>Though as the explanation in Nickle and Dimed makes pretty clear, the
>services are potentially more exploitative because the clients' money
>is
not going directly to the worker - the service takes a big fat cut, and
>workers get peanuts.
yeah, but when you're the employer hiring a maid you think, "damn, i'm hiring her for good money. I could be like Kelley's boss and pay shit wages to a poor immigrant at five clams an hour." and you get to pat yourself on the back, as many feminists who hire maids do.
and what happens when, as one author in Global Woman acknowledges, you find out you're a pretty shitty employer in the eyes of your Jamaican nanny?
The point is not about which is more exploitative--they're equally so--the point is, which situation is worse for feminist solidarity? Taking the position of employer directly hiring, you end up thinking that you ought to be thanked for your generosity or that you couldn't possibly be thought of as a bad employer because those other guys out there are much worse. You are _bound_ to be in a relationship of antagonism. You can't help it. The march, march, march of capital beats on and you have to try mighty hard not to take on an antagonistic stance toward the uppity domestics who are demanding more and more and more, like high enough wages to pay for their _own domestics_. 'Coz, as a contractor making $20/hr, I'm not clearing $20, I'm clearing more like $12 x 40 hr work week/52 weeks a year.
Taking the position of consumer of services is different. When you find out that you're paying $25/hr and the maid is only making $5.15, who are ya gonna be pissed at? Which position in the social relations of production is going to--march, march, march--encourage you to feel _solidarity_ with the maid, rather than antagonism? What is going to make you angry and pissed off at the real enemy?
Bye all! I just had to post this one before signing off.
Thanks for the moving tips, too!
kelley