I read in the comments section that their compensation is about four times that of a textile worker in Ethiopia. As brutal as it sounds, it doesn’t look as if they’re being forced to do this, and as paltry as their pay sounds to us, to them it’s good money.
I had a long talk with a Mexican textile plant GM, oh, about 20 years ago. It was right in the middle of NAFTA fallout, when companies were elbowing each other out of the way to cross the border.
He said, approximately, that if you paid American workers $9/hour they rapidly got PO'd and quit (sound familiar?). However, you could pay their Mexican counterparts $9 / DAY to do the same thing, and they'd be thrilled. At the time, that was 3x what they could expect in other jobs, plus they had free on-site medical care, and a clean, air-conditioned workplace. And, cafeteria meals were mostly subsidized - when I was working there, I always bought lunch for everyone I was with (I was on an expense account), and lunch for a table full of people came to 27 pesos, or a little less than three bucks.
For them, it was a fantastic opportunity.
Exactly.
People forget the cost of living in third-world toilet-bowls is far below our cost of living.
We end up with idiot leftists (idiomatic intensifier) wailing about poor pay, feeling these poor people have the same cost of living we do.
20 years ago I worked at a mine in Indonesia. Our helpers loved working with us as they got paid 3 times their normal wages (long hours and off the main site).
I asked one how much he normally made.
“50 cents an hour - best job in Indonesia!!”
They were provided food and lodging, and nothing around to waste money on.
He said in five years he would have enough saved up so he could build a new house for his family (he was a carpenter back home). Granted - his house isn’t like my house, but still - I was still paying off on my house after 25 years.