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<DIV><FONT face=Calibri>I take this as a case in point that China has become
more Capitalist and Libertarian in the economic sector - in the traditional
sense of 18th century entrepreneurial Capitalism and individualistic English
notions of liberty from government control - than the US or other Western
nations have ever been in fact and despite presentations to the contrary since
the 18th century. Of course, the Western corporations as well as those
from Korea and Japan have taken full advantage of this, encouraged and
promote it, and sustain it.</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><BR></DIV>
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<DIV style="font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title="mailto:unionyes@ameritech.net CTRL + Click to follow link"
href="mailto:unionyes@ameritech.net">unionyes</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, June 30, 2010 9:07 AM</DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net
href="mailto:peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net">Peace-discuss</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> [Peace-discuss] Fw: memorial for workers who killed
themselves atthe factory making ipads</DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message -----
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=dbacon@igc.org href="mailto:dbacon@igc.org">David Bacon</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=dbacon@igc.org
href="mailto:dbacon@igc.org">dbacon@igc.org</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, June 30, 2010 12:31 AM</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> memorial for workers who killed themselves at the factory
making ipads</DIV></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000><X-TAB>
</X-TAB>SAN FRANCISCO, CA - 17JUNE10 - Chinese immigrants and Chinese-Americans
in San Francisco protest the long hours and bad conditions at the Foxconn
factory in southern China, where the Apple iPad is manufactured. They
lined up in front of Apple's flagship store in San Francisco, holding signs with
the names of workers at the factory who have committed suicide because of the
conditions.<BR><X-TAB> </X-TAB>Those conditions include
80 hours of overtime a month, according to the Chinese media.
Chinese law limits overtime to 36 hours per month. No one is allowed to
talk on the production line, and workers complain of constant high line speed
and speedup. Most workers live in huge dormitories, where often 12 people
share a room. <BR><X-TAB> </X-TAB>The
suicides include a man who jumped from a dormitory. He'd worked there for
two years. Another man, recently hired, slit his wrists and was taken to a
hospital. A woman hanged herself in the bathroom, and a man drowned in a
company swimming pool. The latest person committed suicide right after
Foxconn's head, Terry Guo, had visited the factory and taken journalists on a
tour.<BR><X-TAB> </X-TAB>Apple
Corporation was embarrassed by the disclosure of the conditions for the people
who make iPhones, iPods and iPads. The company, which has pushed for extra
production of the newly unveiled iPad, said it would compensate workers by
increasing the money it was paying Foxconn from 2.3% to 3% of the final price it
charges for an iPad. That's the equivalent of the amount Apple spends for
the device's aluminium back.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000><X-TAB>
</X-TAB>The protest and memorial was organized by San Francisco's Chinese
Progressive Association.</FONT></DIV>
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color=#000000><BR><BR><B>"From Silicon Valley to Shenzhen"</B> is a new book, to
be published later this year, about the electronics contract manufacturing
industry, by German sociologist Boy Leuthje. The following are excerpts
from the book's description of Foxconn:<BR><BR><X-TAB></X-TAB>The hallmark of
industrial mass work in Chinese contract manufacturing is the massive employment
of young, mostly women workers from rural areas ... Electronics contract
manufacturing combines wage labor from poor and undeveloped areas with highly
modern work and living environments in world market factories.<BR><X-TAB>
</X-TAB>In 2008, the company [Foxconn] reported 700.000 workers all over China,
320.000 of them alone in the giant Shenzhen Longhua facility ("Foxconn City"),
another 80.000 in other facilities in Shenzhen and the remainder in about half a
dozen newly built industrial parks in other parts of China, such as Kunshan,
Hangzhou, Nanjing, Yantai and
Wuhan.<BR><X-TAB> </X-TAB>Foxconn publicly
announced in 2008 that it would reduce its workforce of 700.000 in China
by 15%,. In the Shenzhen Longhua facility 60.000 workers were laid off in
late 2008 and early 2009 or did not return from their home villages after the
Chinese New Year.<BR><X-TAB> </X-TAB>Even relatively good benefits
in housing, food and recreation do not significantly stabilize the workforce. In
some major contract manufacturing plants, tragic incidents have highlighted the
often-desperate situation of individual workers, who seek to escape the
permanent pressure of management control and workplace stress. ... In 2006, the
situation in Foxconn's giant industrial park in Shenzhen also gave rise to the
first major public debate in China about the working conditions at contract
manufacturers. This subsequently caused significant changes in labor
relations.<BR><X-TAB> </X-TAB>A report in a
British tabloid exposed the working conditions in the production of Apple's
I-Pod music player at Foxconn. Chinese media then ran numerous
stories about ultra-low wages and extremely long working hours in Foxconn
factories in Shenzhen and other locations around the country. The company's
extensive control system could not prevent workers from reporting to Chinese
media that violation of labor laws was a common practice at
Foxconn.<X-TAB>
</X-TAB><BR><X-TAB> </X-TAB>[The
company's attitude] reflects the increasing difficulty multinational contract
manufacturers have in controlling the social and political costs of their
despotic low-wage regime.<BR><X-TAB> </X-TAB>Most recently, the tragic
series of suicides among young migrant workers in the same factory in early 2010
provoked unprecedented media publicity in China and internationally. In China,
the debate not only focussed on the fate of migrant workers, but also raised
profound questions about the need to change the model of economic development,
based on large-scale use of rural low-wage labor for export
production.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000><X-TAB>
</X-TAB>The tragic events in Foxconn City in 2010 underline the failure of
industry-proclaimed codes of conduct and their "monitoring" to achieve socially
responsible working conditions in this and other contract manufacturing
factories ... In China, a group of nine Chinese sociologists from leading
universities took the unusual step of issuing a collective appeal. In their
opinion, the crisis at Foxconn reveals deep problems in China's current model of
economic development. They challenge the factory regime at Foxconn, and call on
the Chinese national and local government and the concerned enterprises to allow
migrant workers to become "true citizens of the enterprise"</FONT></DIV>
<HR>
<DIV>For more articles and images, see <FONT color=#000000>
http://dbacon.igc.org</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and
Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008)</DIV>
<DIV>Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008</DIV>
<DIV><FONT
color=#000000>http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US</DIV>
<DIV>Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006)</DIV>
<DIV><FONT
color=#000000>http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border
(University of California, 2004)</DIV>
<DIV><FONT
color=#000000>http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html</FONT></DIV><X-SIGSEP><PRE>--
</PRE></X-SIGSEP>
<DIV>__________________________________<BR><BR>David Bacon, Photographs and
Stories<BR>http://dbacon.igc.org<BR><BR>__________________________________</DIV><BR>--
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