Fishy business. The Social Impact of SST.pdf - Act Now!

Above is a list of curses said to be used by Supervisor John Veali in the Mess in beratingworkers, given to us anonymously.Kate Barclay (2004:533-4) writing about a Solomon Islands–Japanese joint venture cannery,tells us that::The nature of mixing up between Solomon Islanders and foreigners in Solomon Taiyo wasstructurally hierarchical and it was represented as such by almost all Solomon Islanderinterviewees. They expressed a strong sense of injustice at this subordination…Indeed, thepreoccupation with domination by foreigners was such that it permeated perceptions of allthe negative aspects of mixing up in Solomon Taiyo. Problems suffered by women wereframed by some interviewees as perpetuated on ‘our’ women by ‘foreigners,’ rather thanbeing seen as a result of patriarchy.The overall point here is that management has made some complacent and condescendingassumptions about the local workforce, particularly about the women. Nowhere has it beenassayed or proven that the production line women would not be earning a living were they notemployed by SST. Indeed, our research leads us to assume most of them would be working inthe informal economy in some way or another, whether at roadside markets or with cash cropsor small businesses, and most probably, in so doing, earning far more than their income at SST.101