This seems to be true... But what does it say about the attitude of the government, business owners, and household employers disposition toward worker compensation, in the context of the value they place on the service being performed by these workers?
That’s irrelevant in defining the wage levels.
Violations towards compensation due to employees on the part of the employers is a greater issue when the employee is an illegal immigrant or in the informal sector. All formal employees, who are almost all Dominicans, are protected by a series of labor laws that basically force employers to provide all sorts of things such as a bonus during the Christmas season which is essentially an extra month (in December formal workers essentially are paid twice, what they earned while working plus the bonus.) There is also a liquidation amount to be given to each employee if the company let them go or they quit after an X amount of time and other things.
From the part of the employer, a single formal employee cost is his wages + the extra compensation that normally the employee doesn’t see in his paycheck, but the employer has to pay. Illegal immigrants don’t have any of that, ao employers save on that extra cost and the cost of the employee is just his wage.
I've read many comments on DR1 that criticize the poor attitude toward providing service... Building homes for example... It seems that the customer just has to be patient and appreciate when workers show up... And given this type of worker attitude, why would anyone want to pay top dollar for work done?
That’s also irrelevant.
DR employers seem perfectly happy to use Haitian workers — illegal or illegal in immigration status...
Sirena is one of the largest employers in the country and you will be hardpressed to find an illegal immigrant working in their stores. You will also be hardpressed to find illegal immigrants working in Dominican banks. In fact, outside of agriculture and to a certain extent construction, Dominicans are the majority of the employeed.
Which would place the responsibility on the DR employers, not the Haitian workers...
The reason the DR hardly has Chilean or Peruvian employees is because they don’t migrate much to the DR. You do find from time to time Venezuelans employees from the professions down to street vending and that is due to Venezuelans migratinv to the DR in relatively large numbers. The DR didn’t went to Venezuela and hire the Venezuelan employees, they went to the DR because it was their decision. To pretend it isn’t so is to not acknowledge reality.
In the Bahamas you will see many Haitians, but you hardly don’t see any Haitians in Jamaica. The main reason for this includes that Haitians choose not to immigrate much to Jamaica, but they do to the Bahamas.
History has shown that the DR government has allowed it to take place, therefore making it a type of collaborator/partner and therefore bearing some responsibility as well.
That and many other things. Simply look at Dominican highways like the Duarte. Most of the homes and businesses built along its edges on many stretches are illegal constructions. The same with parallel parking, there are laws that dictate parallel parking should only be done in the direction of the traffic in that road or on that side of the road. That means that on most roads with a two-way traffic, parallel parking should imply that the passenger door always faces the sidewalk.
If Haitians could not find work in the DR, what reason would they have to come to the DR for work?
There are other reasons too. For example, many feel unsafe in Port-au-Prince and opt to go to the DR instead of other areas of Haiti. Many pregnant women go to the DR to give birth since from their view everything is free and they are getting a service that doesn’t exist in Haiti. Where it all comes from, how much money it takes, etc isn’t something they think about. In the border region many Haitian families living in the Haitian side send their kids to public schools in the Dominican side. These are some examples of other reasons beyond working.
Why can't Dominican employers simply say "...No..." to Haitian workers being employed?
Do Haitians come to the DR and put a gun to the heads of the employers to force them to employ them?
There is the 80/20 law, it’s only a matter of applying it. Many Dominican companies such as Sirena, Jumbo, etc intentionally don’t violate that law. Others do, but enforcement should put an end to that.
The main culprit for that is the belief that their businesses doesn’t depends on the government for their success, so if they csn get away with something they will whether it’s not paying the taxes or highering illegal immigrants. However, in reality the government is on top of the businesses and not the other way around. The government is the one that create many incentives to promote the development of certain sectors. No business can supply or receive supplies/merchandise without the trucks driving on public roads and highways which are built and maintained by the government. Most exports of the DR go through the Haina Port, which is owned by the government. Etc. The idea that every successful business in the DR is due entirely to the efforts of the budiness owners and their employees is not quite reality. Even Puntacana, which did developed with not much government input, depended on the government to approve for them to operate an airport, which is one of their largest cash cows. Nowadays Puntacana benefits from the Coral Highway, a government built and owned highway, The same with the Boulevard.
On the north coast you can’t go from one town to another without using public roads. The airport that has sustained much of the tourism, though now not as active as before, is the Luperon Airport, built and owned by the government. The first major push for getting mass tourism to arrive in Puerto Plata is Playa Dorada, a complex built and owned by the Central Bank, itself owned by the government. The reason tourism even got its start on the north coast is because the government earmarked that area for tourism development and put in place several incentives to promote it.
To a large extent the same could be said with the Free Trade Zones and many other sectors.
Of course not... Employers have a profit agenda for employing Haitians... And Haitians are just happy to be earning a wage, even if it is not a proper wage for the work they are doing.
In other words... Perhaps DR employers, and even the DR government, have taken advantage of Haitian workers... And done so to the detriment of Dominican workers, in context to proper (higher) wages being paid.
What drives economic development is the desire to be rich. To not be satisfied with what you have and always want more. However, economic development almost always follows (not lead) the government because that’s the legitimate authority in a geographic area. If you become economically successful in creating a business in a particular place, first and foremost this was possible because the government let you. This is the same reason why many things are different in Cuba.
Thing is... As you pointed out... Despite "...average salaries [being] the highest than in any Latin American country, even Chile...", many Puerto Ricans still suffer in poverty... Why is this?
Poverty in Puerto Rico is measured differently than just about everywhere in Latin America. To put it another way, modt of Puerto Rico’s poor wouldn’t be considered poor in other Latin American countries and they wouldn’t had been condidered poor in say the Puerto Rico of 1940. Case in point, backthen most Puerto Ricans lived in wooden shacks with zinc roof and the bathroom tende to be letrines more often than not. Puerto Rican towns had slums with unpaved roads and kids running around in dirty or no clothes, and a bulging belly was common. These things either don’t exist or are not as common in the Puerto Rico of today.
The GDP of Puerto Rico has been steadily increasing over the last thirty years and is expected to continue this way over the next ten years (a forecast of almost 20% brother).
Puerto Rico has actually been in an economic crisis since about 2006. It’s in very recent times that it begsn to grow again and not by much. The slowing down of Puerto Rico’s economic growth is one of the reasons the gap with the DR has been decreasing at a faster rate. One of the most notable aspects is that among Puerto Rico’s business owners, particularly of the larger companies for the island, see the DR as of right now as a better place to do business than in Puerto Rico. The DR is set up in a way that a well thoughtout investment becomes profitable at a faster rate than in PR.
So you're suggesting that less educated illegal immigrant Haitians are to be blamed for "...retarding salary growth..." for the more educated Dominican citizen?
The presence of the excess is a major reason for the depressed wages of the DR. Productivity is considerably higher today than it was say in 199p0, but the gap between the productivity if the workers vs their pay is greater. This is more than in any other country with the kevel of development of the DR, but those countries don’t have a similar oroblem as the DR has with illegal immigration.
Could Dominican employers simply choose to not employ these less-educated illegal immigrant Haitians and just employ Dominicans... Albeit, at a higher salary?
Many Dominican employers do that.
Meaning... The Dominican employers would have to be satisfied with a slightly lower net profit... Or, charge their customers a higher price.
Most employees in the DR are Dominicans.
MoJoInDR said:
Or... If employing only Dominicans would be feasible because perhaps there are not enough Dominicans to do all the work...
You seem to not be aware that there are laws that allow a Dominican company to higher more foreigners than the 20% of employees if it can’t find Dominican workers. There is no need for illegal immigrants since they will be in the country legally with a work permit.
MoJoInDR said:
Just pay the illegal immigrant Haitians higher wages... The same higher wages that should be paid to Dominican workers.
As said before, that’s not how wages are defined.
Puerto Rico has the same problem that all formerly colonized countries suffer from...
Like Singapore? The United States? Australia? Barbados?
The ingrained disposition of self-profit...
That’s human nature. Has nothing to do with colonialism.
The rich will always want to get richer... That's just the way of fallen humanity and can be expected.
But at what cost?
There is nothing wrong with the rich getting richer. Economics isn’t a zero sum game. The rich will get richer regardless if there is illegal immigration or not. Previous people that were not rich will also become rich, many that were poor will move up to the middle class. Then there are those that go downward.
Perhaps Dominicans, and the world in general, need to pay a little more attention to the overall state of the human society we live in... And self-sacrifice a bit more, for the gain of a better overall living environment.
From my brief look at the DR... I'd like to think that the DR has a wonderfully unique opportunity to do just that.
There is nothing to be sacrificed. There are laws in place that are suppose to guarantee that most workers in every company are Dominican, that the foreigners are in order with their migration status and even laws meant to discourage illegal immigration and encourage immigrating via the legal route. It simply needs to be enforced.
But most employees in the DR are Dominicans and there are plenty of Dominican companies that don’t depend on illegal immigrants.
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