Maria's American Dream

Maria was a young woman who lived in Turbaco, a small town on Colombia’s north coast. It was December 2003 and she had lived a really hard year.  She had been discharged three months ago; she lived with her sick mother and her little son Andres, they were living with her whole life savings and there was no much remaining. On New Year she spoke to her cousin who lived in Texas- USA and she told Maria she would have more opportunities for her and her son if she goes to USA, she said there were more opportunities to work and were paid better. After this conversation she decided that her purpose for New Year was going to the USA.

On March she was ready to leave the town, her mother and little son. When she arrived to Texas every thing was perfect, her cousin Carla was helping a lot, and she paid her tickets and gave her a room on her house. The first few weeks were the best trip ever; she was having fun and visiting new places every day like a tourist.

On her third week in Texas her cousin found her a job in a restaurant washing dishes. The manager of the restaurant said she had to wash dishes during dinner, around 5 hours and she will be paid 8 dollar per hour; she accepted because she knew she didn’t have status to work legally, she didn’t speak English and she won’t find anything better that let her work in the morning cleaning the house of Carla’s friend.

The first week was perfect, she worked for 5 hours and when there was too much to do the manager had another girl working with her, this other girl was a legal worker earning 18 dollar per hour. The next week the manager discharged this lady and left all the work to Maria, who had to work more than 5 hours and be paid the same 40 dollars. One day Maria was very tired and told the manager she should be paid more because it was a hard work, there were too many dishes for her; it takes her more than 5 hours to finish and she was receiving the same 40 dollar per day. The manager told her she could leave whenever she wants but first she had to finish the work she had that day. She stayed, but 6 days later she got sick and she was feeling really bad at work; she told the manager if she could leave early but he said she couldn’t do so. That night she tried to finish as much and she could until she finished the 5 hours but the manager didn’t let her leave, he told her she had to finish everything and wait until the restaurant close to clean all; she said she was so tired and sick to stay and all this time she has being paid for just five hours so she was leaving because she finished her work. Hearing this manager approached her and very angry told her that if she leaves the restaurant in that moment she should wait for immigration at her house, he will send them. Scared she waited until they closed and stayed home 6 days layed on bed; when she was recovered she had to find a new job to send money to her family in Colombia suffering the same injustice and abuse. 

Cultural Diversity and Organizations

People within an organization have their own identity, and is that what makes them special to be there and is what contributes to the organization. In groups, members identity become stronger and that is the reason leaders highlight in groups. Leaders are necessary to coordinate team work; it is not easy but is what we do all the time, follow what others do. Every one in organizations should show control over them; but this is more important for leaders, they should earn respect to control the group and have power. CEO´s are leaders inside the organizations, the most powerful leaders and they should have more control than anybody else. They have to choose what is more important means or end, they have to determine how to motivate employees (rewards) and at the same time to focus indirectly on people to avoid future problems.

In organizations and everywhere different cultures coexist and interact; even among people of the same country the difference of culture is highlighted. Sometimes being from a specific country or region gives people extra value, but the ideal is to respect and enjoy every culture and individual differences. In organizations cultural difference between employees must be an important topic to take into account. This cultural difference builds the identity of the company but to get to build that identity the communication between individual identities must flow avoiding ethnocentrism and visual obstinacy.

This cultural diversity coexists due to expatriates and migration. Companies have expatriates, sometimes they need the knowhow of an employee they can’t find in local workers. Multinational companies sometimes send ambassadors of the culture, knowledge and philosophy of the company; and the best way to do it is sending someone from the company’s original place.  Companies encourage migration but there are other reasons for people to migrate, most of the times what they are looking for are better conditions of life; better health, education, security and work conditions and sometimes this decision is not taken because an offer they have from a company. Despite this better conditions people must take into account that hostile reception could happen, there are some cultures or individual identities more xenophobic than others and discrimination exists everywhere even inside organizations.

Is possible to get this world back to our hands?

Today the world is controlled by huge corporations who sells a beautiful image of their product, their way of life, and way of thinking; must of us believe in that image they are selling even though we know at least one case in which one of these corporations harm employees, human health, animals and/ or biosphere.

This is not a recent topic and is not the first time we have heard about it. Since years there have been people concerned with the behavior of corporations or at least concerned of the harm they cause; the thing is that they are just a few concerning because humans are selfish by nature and sometimes we don’t care what is going on outside if it is not affecting us directly.

To get this world back to our hands as the documentary proposed is not that easy. Corporations are huge just as the people who believe and follow their way of life and thinking and don’t think or even care of how corporations do it. As I said before people concerning of the harm caused is just a few, I think we are on their hands if we want to improve the way corporations behave in our society.
These few people concerning must convince all of us of their way of life and let all of us think the world is the only society, we all together are an individual; we will be all affected of what’s done thousand of kilometers away from our home in the nearby or distant future.

I include my self in the bunch of people who doesn’t care on what corporations do to sell their image, their way of life or way of thinking I like. I think people who have take this issue on their hands must convince us to force corporations change, because we are not going to stop eating or buying something that easy and laws are not enough for corporations because paying fines is cheaper  than changing the way they act.