I have heard that in some countries with many foreign workers, the wages of foreign workers are lower than those of local workers. But what is the reason? Economically, since wages are the value needed for the reproduction of labor (including nurturing and educating the next generation), is it because foreign workers’ labor requires less for their reproduction? In countries with many immigrants, local workers need to support their families, and foreign workers also need to support their families, but their families may not be in the same country. So, is it because foreign workers come from colonial or semi-colonial countries where the cost of raising offspring is lower, thus requiring less for their labor reproduction and leading to lower wages? Politically, wage levels depend on the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The fact that wages differ between local and foreign workers clearly shows a division between them. Why does this division exist? Besides language barriers, there must also be deliberate divisions created by bourgeois governments. What exactly does this entail?
Foreign workers in the local area are unable to gain support from local workers due to ethnic boundaries, and many laws that recognize the rights of local workers do not apply to them, putting them at a disadvantage in class struggle. In this way, capitalists can exploit their privileged position to arbitrarily suppress the wages of foreign workers.
I am still not very clear about the relationship between the two aspects mentioned above. Is it that foreign laborers are in a worse position than domestic workers in class struggle, being forced to accept wages lower than the cost of reproducing local labor, or is it that the expenses for reproducing their labor are indeed lower than those of domestic workers, and combined with unfavorable conditions for struggle, this leads to even lower wages?
I believe this is mainly due to the restrictions imposed by bourgeois governments. One of the main purposes for imperialist countries to introduce foreign labor is to lower wages, and they have very brutal policies of control and suppression over foreign workers. The most common are numerous restrictions on work visas. Recently, the U.S. immigration authorities have been aggressively cracking down on foreign workers, and Trump has increased visa fees, among other measures. The Japanese government is similar; if foreigners commit crimes, their visas can be revoked. This makes it difficult for many Chinese workers to carry out solo illegal wage disputes, which are often feasible, while legal struggles can take several years of lawsuits, causing visas to expire and workers to return home. Moreover, due to differences in ethnicity, language, culture, and other factors, it is even more difficult for foreign workers to unite with local workers than for local workers to unite among themselves. One reason might be that families have lower expenses in their home country, but this is not the main reason; it is only a very secondary reason, and often not even that. Because no matter what, the workers themselves are abroad, and the cost of living is that of the foreign country, and the labor costs are the same as others. Additionally, most companies differentiate between workers with families and those without, providing a basic salary and a “dependent allowance.” To receive this allowance, the worker’s family must be abroad; it is definitely not available domestically. Therefore, the cost of labor reproduction for this workforce is completely unreasonable to be lower than that of domestic workers.
The capitalists paying wages to workers based on the value of labor reproduction is indeed a necessary condition for maintaining capitalist production. The value of labor reproduction is the main factor affecting wage costs, but the nature of the bourgeoisie demanding to extract more profits will constantly push down the costs required for labor reproduction. In some countries where bourgeois forces are very strong, they may even seize part of this necessary expense (for example, China often has phenomena such as delayed wages or even non-payment of wages, as well as “black brick kilns, black coal kilns”—slave-like illegal factories). These are secondary aspects affecting wage costs. Once bourgeois forces become very powerful, the contradiction between primary and secondary aspects shifts, and the power comparison between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat becomes the main contradiction.
Many foreign workers introduced by imperialist countries come from colonies or semi-colonies, where their situation is often even worse. Therefore, they have no choice but to go to more favorable imperialist countries to seek work (though sometimes the working conditions are not necessarily better; some imperialist countries deceive people from the Third World or directly traffick them into black factories in imperialist countries). These foreign workers are very weak in imperialist countries. First, they are very isolated upon arrival because the nationalism promoted by imperialist countries makes it difficult to establish connections with local workers. They also have little savings and no way out; second, imperialist countries impose various restrictions on these foreign workers, such as laws that do not apply to them, and many are forced to work illegally due to strict entry policies, essentially working “under the table.” The bourgeoisie can threaten them through various means, and even if they are deported, they face legal penalties in their home countries.
On the surface, imperialist countries claim to oppose immigration, prevent these immigrants from lowering wages, and taking jobs from local workers. But in reality, the bourgeoisie introduces these immigrants precisely to squeeze out local workers, claiming that this is to divide local and foreign workers. As for judging the wages of foreign workers based on the costs of labor reproduction, it can be said that their wages are definitely higher than those of local workers because foreign workers need to learn the local language, adapt to the local environment, and sometimes bear the costs of coming to imperialist countries. Discrimination based on ethnicity also causes them to spend more time, money, and energy. Some bourgeois lackeys say that the labor value of foreign workers is low, entirely because they stand from the bourgeoisie’s perspective, judging the labor price based on whether it can generate more surplus value for the bourgeoisie, believing that foreign workers are “unstable,” “inconvenient to communicate with,” “lack skilled labor,” or directly considering the people from colonized or semi-colonized countries as “worthless,” only fit for starving and suffering. This logic is the logic of the bourgeoisie, which is also used to treat female workers and child laborers. Their wages are often lower than those of adult male workers, sometimes significantly so. The bourgeoisie justifies this by saying that female workers have physiological periods and pregnancy, and child laborers are weaker and cannot be exploited as freely as adult male workers. But precisely because of these reasons, female workers and child laborers need higher wages to maintain labor reproduction—female workers need to buy sanitary products and nutrition during menstruation, spend money on health during pregnancy, and child labor causes greater physical harm, requiring more money for recovery and treatment.
The reason why the bourgeoisie holds such logic is because they do not understand Marxist political economy (and even if they did, it wouldn’t change anything). It is also driven by their greed for profit, viewing wages as the price of labor itself rather than the price of labor power. They see paying wages to workers as an equivalent exchange, not as exploitation to obtain surplus value. Instead, they believe that profits are earned through “careful management,” and profits are just compensation for their business operations.
Actually, many people now also have the misconception that “wages are the price of labor itself,” which is explained in the Introduction to Political Economy (Chapter 3, Section 1).
There is evidence that the Chinese government persecutes African workers, first deceiving African laborers with short-term visas, and when the visas expire, claiming these black workers are “illegal foreigners,” then finding ways to exploit them.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/534226.html
https://gaj.gz.gov.cn/gkmlpt/content/7/7310/mpost_7310845.html#322
We should be grateful that Europe and America have unions; otherwise, Chinese workers in developed countries and Vietnamese, Black, and North Korean people in Guangdong would suffer the same miserable conditions. The proletariat in Europe and America understand what it means when the lips are gone and the teeth are cold.
Unbelievable, the union that collects money and demands wages is the
Are you referring to the trade unions that are actually controlled by the worker aristocracy, which sell out and surrender the workers whenever they go on strike?
These unions are nominally just organizations that help workers in their economic struggles, without any leadership based on scientific thought. Of course, the bourgeoisie would not allow such ideas to dominate the leadership within unions. For example, the United States strictly suppresses communist ideas, and so-called American Communist Party is actually full of FBI and CIA spies. Without Marxist leadership, the organizational form of unions becomes very loose, making it easier for the bourgeoisie to place their agents within the unions. Moreover, union leaders, in order to handle union affairs, will to some extent detach from production, making it easier for the union leadership to be usurped by worker aristocrats. Even union leaders who initially insisted on representing workers’ interests can become corrupt and degenerate due to the lack of a scientific worldview. Currently, unions are no longer suitable organizations for workers to carry out struggles.
On the appropriate form of the workers’ struggle
There are also class divisions within the union. The comrades above have already said that union bureaucrats and strikebreakers are essentially agents of the bourgeoisie. Moreover, there is no reason to think that simply joining a union is enough. Ultimately, it is because the workers’ strength is powerful enough to fight against the bourgeoisie that the bourgeoisie still has to maintain formal democracy, so workers have the right to form unions. In reality, it is not that workers can only struggle after forming unions; it is through struggle that unions have emerged.
What nonsense are you talking about? These unions are all yellow unions controlled by the worker aristocracy. First of all, each of these unions is aggressively promoting the theory of class reconciliation, saying that workers should struggle under capitalism and not think about violent revolution, limiting class struggle to economic struggle. Secondly, even in purely economic struggles, these people won’t persist to the end; they collude with capitalists from inside and betray the revolution. The 2023 US auto workers’ strike is exactly like that.
I remember that the port workers’ strike seemed to have increased the hourly wage a lot, and Yang Heping also seemed to participate.
The port workers’ strike involves only 20,000 people, while 130,000 non-union workers cannot get a raise. American unions are just old aristocratic unions; each union member has to pay 10% of their after-tax annual income as dues, and in developed countries, about one-third of wages go to taxes. As a result, yellow unions are the mafia hands of the U.S. government and places spreading the bourgeoisie. A single union president surprisingly owns two yachts! Even Biden has said that compared to the bourgeoisie of the bourgeois unions, he is considered ‘poor’.