[lbo-talk] Long Commutes, Long Work Hours

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

The New York Times reports that "[m]ore than 18,000 household workers 
-- nannies, cleaners, home health aides -- endure daily trips of 90 
minutes or more for jobs paying less than $25,000 a year, according 
to an analysis of 2000 Census data," many of them immigrants who 
might have found "manufacturing jobs clustered in a central place 
like the Garment District [if they had arrived in America before 
de-industrialization of cities], said Daniel Cornfield, a sociologist 
at Vanderbilt University who specializes in labor" (Joseph Berger, 
"4-Hour Trek Across New York for 4 Hours of Work, and $28," May 6, 
2004). The article features a Palestinian immigrant woman, Intesar 
Museitef, who "came to New York from Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied 
West Bank" in 1997 and now "commutes four hours each workday to work 
just four hours at $7 an hour" (May 6, 2004).

On average, it takes an American worker 24.4 minutes to _get to work_ 
each day; for New York City residents, the average is 38.4 minutes, 
the longest commute in the nation (US Census Bureau, "New York Has 
Longest Commute to Work in Nation, American Community Survey Finds," 
February 25, 2004). . . .

The rest of the posting is at 
<http://montages.blogspot.com/2004_05_01_montages_archive.html#108404835031524118>.
-- 
Yoshie

* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/>
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/>
* Calendars of Events in Columbus: 
<http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, 
<http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/>
* Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/>
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/>
* Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio>
* Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>