torstai 19. huhtikuuta 2007

The good, the bad and the ugly

I never knew there were rich people in Finland until I came back from Africa. Well, not in such numbers anyway. For thirty years I had this notion of Finland that there are few poor, a huge middle class and some, very few, rich that were basically from the old money or had made their millions with the internet. In any case, a hand full.

For years I had preached in Africa and all around that it’s only in the developing World where the rich can be as rich as they are. Well this was not true of course. I apologise my dear friends! I was wrong. Yes, there are rich in Finland too and a lot of them!

For years I had made the conclusion that the sign of a developing country is income differences. With this argument I even dared to conclude that even the United States is a developing country, 10 million homeless people and so on. I remember arguing, when South Africa was chosen as a recipient country for our development cooperation money that we should also do that to the United States. Because with the same arguments that we support South Africa, which is well enough rich to support itself, we might as well start developing cooperation in the ghettos of the USA.

But like I said, I was wrong. I stand corrected. Now Finland also has the rich and the poor and for heaven’s sake, we’re definitely not a developing country are we?! No. 1 in competitiveness, No. 1 in High-Tech per capita, Top 10 in wealth and so on and so on.

If one takes an early morning stroll from Rautatientori to the heart of Kallio and to Hesari, the very downtown of Capital Helsinki, there is two things that stand out. First the queues of mostly immigrants in front of Capital Restaurants, work for hire place, and then the bread queues in Kallio of mostly middle aged or elderly ethnic Finns, where one can score bread and some basic necessities worth two or three euro.

Both are growing phenomenon in my hometown. The first exploits the desperate with illegal means and makes huge profits and the second acts as the charity to those who refuse to be exploited. There is poverty in Helsinki, even though Finnish macroeconomic numbers show greater success than ever.

I remember in the 80’s when I first arrived to Windhoek, Namibia. It was still apartheid days and the country was illegally occupied by South Africa. There were the white neighbourhoods and the townships for the black. The coloured or the Asians were living in the middle. All organised according to your ethnicity and the ideology of apartheid, keeping races apart and unequal. The way the economy worked in the city was that the black, who would have a curfew to leave the white neighbourhoods at 6pm, would come and stand in the street corners of the white neighbourhood in the mornings so that the white could come and pick them up with their bakkies, or pick-up trucks, for the day’s labour. The average wage was then R10 or one US dollar per day, which was much better than the average farm workers wage which could be as low as R10 per month. So work would be there every morning, or then it would not. No holidays, no weekends, no set working hours, no minimum wage… Ok, ok this was in the bad old days and in poor Africa. We all know from the Marlon Brando movies that that’s how it used to be in the docs in America too. Bad old times for any wage labourers. Even America has developed from that.

Anyway, what’s shocking is that this system is now growing back to Finnish society. Finland of all places! Just like the Italians in the New York docs in the 1920’s, 30’s and 40’s or the Africans during the apartheid days, our immigrant population is queuing for a job at these numerous vuokratyöfirmat, or what are they in English, labour rental companies. You go and queue for a job every morning at seven and hope to be hired for a day or two. If there’s no job, there’s no job and the competition is fierce. No holidays, no 8 hour working day, no weekends, no minimum wage… And where do they work. Take any government cafeteria, outsourced to FAZER-AMICA or SODEXHO, and look in the back, you’ll see some immigrant faces working there. I guarantee most of them do not have the working contract with the cafeteria in question. They are work for hire. It would be interesting to see how much of the labour costs are outsourced from these companies to be done by these Capital Restaurants, Varamiespalvelut and the sort. But we can’t of course. They’re protected as company secrets.

First only the people in sick leave were replaced by them, but now it seems most of the lowest forms of works are done by them. Not to talk about ALL the cleaning jobs that are done in Helsinki now are all done by this same system, 8 euros per hour as much work as you can get.

Now, of course this is in strike contrast with the labour laws in Finland. The labour movement has fought for us to have the right for an 8 hour working day, weekends free and for the right to have holidays and number of smaller rights at ones working place. Why are the labour unions, still very strong, not taking care of this issue then?

Well, the first answer I’m sure is that these workers are not members of any unions. Secondly, they’re not Finnish citizens, most of them. Thirdly… well I’m sure you can all guess what the third reason is. It’s the same reason that labour movement from Finland used to fight against in South Africa.

But this is how it goes. Power is not given, power is taken. Power to affect your own affairs will never be trickling down from the top. The Finnish labour unions are up there and not down with the people. At least not with these people, so if they want to unionise and take control of their fate, they have to do it by themselves.

I never knew there are rich in Finland. Well, that’s what I wanted to talk about and how funny it is, coming from America and Africa, how the Finnish rich have changed from modest ways to bling-bling culture. Just walk to spring Kaivari and see yourself.

It’s funny because this bling-bling is a manifestation of culture from the developing World and now the Finnish yuppies are imitating it. It’s almost as stupid and senseless as Africans calling each other niggaz. But then again, that is another-another story…

to be continued.

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