Fun_People Archive
21 Feb
HOLY SLAVE-LABOR [is there any other kind?]

Date: Tue, 21 Feb 95 20:28:17 PST
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: HOLY SLAVE-LABOR [is there any other kind?]

Forwarded-by: lanih@irony.Berkeley.EDU (Lani Herrmann)
Forwarded-by: Noam Kaminer <kaminer@networking.stanford.edu>
I don't have the source but FYI.    Noam.
 
 HOLY SLAVE-LABOR: Bad enough competing with slave wages in the 
 maquiladoras or Chinese (or American) prisons -- now the Roman 
 Catholic Church is in on the game.  30 monks and nuns at six 
 monasteries have turned their hands to new tasks on computers, 
 including entering and checking data for publications, indexes and 
 library catalogs. According to Edward M. Leonard, the president of 
 Electronic Scriptorium Ltd., "The younger monks just love it.  
 They see the computer as an extension of the  monastery and 
 something holy." [? - Ed]  The head librarian for the Amherst 
 County Public Library, said Electronic Scriptorium's $12,000 bid 
 for converting its 32,000-card catalog was the lowest of three 
 bids it received last winter. She attributed Electronic 
 Scriptorium's "remarkably error-free" results to the lack of 
 distraction in the lives of the monks at the Monastery of the Holy 
 Cross in Chicago who handled that particular assignment. "They 
 were taking prayer breaks, not coffee breaks," she said. Leonard 
 said each monk earns an hourly wage of $8 to $12. (_SFC_ 1/9/95) 
 [Meanwhile, workers at the Vatican walked off of their jobs 
 recently, complaining that they hadn't received a pay increase in 
 eight years.]

© 1995 Peter Langston