Sweat Shop Mickey !!!

[Trigg]

Just the fact that companies do hire these snoops shows that shining a media spotlight on such issues does make a difference. Public awareness leads to bad publicity which in turn makes the companies more careful.

 

Make a difference? Yes, the difference is that a very small percentage of the public have their opinions swayed by what they see on Hard Copy and MTV. The rest will keep looking and buying the best products at the cheapest price and fill up their cars using oil from the mideast on the way there.

 

The world is driven by market and by price; it's just that simple.

Sighing and saying "oh well that's just the way the world is, we might as well accept it" makes more of a difference? Attitudes like that is what perpetuates this exploitation of workers.

Right on Carl!!! Whatever happened to the good ole days when people gave a rat's rump about someone other than themselves?? I reckon the 'we' generation moved to the 'me' generation. 'I got mine so who gives a flip if you get your?'

 

Seems like it's fend for yourself and damn the rest of 'em. No wonder our country is in such a pitiful state of affairs!!

[IllinoisDave]

The headline "Indian 'slave' children found making low-cost clothes destined for Gap" in last week's Observer online must have caused massive indigestion for the PR pixies who burnish the Gap's image as a good corporate egg.

 

The paper's investigation uncovered a Dickensian sweatshop in India where children as young as 10 toiled in slavelike conditions to produce Gap-labeled clothes. The children at the New Delhi factory were consigned to lives of deprivation and violence, forced to work 16-hour days and beaten if they cried from exhaustion. Some interviewed by the Observer hadn't been paid for months.

 

The Gap responded by agreeing not to sell any of the garments from the work order identified by the newspaper and reiterating that it has a "rigorous factory-monitoring program" to police against the use of child labor.

 

One is left to wonder, however, if a newspaper can smoke out a Gap-sponsored sweatshop, why couldn't the company's own team of professional auditors?

 

As horrific as child labor is, these working conditions wouldn't be any more palatable if someone 19 years old were subjected to them. Sweatshops, where workers are forced to work long hours, breathing toxic air, for pay that doesn't begin to cover the expenses of basic living, are a kind of ubiquitous evil in the developing world.

 

They exist in places like India and China where human beings are considered disposable and where government makes common cause with business interests to sabotage worker rights.

 

But what happens "over there" has everything to do with what happens here. American toy and apparel companies and retailers like Wal-Mart are largely responsible for allowing this kind of exploitation to flourish. They prime the pump and then fight against rules that would better the lot of workers.

 

One need look no further than the internal auditing documents on the Mattel toy company's Web site to see that the company knows what is going on and continues to profit from it.

 

Plant 18 located in the Dongguan Province of China isn't named, but its 2006 audit indicates that workers there are seriously mistreated. The audit found "important shortfalls" in "wages and working hours, health and safety standards, and environmental protection." The same problems were identified in an earlier review.

 

Workers were on the job up to 17 hours a day, and some were forced to work 31 straight days without a day off. The report also found that the workers were exposed to "air, water and ground contamination," and there were serious questions about whether they were being cheated out of pay.

 

A Mattel representative claims they have "made headway with improvements."

 

Charles Kernaghan, director of the National Labor Committee, can give you an earful about Mattel's practices in China. In testimony last month before a Senate subcommittee, he laid out in rather stomach-turning detail the pound of flesh extracted from workers in the manufacture of a Barbie accessory toy at the Xin Yi factory in Shenzhen.

 

Last year, that factory's 5,000 workers were made to work seven days a week for months on end, with routine 15-hour days. In the steaming, hot factory, workers were barred from standing during work hours. They had to sit on hard wood benches with no backs.

 

Things have slightly improved this year, according to Kernaghan, with a six-day work week. Still, the workers report being regularly cheated out of the equivalent of two days' wages every week, even though their base wage is only 53 cents an hour.

 

Mattel claims it doesn't operate at the Xin Yi factory, one of its licensees does, nonetheless it has "dispensed an audit team to the facility."

 

Another abuse-ridden report for the Web site, perhaps?

 

According to Kernaghan, Mattel has in the past sought and obtained special waivers in China so it could pay workers less than the legal minimum wage. It also has gotten waivers to allow it to force workers to do 32 hours of overtime a week - an amount that is 295 percent above China's legal limit.

 

Parents rightly reacted fiercely when lead paint was found on some of their children's Chinese-made toys. Now we just need that same intense anger on behalf of the young workers making them. We need some national consciousness-raising that will goose Congress into passing the Decent Working Conditions and Fair Competition Act, a bill that would make it illegal to sell goods made in a sweatshop.

 

In the documentary Mardi Gras: Made in China, Mardi Gras revelers were shown video of the Chinese factory where young women toiled to make the very beads they now had piled around their necks. Most were seriously discomforted by the sight. Americans don't want to buy goods made by people forced to work to exhaustion, around toxic fumes, for unsustainable pay, even if that means a good bargain.

 

It boils down to pure unadulterated greed. Greed that rides on the backs of millions of poor workers around the world,especially China.

 

Companies like WalMart continually pressure their suppliers to provide cheaper and cheaper products so people in this country can go to their local WallyWorld and save a few cents on toys or tupperware.

 

And how do those products get to be cheaper and cheaper? Lower costs for the raw materials? No. Lower costs for shipping? No. Plant owners taking less profit? No. US company CEOs taking a paycut from their $20 million salaries? No. Investors taking less profit? No. The Walton heirs taking a hit on their $15 billion plus each net worth? Not bloody likely.

 

Those lower prices are achieved one way. By paying already underpaid and overworked factory employees in places like China and India even less! And by making them work even more hours for the same pittance.

 

Meanwhile we in this country pretend we don't really know what's going on in those Chinese and Indian factories because we need that Tickle Me Elmo for our kids damnit! Or we say "Hey, no one's forcing them to keep those jobs." Or "If we force those companies to pay higher wages,they'll just moves the jobs somewhere else." Or "If these factories weren't here, there would be no jobs." Or "The market decides what is a suitable wage." Or "800rmb a month is pretty darned good for someone with zero skills and even less education."

 

Bulls@#t! Bulls@#t! Bulls@#t! and Bulls@#t!

 

If we really cared about all those workers toiling away in all those factories we could do something about it. But we won't because we're all too damn greedy to pay an extra penny for anything, from the end user in the check-out line at Walmart to those Walton kids sitting on their piles of money in Bentonville.

 

Now everyone can blast away with the expected defenses of good old American capitalism and "what the market will bear" and all that stuff. Go ahead, I've heard it all before. IMHO it's all just different ways of saying "Greed is good."

Edited November 6, 2007 by IllinoisDave (see edit history)

[Randy W]

Just the fact that companies do hire these snoops shows that shining a media spotlight on such issues does make a difference. Public awareness leads to bad publicity which in turn makes the companies more careful.

 

Make a difference? Yes, the difference is that a very small percentage of the public have their opinions swayed by what they see on Hard Copy and MTV. The rest will keep looking and buying the best products at the cheapest price and fill up their cars using oil from the mideast on the way there.

 

The world is driven by market and by price; it's just that simple.

Sighing and saying "oh well that's just the way the world is, we might as well accept it" makes more of a difference? Attitudes like that is what perpetuates this exploitation of workers.

Right on Carl!!! Whatever happened to the good ole days when people gave a rat's rump about someone other than themselves?? I reckon the 'we' generation moved to the 'me' generation. 'I got mine so who gives a flip if you get your?'

 

Seems like it's fend for yourself and damn the rest of 'em. No wonder our country is in such a pitiful state of affairs!!

 

 

Come on, guys! I believe Shaq was making a statement about the way things are, and not an endorsement.

[warpedbored]

Before this turns into a political arguement let me say that this is not a left vs right issue. It's about human rights. The GOP rags on China about human rights violations as much as the Democrats do if not more.

[Guest ShaQuaNew]

Just the fact that companies do hire these snoops shows that shining a media spotlight on such issues does make a difference. Public awareness leads to bad publicity which in turn makes the companies more careful.

 

Make a difference? Yes, the difference is that a very small percentage of the public have their opinions swayed by what they see on Hard Copy and MTV. The rest will keep looking and buying the best products at the cheapest price and fill up their cars using oil from the mideast on the way there.

 

The world is driven by market and by price; it's just that simple.

Sighing and saying "oh well that's just the way the world is, we might as well accept it" makes more of a difference? Attitudes like that is what perpetuates this exploitation of workers.

Right on Carl!!! Whatever happened to the good ole days when people gave a rat's rump about someone other than themselves?? I reckon the 'we' generation moved to the 'me' generation. 'I got mine so who gives a flip if you get your?'

 

Seems like it's fend for yourself and damn the rest of 'em. No wonder our country is in such a pitiful state of affairs!!

 

 

Come on, guys! I believe Shaq was making a statement about the way things are, and not an endorsement.

 

You think?

 

You know, it's interesting when you talk to the people of China about whether they are being exploited you get an entirely different picture. It sounds like there are more knights ready to rescue than there are fair maidens.

 

Each time I visit China I learn more and more about its people and culture. I must admit that I too was force fed from the spoon telling me that China is red and bad, forces long hours at low wages, and has a government that is not good for anyone. Then, upon arriving there and talking to the people in the big cities and countryside, I got a much different picture. In my view, and this is an in general pontification about my own personal observation, is that the working people of China are happier than the people of the USA.

Edited November 8, 2007 by ShaQuaNew (see edit history)

[rogerluli]

Just the fact that companies do hire these snoops shows that shining a media spotlight on such issues does make a difference. Public awareness leads to bad publicity which in turn makes the companies more careful.

 

Make a difference? Yes, the difference is that a very small percentage of the public have their opinions swayed by what they see on Hard Copy and MTV. The rest will keep looking and buying the best products at the cheapest price and fill up their cars using oil from the mideast on the way there.

 

The world is driven by market and by price; it's just that simple.

Sighing and saying "oh well that's just the way the world is, we might as well accept it" makes more of a difference? Attitudes like that is what perpetuates this exploitation of workers.

Right on Carl!!! Whatever happened to the good ole days when people gave a rat's rump about someone other than themselves?? I reckon the 'we' generation moved to the 'me' generation. 'I got mine so who gives a flip if you get your?'

 

Seems like it's fend for yourself and damn the rest of 'em. No wonder our country is in such a pitiful state of affairs!!

 

 

Come on, guys! I believe Shaq was making a statement about the way things are, and not an endorsement.

 

You think?

 

You know, it's interesting when you talk to the people of China about whether they are being exploited you get an entirely different picture. It sounds like there are more knights ready to rescue than there are fair maidens.

 

Each time I visit China I learn more and more about its people and culture. I must admit that I too was force fed from the spoon telling me that China is red and bad, forces long hours at low wages, and has a government that is not good for anyone. Then, upon arriving there and talking to the people in the big cities and countryside, I got a much different picture. In my view, and this is an in general pontification about my own personal observation, is that the working people of China are happier than the people of the USA.

 

I recommend you do a lot more in-depth reading about China and if you get Chinese TV watch some of the excellent documentaries that are shown about how many people really live rather than depending on the "smiling faces" that are shown to a laowei... B)

[rogerluli]

In more labor news...

 

 

China warns companies evading new labour law

 

BEIJING (AFP) ¡ª Chinese companies are trying to evade a new law that will make it harder to sack employees, prompting a government warning that they may have to pay "a heavy price," state media said Friday.

 

The Labour Contract Law, to take effect early next year, offers staff with more than 10 years of service at a company the right to sign a new contract that will make it harder to fire them, the China Daily reported.

 

In an apparent bid to evade the law, major telecom equipment maker Huawei recently ordered 7,000 employees who had been with the company for more than eight years to quit and then reapply, according to the paper.

 

"We have carried out probes into such cases," an official with the state-controlled All China Federation of Trade Unions told the paper.

 

The practice is apparently so widespread the government is planning special regulations dealing with companies that seek to evade the new law.

 

"Violators will have to pay a heavy price," said Chang Kai, an official with the Legal Affairs Office of the State Council, or Cabinet, according to the paper.

 

A spokeswoman at Shenzhen-based Huawei, in south China, told AFP she did not know the exact reasons why 7,000 people had been told to resign and reapply for their old positions.

 

"We don't have any official statement on this issue," she told AFP by telephone.

 

China is notorious for frequent violations of basic labour rights, often made possible as company owners colluding with local officials.

[rogerluli]

Just the fact that companies do hire these snoops shows that shining a media spotlight on such issues does make a difference. Public awareness leads to bad publicity which in turn makes the companies more careful.

 

Make a difference? Yes, the difference is that a very small percentage of the public have their opinions swayed by what they see on Hard Copy and MTV. The rest will keep looking and buying the best products at the cheapest price and fill up their cars using oil from the mideast on the way there.

 

The world is driven by market and by price; it's just that simple.

Sighing and saying "oh well that's just the way the world is, we might as well accept it" makes more of a difference? Attitudes like that is what perpetuates this exploitation of workers.

Right on Carl!!! Whatever happened to the good ole days when people gave a rat's rump about someone other than themselves?? I reckon the 'we' generation moved to the 'me' generation. 'I got mine so who gives a flip if you get your?'

 

Seems like it's fend for yourself and damn the rest of 'em. No wonder our country is in such a pitiful state of affairs!!

 

 

Come on, guys! I believe Shaq was making a statement about the way things are, and not an endorsement.

 

You think?

 

You know, it's interesting when you talk to the people of China about whether they are being exploited you get an entirely different picture. It sounds like there are more knights ready to rescue than there are fair maidens.

 

Each time I visit China I learn more and more about its people and culture. I must admit that I too was force fed from the spoon telling me that China is red and bad, forces long hours at low wages, and has a government that is not good for anyone. Then, upon arriving there and talking to the people in the big cities and countryside, I got a much different picture. In my view, and this is an in general pontification about my own personal observation, is that the working people of China are happier than the people of the USA.

 

I recommend you do a lot more in-depth reading about China and if you get Chinese TV watch some of the excellent documentaries that are shown about how many people really live rather than depending on the "smiling faces" that are shown to a laowei...

 

Here's an excellent example of what I mean Jesse...

 

http://img57.imageshack.us/img57/9568/minjunexecutionyuepo3.jpg

 

Yue Minjun's painting 'Execution' which recently sold at Sotheby's for 5.9 million $...

[Guest ShaQuaNew]

In more labor news...

 

 

China warns companies evading new labour law

 

BEIJING (AFP) ¡ª Chinese companies are trying to evade a new law that will make it harder to sack employees, prompting a government warning that they may have to pay "a heavy price," state media said Friday.

 

The Labour Contract Law, to take effect early next year, offers staff with more than 10 years of service at a company the right to sign a new contract that will make it harder to fire them, the China Daily reported.

 

In an apparent bid to evade the law, major telecom equipment maker Huawei recently ordered 7,000 employees who had been with the company for more than eight years to quit and then reapply, according to the paper.

 

Roger, please understand that I understand that there are abuses going on in the Chinese job market. There are however a large number of companies in China that recognize the value of good treatment and reward to their employees. Personally, I think fewer restrictions are better, but again, that is my personal view. You see this kind of thing happening in American companies every single day with one exception. The American company will not hire them back.

Edited November 9, 2007 by ShaQuaNew (see edit history)

[hakkamike]

In more labor news...

 

 

China warns companies evading new labour law

 

BEIJING (AFP) ¡ª Chinese companies are trying to evade a new law that will make it harder to sack employees, prompting a government warning that they may have to pay "a heavy price," state media said Friday.

 

The Labour Contract Law, to take effect early next year, offers staff with more than 10 years of service at a company the right to sign a new contract that will make it harder to fire them, the China Daily reported.

 

In an apparent bid to evade the law, major telecom equipment maker Huawei recently ordered 7,000 employees who had been with the company for more than eight years to quit and then reapply, according to the paper.

 

Roger, please understand that I understand that there are abuses going on in the Chinese job market. There are however a large number of companies in China that recognize the value of good treatment and reward to their employees. Personally, I think fewer restrictions are better, but again, that is my personal view. You see this kind of thing happening in American companies every single day with one exception. The American company will not hire them back.

And what is their reward lol lol.. How did U guys get women from China anyway, because they love u, give me a damn break. They are all here becaue of this crap..

[credzba]

And what is their reward lol lol.. How did U guys get women from China anyway, because they love u, give me a damn break. They are all here becaue of this crap..

 

 

I read many different views in this, and I can see each person view.

I think it comes down to math, and yes what people are willing to pay.

 

To the extent that a single, or very few "top" people in a company make outrageously more percentage of the profit than the actual workers, then it is exploitation, and seems to need correction.

 

If you treat the problem by just saying "You must pay your employees more (whatever that more is) you ignore the fact that you can loose everyone job by driving the companies customers to another low cost provider.

 

It seems that the measure of a company should be how the people at the top are paid in comparison to the people at the bottom. I am not saying equivalent pay, but a fair distribution of profits.

 

I have NO problem with my boss telling me, I am sorry guys, no raises again this year, and we have to work more hours to get this out or our business will go elsewhere. He is telling me how we can all continue to get paid.

 

I would have a BIG problem if he gave no raises, wanted us working outrageous hours, and his salary went up my a huge amount.

 

So, it is not a matter of how much a person is paid, they all try to get the job that pays the most they can get (given some barriers to movement).

What should be monitored, and outlawed is the dis-proportionate profit of owners/executives at the expense of workers.

 

I think this is what everyone is saying, it is just some are so focused on a single piece of this discussion, they are missing the bigger picture.

 

peace?

[GZBILL]

And what is their reward lol lol.. How did U guys get women from China anyway, because they love u, give me a damn break. They are all here becaue of this crap..

 

 

To the extent that a single, or very few "top" people in a company make outrageously more percentage of the profit than the actual workers, then it is exploitation, and seems to need correction.

 

...

 

It seems that the measure of a company should be how the people at the top are paid in comparison to the people at the bottom. I am not saying equivalent pay, but a fair distribution of profits.

 

I would have a BIG problem if he gave no raises, wanted us working outrageous hours, and his salary went up my a huge amount.

 

...

 

What should be monitored, and outlawed is the dis-proportionate profit of owners/executives at the expense of workers.

 

You are living in a fairy tale. On this planet it is more than customary for CEOs to earn $1 million + while the average salary for those in the company is about $40k. And it is not going to change in your lifetime.

[IllinoisDave]

And what is their reward lol lol.. How did U guys get women from China anyway, because they love u, give me a damn break. They are all here becaue of this crap..

 

 

To the extent that a single, or very few "top" people in a company make outrageously more percentage of the profit than the actual workers, then it is exploitation, and seems to need correction.

 

...

 

It seems that the measure of a company should be how the people at the top are paid in comparison to the people at the bottom. I am not saying equivalent pay, but a fair distribution of profits.

 

I would have a BIG problem if he gave no raises, wanted us working outrageous hours, and his salary went up my a huge amount.

 

...

 

What should be monitored, and outlawed is the dis-proportionate profit of owners/executives at the expense of workers.

 

You are living in a fairy tale. On this planet it is more than customary for CEOs to earn $1 million + while the average salary for those in the company is about $40k. And it is not going to change in your lifetime.

 

You're right and that's the problem! The attitude that "Oh well, it's customary, live with it." Until people in this country and world decide to stop putting people in office who believe that the distribution of wealth is just fine and that the rich should get richer and the poor should get poorer, we'll all live under their thumbs.