[lbo-talk] Slaves of the 21st century

Charles Brown cbrown at michiganlegal.org
Sun Jan 9 11:18:41 PST 2005


What the Charles Dickens !

CB

^^^^^^

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-16149-1428074-16752,00.html

Slaves of the 21st century

by urban fox, times online correspondent

If you want ruthless cruelty, find a London mother of small children and ask her about her childcare arrangements. The sweet-faced madonna smiling beside the crib, or cooing at her little darlings in the playground, instantly turns into something altogether redder in tooth and claw.

The emergence of a whole new batch of countries from which to source au pairs (hooray for the collapse of communism) has proved a godsend for hard-pressed parents in one of Europe's most expensive cities. Cheap, cheap labour, in the hugely exploitable form of young girls unsure what people in this country consider hard work, and what is frankly no better than abuse, is flooding into London. There are no controls. And complete freedom over a £50-a-week skivvy is going to the heads of my hitherto blamelessly humanitarian friends. One by one, they're turning into the kind of racist, bullying, heartless employers whose appalling behaviour they would indignantly condemn if they came across it in any other walk of life.

"I'm getting a Serb from Kosovo," Friend A confided at the end of the summer, with a devilish glint in her eyes. "She wept in the interview when I asked her how her parents would get along without her once she came to live in London. It turned out I'd reminded her that her father had been beaten up by Kosovan teenagers the other day. But I figure coming from a war zone is good. She'll be too freaked out to want to go out in the evenings. That means more babysitting and cleaning for us. The downside is that she might go around crying all the time and get on our nerves. But I've sorted that out too. I've told her she's not allowed to cry in the house. And she's banned from using our phone to call home." She beamed happily.

Full at: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-16149-1428074-16752,00.html



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