BS: Chinese sweatshops/cost of your computer

Subject: RE: BS: Chinese sweatshops/cost of your computer
From: Big Mick
Date: 28 Feb 09 - 10:39 PM

Yep, that is what I am saying, Alice. The person on the street, including many of us here, just have to shop price, despite our best intentions. The solution has to come in trade agreements, regulations, and as you point out, global trade contracts or compacts.

Mick

Subject: RE: BS: Chinese sweatshops/cost of your computer
From: Alice
Date: 28 Feb 09 - 10:35 PM

Components for just about all the goods we buy in America are made in China or some other country, even if they are assembled here.
see this site:
http://www.made-in-china.com/quick-products/Mechanical-Components.html


The answer is to make working conditions an issue that our government must address in the arena of global trade contracts.

Subject: RE: BS: Chinese sweatshops/cost of your computer
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Feb 09 - 10:24 PM

It means all of those things, Mick. It is time that our products & their prices begin to reflect the true value of what it takes to produce them safely...both for people and for the environment.

Computer keys? Why not standardize them and hire folks HERE to recycle them and salvage usable keys? Maybe someone already is doing that.

Subject: RE: BS: Chinese sweatshops/cost of your computer
From: Big Mick
Date: 28 Feb 09 - 10:13 PM

I think that would be a component of what I am talking about, Bill. But it isn't good enough to just inspect the conditions of labor. It also has to include legislation that penalizes the things that we don't allow our employers to do. It is much more comprehensive than just inspecting for the conditions. It is providing disincentive for laws that don't protect the groundwater from dumping of chemicals, laws that don't protect against child labor, and laws that allow unsafe working conditions.

I have always said that our laws ought to be viewed as a reflection of our national sense of right and wrong, our national sense of morals, as it were. If we believe it is wrong to poison our groundwater, then it is wrong (according to our sense of national morality) for anyone to do it. It doesn't mean we don't trade with China. It does mean that as long as they choose to not have certain basic standards in a few critical areas, then they would pay a tariff based on that, that say, Canada would not. If Canada chooses to subsidize their lumber industry, and we do not, then they would pay a tariff based on that industry. But they would not on true free trade, and based on having laws that protect workers, make for safe workplaces, and good environmental standards. It could be done, and would encourage a truly competitive marketplace based on sound management practices, and not based on how many people they can cripple, how many kids they consign to a life of labor without education, or how badly they can screw up the environment.

We wouldn't be telling them how to run their country, as much as we are saying that we give a better deal to those that believe in the same types of things we do.

Mick

Subject: RE: BS: Chinese sweatshops/cost of your computer
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Feb 09 - 09:57 PM

What I think is that anyone who wishes to contract with a foreign country to produce their product(s) should be REQUIRED to obtain photos/video of the conditions in the factory and make these available to whatever agency is concerned with oversight.......and that updates to the data would be required every 2 years on a random date...unannounced.

Now, I suppose that this would need some tweaking as an idea, but basically I am asking for regular inspection and minimal standards.

Subject: RE: BS: Chinese sweatshops/cost of your computer
From: Big Mick
Date: 28 Feb 09 - 09:41 PM

Actually, Bob, it isn't protectionism that's bad. It's the wrong type of protectionism. Blanket protectionism of the Fortress America type just doesn't work. But the type I described above would absolutely have the desired effect. And the opposite, the wide open, laissez-faire, unfettered market only encourages the greed mongers who are willing to sacrifice workers, and the coming generations, for their own ends.

Mick

Subject: RE: BS: Chinese sweatshops/cost of your computer
From: Big Mick
Date: 28 Feb 09 - 09:38 PM

I am not sure why a regular would feel the need to be anon on this.

Actually, bhsc is, I believe, on the right track. For years I have beat my head against the wall with trying to educate the public on the issue of Walmart and the product it gets from companies using essentially slave labor. In China there is evidence of prison labor being used. In parts of the Asian sub continent there is a ton of evidence for child labor and sweat shops. Even in the US we find this increasing. Our southern neighbors continue to have very weak worker protection. I believe that the draw of cheap prices is just too hard to overcome for average folks trying to feed and clothe their kids, to effectively get them to boycott those corporate entities that market to them. And I further believe that we cannot dictate to a sovereign nation what their laws have to be. But we can tie access to our markets to those labor standards and to environmental standards. For those countries that have rough parity in the key areas of workers rights, worker safety, and environmental compliance, we could have very few tariffs. In each of those areas, based on the laws of the land in those countries, we could enforce tariffs that would encourage them to compete on a fairer basis. I also believe that if said country is subsidizing their industry, that should be reflected as well. This would have the effect of levelling the playing field. Seems to me that this is what we need.

It is critical, in my opinion, for the Unions of the world to understand that this is not a national crisis. It is a world wide crisis. We (unions and their members) must cease to see ourselves as aligned with parties, and hold ourselves to rigid standards based on the values we hold dear. I am sick to death of getting a ton of attention during the election cycle, and once it is over, it's hard to get a call answered. Time for a much more radical, and independent, course of action.

All the best,

Mick

Subject: RE: BS: Chinese sweatshops/cost of your computer
From: Bobert
Date: 28 Feb 09 - 09:30 PM

Well, it's not all that easy, Reg-ster.... One of the things that prolonged the Great Depression was protectionism...

Yeah, I understand that its difficult not to revert to that but it's less about not buying Chinese made goods than putting pressure on the Chinese to pay their workers a living wage... When that occurs then the US goods will become more attractive becuase they will be competitive...

Fine line to walk here...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Chinese sweatshops/cost of your computer
From: GUEST,A Regular
Date: 28 Feb 09 - 09:02 PM

STOP buying products that are made in China. Period. Tell the owners of the store WHY you are stopping. And STOP!

Subject: RE: BS: Chinese sweatshops/cost of your computer
From: bald headed step child
Date: 28 Feb 09 - 07:52 PM

Since most of these shops are the result of US multi-national corps sending the work there for what amounts to slave labor, regulations need to be re-placed on them to discourage these practices.

Tarrifs based on worker compensation would be one place to start. These tarrifs would most certainly have to cover the corporations no matter what their home country is, and would need to be stiff enough to make it cheaper to pay a living wage than to just pay the fees, since the bottom line is what drives these people to do this in the first place.

BHSC

Subject: RE: BS: Chinese sweatshops/cost of your computer
From: Bobert
Date: 28 Feb 09 - 07:34 PM

And, as you know well, its not just computers, Mick... Its just about everything that China makes...

When the rest of the world is pushed to pay their workers competetive wages the US economy will go back to being on top... No doubt...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Chinese sweatshops/cost of your computer
From: Big Mick
Date: 28 Feb 09 - 07:30 PM

I really would like the discussion to swing towards strategies and actions.

Waddya think?

Subject: RE: BS: Chinese sweatshops/cost of your computer
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 28 Feb 09 - 07:04 PM

And the American companies who outsource the jobs to these manufactories are just as complicit.

If Americans don't have decent jobs, they can't purchase the products at all, despite any lower pricing. (And I'm sure most of the manufacturing savings goes to corporate profits, not reduced prices.)

Linn

Subject: RE: BS: Chinese sweatshops/cost of your computer
From: bald headed step child
Date: 28 Feb 09 - 06:29 PM

And they say slavery is dead.

Thanks for posting that Mick.

BHSC

Subject: BS: Chinese sweatshops/cost of your computer
From: Big Mick
Date: 28 Feb 09 - 06:06 PM

Seems a natural for discussion here. We all want to seem to be enlightened, so let us take a look at the cost of our ability to communicate cheaply:

NATIONAL LABOR COMMITTEE
New York, NY
Contact:   Barbara Briggs, 412-417-9384

Unprecedented View Inside the Prison-like Conditions at
High-Tech Sweatshop in China
Producing for HP, Dell, Lenovo, Microsoft and IBM

Today, the National Labor Committee (NLC) is releasing a 60-page report, High Tech Misery in China, documenting the grueling hours, low wages and draconian disciplinary measures at the Meitai factory in southern China. The 2,000 mostly-young women workers produce keyboards and other equipment for Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Lenovo, Microsoft and IBM. Along with worker interviews, photographs of primitive factory and dorm conditions and extensive internal company documents were smuggled out of the factory.

Full report:   http://www.nlcnet.org/article.php?id=613

        Workers sit on hard wooden stools as 500 computer keyboards an hour move down the assembly line, 12 hours a day, seven days a week, with just two days off a month. The workers have 1.1 seconds to snap on each key, an operation repeated 3,250 times an hour, 35,750 a day, 250,250 a week and over one million times a month. The pace is relentless.
        Workers are paid 1/50th of a cent for each operation they complete.
        Workers cannot talk, listen to music or even lift their heads to look around. They must periodically trim their nails, or be fined. Workers needing to use the bathroom must learn to hold it until there is a break. Security guards spy on the workers, who are prohibited from putting their hands in their pockets and are searched when they leave the factory.
        All overtime is mandatory and workers are at the factory up to 87 hours a week, while earning a take-home wage of just 41 cents an hour. Workers are being cheated of up to 19 percent of the wages due them.
        Ten to twelve workers share each overcrowded dorm room, sleeping on metal bunk beds and draping old sheets over their cubicles for privacy. Workers bathe using small plastic buckets and must walk down several flights of stairs to fetch hot water.
        Workers are locked in the factory compound four days a week and prohibited from even taking a walk.
        For breakfast the workers receive a thin rice gruel. On Fridays they receive a small chicken leg and foot to symbolize ¡§their improving life.¡¨
nbsp;       Workers are instructed to "love the company like your home",¨continuously striving for perfection¨ and to spy on and actively monitor each other¨
        China provides large subsidies to its exporters. In 2008, the U.S. trade deficit with China in advanced technology products is expected to reach $74 billion. There are 1.4 million electronic assembly jobs left in the U.S. paying $12.72 to $14.41 an hour which may be lost due to China's low wages and repression of worker rights.

One Metai worker summed up the general feeling in the factory: "I feel like I am serving a prison sentence...The factory is forever pressing down on our heads and will not tolerate even the tiniest mistake. When working, we work continuously. When we eat, we have to eat with lightning speed. The security guards are like policemen watching over prisoners. We're really livestock and shouldn't be called workers.¨

Charles Kernaghan, director of the NLC commented, "God help us if the labor-management relations being developed in China become the new low standard for the rest of the world. The $200 personal computer and $22.99 keyboard may seem like a great bargain. But they come at a terrible cost. The low wages and lack of worker rights protections in China are leading the race to the bottom in the global sweatshop economy, where there are no winners.¨