#4026: Factory wages: correction (fwd)

[Robert Corbett <bcorbett@netcom.com>]

From: Tom F. Driver <tfd3@columbia.edu>

Oops!  I got the exchange rate wrong in the following part of my recent 
posting:

    In [the example Shirley Jean had given], the work week is 112 hours. 
     The pay of 750 gourdes for this amount of labor comes to 6.74 
    gourdes per hour, or 1.34 Haitian dollars per hour.  In early May this 
    year the exchange rate was about 20 Haitian dollars to one US 
    dollar.  That means the workers in the example are getting 6.7 cents 
    per hour.  

It was quickly pointed out to me that the rate was about 20 GOURDES, not 
Haitian DOLLARS, to one U.S. dollar.  That means that I had stated the 
wage as 5 times lower than I should have.  In other words, the wage would 
figure out to be about 33 1/2 U.S. cents per hour.  Sorry for the mistake.  
Even so, the wage is still, to my mind, obscenely low when compared with 
the profits to be made from it.


-------------
Tom F. Driver
New York City
<tfd3@columbia.edu>