October 18, 2004
FRANCO'S DEAD, WE CAN TANK AND NO ONE WILL EVEN BE ASHAMED:
Chinese work ethic tires Spanish: Losing business to immigrants, Spanish shoe workers in Elche recently set fire to Chinese warehouses. (Geoff Pingree, 10/19/04, CS Monitor)
As Spain struggles to become an economic power in Europe, immigrant laborers are increasingly coming into conflict with native workers who approach work and the workplace with very different attitudes.Although the first Chinese immigrants arrived here in the early 20th century, their numbers have grown rapidly over the past two decades. Today it is estimated that there are between 50,000 and 100,000 living in Spain.
They may be causing resentment, however, not because of their numbers (there are far more North African and Latin American immigrants), but because many Spaniards feel that their economic practices threaten age-old social customs, employment norms, and labor relations in Spain.
Europe, where the work ethic makes you the enemy. Posted by Orrin Judd at October 18, 2004 11:01 PM
Damn Chinks . . . how dare they work harder. If only I could convince my kids (half-Chinese) to work half as hard as Chinese immigrants to Spain.
Posted by: Fred Jacobsen (San Fran) at October 18, 2004 11:09 PMOnce the chinese take the jobs and
displace the locals they will fall into the same
social "customs" as the old Spaniards.
All of our ancestors worked harder than us
each step of the way back. That's just the way
it is. This is the Darwinian connundrum that
less hungry societies face when they come into
contact with more hungry societies.
Well, I guess that OJ could claim he has a 'work ethic'. He does a lot of web surfing.
Stretching the definition of the word 'work' a bit though.
Posted by: at October 19, 2004 10:34 AMSpain(Catalonia and the Basque region aside) has always been a lazy society. They went from being a bunch of illiterate goatherds who realized that if they killed the Muslims and Jews who lived peacefully on their peninsula that they could get wealthy to invading America and doing the same thing to the local tribes.
Attacking warehouses is about their speed. One must keep in mind that the vast majority of casualties in the Spanish Civil War came after the battles were over, when both sides would happily slaughter the wounded, the women and the children.
Posted by: Bart at October 19, 2004 1:49 PM