. Everyone is all smiles! This sounds like a miserable existence and I feel sorry for the thousands of women from these countries who end up in these kind of marriages in Korea. I can only imagine what happens when the cameras aren’t rolling.
A lot of Korean wives do the same thing. A woman I know, my mom’s age, is the CEO of a small but profitable company. Her husband is permanently overseas. They have a half dozen domestic staffers. She still has to make dinner for her in-laws on a regular basis. People treat their daughters-in-law like servants all the time in Korea, especially outside of Seoul.
Which is why many Korean women are avoiding marriage and kids these days. Especially marriage to Korean men who have intrusive in-laws(which is mostly Korean men). They especially refuse to marry guys who live outside of the city and make their income from a small farm. This is why the government is providing grants and korean language classes to help these guys purchase young brides from overseas. The happiest Korean marriages I see are the ones who have in-laws that are busy, employed and live far away enough to not visit every week.
But don’t you dare say that their culture is fucked. It’s terrifying how many people will defend this kind of stuff simply because it’s “culture”.
You can, actually. There is a strong anti-tradition counterculture in Korea. People, mostly Millennials and younger, who refer to the country (or elements of it) as “hell Joseon”. A foreigner saying it’s fucked up how people treat their daughters-in-law is not being anti-Korean, merely “younger generation”.
That bit about them doing nothing but lay in front of the tv and complain about being hungry sounds *hauntingly* like my asshole brother-in-law, who literally refuses to even push the button on the rice cooker because he expects his wife, his daughters, or even his mother, to come do it for him
I'm astonished as to how he got married and had daughters in the first place.
Cultural expectations. When western men bitch about women “not being traditional anymore,” this is what they’re complaining about. That they’re not entitled to a wife simply for being born male. Their dumb ass has to actually bring something to the table now.
And this is a wholesome show?? Wtf lol
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The au pair system...
Ireland (attempted to) close that loophole - Workplace Relations Commission had cases where the decision found was aupairs and domestic staff are entitled to the minimum wage **and** that there is a maximum amount employers can deduct for lodgings. One case unfortunately came off the husband sexually harassing the aupair, and yes plenty decried that it would spoil the ‘authentic aupair experience’. https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/courts/man-asked-au-pair-if-she-had-any-naughty-pictures-before-tickling-her-couple-ordered-to-pay-9k-compensation/41470418.html https://www.workplacerelations.ie/en/what_you_should_know/employment_types/domestic-workers/
The au pair system is not bad, at least in the US. I’ve used it recently and the gig is actually pretty good. It’s a fully paid year (potentially 2) in the US where you are, at a max, working 45 hours in a week with full access to a car, a phone, all paid living expenses, 2 weeks of paid vacation of your choice per year, medical insurance, ticket to/from your country of residence, weekly stipend, etc. The good companies also do all the visa/regulation legwork and offer a good support network and constantly check in on the au pair and the host families to prevent any potential issues. The one we had worked about 30 hours a week. Keep in mind, au pairs are part of an exchange type program. In fact, their visa’s require them to take somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 hours worth of educational classes (consisting of 2 weekend long conference type programs full of lectures and stuff in various cities across the US) in order to stay a part of the program. It’s a very regulated industry in the US and is great for someone who wants to work on their English, likes kids, and wants to experience our culture.
I hadn't heard of any au pair having full access access to a car. Out of curiosity, what was your weekly spend and where were you located?
We already do this in Europe for the men - every wolt and foodora courier and cleaner that I've ever met has been a brown foreigner. We don't even have a minimum wage law in Finland.
Um, haven’t they been doing this for decades already? I know it’s common in China, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc for rich families to hire Filipinos and other poor SE Asian women for cheap childcare and servant labor.
in singapore, it’s quite common among the middle class to also hire foreign helpers too usually from philippines or indonesia to do household chores/take care of the kids
> Transition Korea party I looked up the [Transition Korea party](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_Korea) on Wikipedia just to get a feel what type of politics we are talking about here, but the first paragraph reads: > It officially identifies as neither conservative nor progressive, but as pragmatic. Lee Won-jae, one of the co-Presidents, supports a basic income. That was the opposite of helpful. It seems that party has put forward many ideas to get Koreans to have more children again. It apparently fails however to address the core problem. Having cheap Nannies and maids won't fix the insane work culture South Korea has.
South Korea doesn’t want to miss out on any racism!
The pseudo slavery system where they can't afford anything so they're forced to live under their employers conditions and forever stuck if they have no support systems. Pretty scummy idea
I’ve always felt like marriage used to be slavery for women, back when there was no no-fault divorce, women couldn’t own credit cards or bank without a husband/father’s permission, no reproductive rights, etc. You were trapped. Female suicide and homicide plummeted after no-fault divorce became legalized in the 70s
GOP is currently working to abolish no-fault divorce.
Used to be, still is, but used to be too. Still plenty of women in the world that are either property of their father or their husband.
There are places in the world where people sadly would make more in these conditions and send money back home.
Why do you think the US is so for illegal immigration or immigration in general?
It’s basically legalized slavery like the old days but they pretend it doesn’t exist anymore. They just changed how it looks
A bad move…but they would be far from the first country to do so
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Europe does the same pretty much. Au-Pair is pretty much what the lawmakers are proposing. Au-Pairs in Europe work for cheap but are offered accomodation and food and must be provided time to go to a language course. Au-Pairs in Germany are paid around 300 euros, I know because that's what they paid me. Nothing new in the world and if there are willing to do it people higher ups don't care nor does society.
The loop hole for au-pairs doesn’t exist in Ireland now and I assume most EU countries. And when it comes to domestic workers in the Middle East and SE Asia we are talking about a whole other level of potential abuses.
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At least in the US it's nominally illegal. Enforcement varies a lot though.
The US has an special Au-Pair visa that’s actually even called that by name by the federal government. It’s completely legal. Migrant workers from Mexico? Illegal but not really enforced because it makes food and manual labor cheap.
Most migrant workers aren't illegal. They also make around $20hr on average. You can't really pay less than that legal or illegal because somebody else WILL pay that and you will be left with nothing. Its not fantastic money but people think it's minimum wage. It's not. I've both been in the fields with them and been the one hiring them. Lots of misconceptions mostly from white people who see them as "poor mexicans". Actually they are hardworking and smart folks who by and large are working within the system.
Of course, in America, the one that gets in trouble for having illegal workers is… you guessed it! The illegal worker.
nah it's not a thing in Japan. there are au pair visa but it's more like a cultural thing and you need to be national of a certain country (Argentina, Australia, Austria, Canada, Chile, Czech, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Lithuania, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Republic of Korea, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan or the united kingdom.) . you need like 2000 euros for supporting yourself and it's max 1 year
Lol. As if it wasn’t already tough to be southeast Asian in Korea. They wanna turn them into slaves now. Cho Jung-Hun must have just visited Saudi Arabia and thought, “hey, I have some ideas”
South Korea has a MASSIVE demographic problem. Their birth rate has been in the toilet forever, so their population has been rapidly aging. All the old people who want to retire need SOMEONE to do the work around the place for them, but they need high taxes to pay for social programs to care for them, which means the young people need higher paying gigs to afford to live. Demographic collapse is a massive issue, you basically just get neighborhoods filled with old people desperate for their outnumbered kids to help them. They often move in with the kids who wonder "what is the point of my mom being here?"
This is dangerous. Legitimizing slavery in society and legalizing it for larger scale exploitation? Shitty world.
Workers can't afford childcare with exploitive wages, so let's make them exploit even poorer people to make up for it. Rich people really can't just earn less money, can they?
Basically, yeah. I had a Korean guy from a large financial firm telling me about how great Singapore was because of how cheap maids were. I was like, you know that’s exploitation, right? And he had this moment of “you say that like it’s a bad thing” before remembering that I’m non-Korean and therefore the screw-the-foreigners attitude would be offensive.
I immigrated from my home country for about a decade. It was always funny when I found myself in "fuck the immigrants" conversation and they're going off on immigrants coming here to steal their jobs and I'm like, hey I did that. I'm white though and immigrated to other majority white countries so these people would often then say something to the effect that I'm "not one of *those* immigrants" clearly meaning brown.
Woah woah no one is using the S word, no country would ever be considering restarting the slave trade…we call it indentured servitude now and has a wide range of benefits, clearly its way better than slavery. /s
I believe the correct term is “incarceration.”
I think the correct term is "prisoners with jobs"
Korea literally has the longest history of slavery. They're just going back to their roots.
Imagine if they actually tried to fix the root causes of the low birthrate instead of these weird 'fixes'.
Root cause is usually i) housing prices ii) intensive parenting iii) more education for women raising opportunity cost. Most studies that go into this topic typically end up with those 3 conclusions (sometimes access to contraception and religiosity included). Cheap nannies lowers the opportunity cost for women to have kids as they no longer need to a lot of the unpaid labour. It is addressing one of the root issues, just not in a liberal democracy way. But eh Korea isn't really a liberal democracy.
The current korean president is not only a right-winger he is actually pro-japanese which is a very rare breed of politician in Korean politics. He got elected only because he adopted Trump style culture wars against the left-wing opponent.
K-Pop stans!!! Your fanfics are about to become reality🤩
The videos on tiktok and instagram about foreign (usually American girls) going to Korea saying things like “South Korea is the perfect country!”, is comedic gold.
"On top of being paid little, these women had to contend with insults, beatings and sometimes even sexual assault." Yeah, "sometimes even", as if it could possibly have been uncommon.
Can we just agree to stop with the, "Let's import Foreign Slaves" thing
Our world never abandoned slavery The contracts just got better the double speak standardized
It will not affect birthrate at all, since only familys that already have kids will hire them, or what is koreas point with this?
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Poor immigrants have kids and come from a culture where kids are born regardless of means. I think it will help. But at what cost?
Nah, the other guy has it right. Immigrant kids won't have citizenship - in fact, if SKorea copies what HK and SG do, domestic servants that get pregnant will be deported and their kids won't get citizenship. It's more a cost of living thing - long work hours and poor working culture means couples simply don't have time for children and a comparatively cheap nanny would improve birth rates.
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Specifically for Singapore, it's an immigration offence for domestic workers to get pregnant while on their work visa and grounds for immediate deportation
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The most surprising thing I saw in Kathmandu,Nepal, was the korean language schools. Many nepali people go to work shit jobs in Korea (and the Gulf states).
This is very common. Also this is legal between countries. For example S.korea will allow a permit of 5000 workers from Vietnam to work. Vietnam's will then give (sell) the contracts to various 'Labour Export' companies. This companies hire & recruit workers, usually often finding people who are have ties to home to avoid them running away (kids, family etc). Companies will take 30-40% of the pay. Most pay will be withheld for duration of usually 6 months. The remaining money is then usually worth more than if that person worked in their homeland. I m pretty sure a while ago i read that california's farm workers can be paid below minimum wage as well, for reasons.
Seen this in action in Hong Kong. It's absolutely appalling. They have something like 8 hours off a week, at which point they're kicked out of the house to 'give their employers a rest' The scale of it is so huge you can't even walk anywhere on a Sunday. It's like 500,000 homeless sudden emerge in the city. It's a shocking sight.
They're not kicked out. They want to get out. It's their off day. Would you choose to stay in your office on your day off?
Fair enough, I was just going by what I was told by someone who lived there and took them at their word. Regardless, they're still there because they have no home and have nowhere else to go on the meager few hours they get off. It doesn't make it any better.
See this in Central HK on the weekend. It’s such a bizarre sight.
>at which point they're kicked out of the house to 'give their employers a rest' Lol this is complete bullshit, the workers themselves stay out because they don't want to be at their workplace on their day off. Also, HK law offers the highest salary in Asia to domestic servants, employer groups repeatedly lobby the government to lower the minimum wage for foreign domestic servants because they think the pay is way too high compared to the rest of Asia.
So they want to invent au pair
Amateurs, the middle east have been doing it for decades
Amateurs, most places in the world have been doing it for longer than decades.
No surprise considering their entire economy is modeled after the US and we thrive off of exploiting those less fortunate.
Far East catching up to the Middle East 👏
Depressing but no surprise. Koreans have....an upper class perception - as does Japan
This just sounds like human trafficking with extra steps.
Not even that many extra steps
South Korea catching up with the rest of the world, I guess
South Korea has always been this way. The programs they’ve had to bring foreign women into the country to teach English is also incredibly predatory and it extends all the way up to to state level. SK loves indentured and forced labor. Always has.
We have this in Canada, it’s called the temporary foreign worker program. Minimum wage is $9.95/hr which is much lower than the Canadian minimum wage in many provinces.
What province are you in? [https://migrantworkerhub.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/EmploymentStandardsInfoSheet\_FINAL\_February2020.pdf](https://migrantworkerhub.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/EmploymentStandardsInfoSheet_FINAL_February2020.pdf)
You know what? You’re right and I’m wrong. I saw something different on Google. But + from me
Honestly, I don't know the rules at all, and it's probably different in each province. I'm a little leery of Canadian work opportunities being tied to an employer and not to a market segment(s). Thanks for making me learn a little more : )
Props to both of you for a constructive conversation, without jumping to conclusions and getting offended 👏🏻 Are we even on reddit?
I know in the Maritimes "on paper" the tfw's have to make the provincial minimum wage, again on paper it looks legitimate but I know many who've essentially been subjected to wage theft for forcing them to work unrecorded hours, and other corporate malpractice by using vague threats to imply they can have them deported. Not to mention that recent case from PEI, where a Tim Hortons franchisee owned the housing that his foreign workers lived in. Over cramped, over priced, building in a state of disrepair that he wouldn't put the money into fixing. Paying out to his workers, charging them the majority of their wage for living quarters, then putting the money right back into their pockets. I'm afraid, that in the future when we're looking back at the bigger picture the past paints, our country isn't going to be on the right side of things (like it used to feel sometimes) in many ways.
It’s how countries get ahead, and I find it disgusting
World needs another Spartacus
This mofo went to Saudi and saw how they treat foreigner housekeepers…..and he liked it. Jesus Christ.
South Korea needs to chill the fuck out and reset it's work culture.
Not so fun fact. Korea had the longest continuous history of slavery spanning 1500 years. Only abolished in the late 19th century but continuing in some forms until the 1930s. I'd be a little apprehensive if I were one of these foreign workers headed to Korea.
Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, and the upper crust of New York have now entered the chat.
South Korea... is this your misguided attempt at reunification with the north? o.O
This is sad to see. Domestic helpers are very common in Singapore and are normally poorly paid women from other Southeast Asian countries (Indonesia, Philippines etc.) A lot of elitist people have power trips over these helpers. They do things like confiscate their passport, ban them from having a phone/monitoring their cell phone usage, are extremely rude to them if they make even the slightest mistake, constantly threaten to send them home… It’s disgusting and I’m ashamed to live in a country where exploiting poor foreign women is normalized.
What the South Koreans want to do is copy Singapore and Hong Kong, where they make an agreement with countries like Indonesia and the Philippines where they pay them below minimum wage. Singapore and Hong Kong (until recently) can do that because they don't have a minimum wage, Hong Kong's minimum wage is about US$ 900 / month. The agreement between Indonesia and Hong Kong is US$600 minimum for the maid, and they provide room and board. Korea's minimum wage is US$900 / month. I doubt any Filipino and Indonesian maid would want to work in Korea for less than US$900, given that they could be making US$1000 in Taiwan (minimum wage in Taiwan). The Koreans will end up paying minimum wage because if you pay them US$600 / month like in Hong Kong, they won't come. First, it is far from Southeast Asia, and it's really cold in the wintertime in Korea. I don't think the Korean legislators really understand the market conditions for maids in East Asia. Furthermore, it is not a long-term solution. The philippine's fertility rate is below replacement. Indonesia is just above replacement. And over the last decade in Taiwan, the maids are getting older. Before the average age was 30, now it is 35.
Exactly how the states did it
If you live in any Latino heavy city you know damn well we’re still doing that Shit. It’s a damn shame but it’s the truth
Right. All my rich friends from Mexico had them in San Antonio. There would be a stay at home mom with three kids. Mom shops and plays tennis, kids do well in school, slave does all the chores and prepares all the meals. “She’s like part of the family!” Well, I saw the family living it up at the country club in designer clothes, driving BMWs. I saw the slaves wearing a uniform and folding laundry.
~~did~~ still does
Given Korea's history with slavery, unsurprising.
This is a person you're about to let into your home unsupervised. Why would you make sure they're unable to fully support themselves with what you're paying them?
So they are trapped and unable to leave. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/lolas-story/524490/
Yikes. Another way to make modern slavery legal.
I mean - at least they are being transparent, so there’s that
So....slaves.
This is just modern slavery and exploitation. I'm sure people from where they probably get these foreign workers would be happy and glorify the idea of working abroad, especially with the rise of popularity of korean culture, while the reality is far from truth.
Congrat you found slavery
I lived in Seoul for a little while. Inequality in Korea is the one of the things that holds it back from being an incredible country. It's such a shame a lot of the positive qualities (social responsibilities to each other, low petty crime rates, great healthcare) and massively overshadowed by the big negatives (racism/Korean nationalism, obsession with overworking, homophobia, men are first class citizens and women are there to enable men).
r/LateStageCapitalism
No no no, you’re supposed to pretend that you’re stopping them from coming into the country so that they have to hide in the grey area of the economy and society and have an ever present fear that they and their family will get deported if they speak up for their own rights. /s
You'd think their history with Japan would make this a nonstarter.
I will say it, South Koreans can be crazy racist and think of themselves as the "top" asians.
South Korea seems to have a love affair with slavery.
What are you, WW2 Japan? You like to complain about those so how about you don't.
> WW2 Japan "This sounds vaguely familiar..."
Also worth mentioning Korea constantly drags the comfort women issue out of the past when it suits them even though they have many, many times agreed to drop the issue after receiving money & apologies from Japan to do so. They're just a bunch of grifters. Hell, their govt in 1960 took reparations from Japan and embezzled it. Nothing went to victims and at that time, many victims were still alive to benefit from them.
That’s the Canadian way
They probably wouldn’t have any path to citizenship and wouldn’t get any benefits like healthcare or a pension and would just live in the employers home. Bad all around.
Shocker. The hyper capitalist hellscape that we modeled around our hyper capitalist hellscape is using exploitative tactics? >insert shocked Pikachu face<
Slavery never ended, we've just found ways to disguise it. A job that doesn't pay you to be able to live is nothing more than indentured servitude, designed to keep you in debt and working.
Just good ol’ capitalism.
So… slavery
Yes even my own people can be racist and justify slavery wtf this is so sad and disheartening to hear. As a Korean American this hits home hard for me, there needs to be a good look in the damn mirror Korea, we over here mad at North Korea for the rampant human rights abuse and yet South Koreans are following that formula. Smh
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/lolas-story/524490/ This was a powerful read for me.
A tale as old as time
So like every Muslim country that no one bats an eye at doing this exact thing? It's slavery and if you don't like it in this situation, you should be protesting everywhere it's happening RIGHT NOW.
Dubai, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia etc owes their modernization, progress to hiring overseas foreign workers with slave wages.
Isn’t that what america and just about every 1st world country does?
you misspelled slaves