Wade Rathke: Chief Organizer Blog » Korea http://chieforganizer.org Founder of ACORN, Chief Organizer at ACORN International, Author of Citizen Wealth, Global Grassroots and The Battle for the 9th Ward. Wed, 23 May 2012 15:43:21 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Facing the Competition to Land a Big Broker’s Contract http://chieforganizer.org/2012/03/30/facing-the-competition-to-land-a-big-broker%e2%80%99s-contract/ http://chieforganizer.org/2012/03/30/facing-the-competition-to-land-a-big-broker%e2%80%99s-contract/#comments Sat, 31 Mar 2012 01:25:00 +0000 Mariehurt http://chieforganizer.org/?p=6635 Marcala      The day moved in the slow deliberate, yet sometimes desperate, speed of the countryside, filled with quite, almost boredom, one minute, and adventure and mayhem the next.

We started down the mountainside to an uncertain appointment in Marcala.  We were joining our friends at COMUCAP, the small women’s coffee and aloe vera growing cooperative, here in [...]]]> Marcala      The day moved in the slow deliberate, yet sometimes desperate, speed of the countryside, filled with quite, almost boredom, one minute, and adventure and mayhem the next.

We started down the mountainside to an uncertain appointment in Marcala.  We were joining our friends at COMUCAP, the small women’s coffee and aloe vera growing cooperative, here in the mountains of the state of La Paz, abutting the El Salvador border.   Even before we got to the restaurant out of town where the tasting competition was to be held, we were all curious how it would work since the word was already out that there would be no electricity in Marcala until 4PM in the afternoon.  That answer came quickly with the roar of a generator when we arrived, but the rest took longer to unfold, since the brokers and the tasting committee from Korea and Belgium were late.

We didn’t mind at first because it gave us a chance to meet some of the other co-ops from around Marcala, most of which were very large.  There were five Marcala co-ops in the tasting competition, so we got a better idea of the world past our normal sightline.

The brokers with Coffee Team and others had organized the tasting.  The price being dangled involved something like contracts for 7 containers to Europe, but that was never expressly stated that I could hear.  One co-op recognized a taster/broker he had sold to before and during the tasting, got the OK high sign from the taster after the spitting and sipping was done.  The Korean women reportedly represented a group of specialty coffee shops and bought haeavily as well, but who knows.  This was the brokers show and everyone kowtowed to them, including starting whenever they were ready.

We continued to learn more and with every conversation our margins of error got thinner along with everything else.  It was fascinating.

After our debriefing we headed up the mountain before nightfall in an uneven, but mainly light, rain.  Unfortunately way pass the halfway mark we came upon two huge dump trucks in the middle of a slippery incline.  The lead truck was in the ditch and being dug out, successfully, but leaving rutted road behind him.  The second truck was backing down and giving up getting by.  In our little rental Toyota with no clearance the odds weren’t good.  Nonetheless I tried twice to make it up the hill only to have to back down and finally abandon the notion of making the mountain this evening.

Limping back we heard from COMCUCAP that they had won several ribbons against this stiff competition and been invited to Copan for the next round.  For our part we ended up being led to a $20 per night motel and pulling into the gravel lot, I joked that anyone of those pickups could have gotten us up the mountain.  True indeed!  A closer looked showed the same brokers running more testing trials in the rooms of the motel for the coffee men in front of their trucks.

Marcala coffee in this region according to a brochure the co-op coordinators left out has a famous and distinctive taste, slightly acidic with orange-citrus notes.  I didn’t realize it before, but now that you mention it, I can taste everything from the dirt up in Marcala now.

]]> http://chieforganizer.org/2012/03/30/facing-the-competition-to-land-a-big-broker%e2%80%99s-contract/feed/ 0 Home Care Labor Crisis in USA & Korea http://chieforganizer.org/2010/07/27/home-care-labor-crisis-in-usa-korea/ http://chieforganizer.org/2010/07/27/home-care-labor-crisis-in-usa-korea/#comments Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:43:47 +0000 jstuart http://chieforganizer.org/?p=3449 New Orleans Meeting with three visitors and friends from Korea, Yungik Jeong, Young Mi Choi, and Hwang Inhul, who work with PSAU, an organization of the unemployed and irregular workers, as informal and unprotected workers are now known there, the conversation quickly came to plight of home health care workers or domestic workers as they [...]]]> P7260872New Orleans Meeting with three visitors and friends from Korea, Yungik Jeong, Young Mi Choi, and Hwang Inhul, who work with PSAU, an organization of the unemployed and irregular workers, as informal and unprotected workers are now known there, the conversation quickly came to plight of home health care workers or domestic workers as they are sometimes called in Korea.  Similar to the US, this has become a fast growing occupation which they estimated already involves 400,000 workers, yet these workers are not allowed the usual protections and social security of other Korean workers and from what they indicated are actually banned from membership in labor unions.

It was painful for me to report that in the US after many years of employment increases and rising protections brought by unionization in many states, these same critical, yet low status health care workers, are facing a crisis in state after state.  Announcement curtailments of workers has already expanded waiting lists in many states, and California where there may be close to as a many workers as exist in Korea faces drastic budget proposals by the governor.  If all the proposals being discussed were realized my guess is that 200,000 home health care workers could see their jobs disappear with cutbacks in state subsidies.  The loss of 200,000 union dues payers would also be critical for SEIU, AFSCME, and other unions representing home health workers.

The IMF crisis a little more than a decade ago in Korea finds its lingering wake in the severe cutback of labor protections.  The Great Recession in the US may end up leaving a similar tsunami for many public – and private – employees as well.

Bob Hebert in the New York Times woefully reminded today that many are averaging a 25% cutback in income in the recession and that it may take 6 to 10 years to make up the ground to move back from income insecurity to any semblance of citizen wealth.

Discussions with my Korean friends was a painful reminder of the long tail of economic crises with no end in sight.

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