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"Under unrelenting pressure to cut costs, American companies are now replacing high-wage workers here with like quality, low-wage workers abroad. With new information technologies allowing products and now knowledge-based services to flow more easily cross borders, global labor arbitrage is likely to be an enduring feature of the economy."
Stephen Roach (2004)
somewhere Karl Marx is grinning from ear to ear . . .Stephen Roach (2004)
India Factory Workers Revolt, Kill Company President
Town of Yanam in India.
(2012)
Workers at the Regency Ceramics factory in India raided the home of their boss, and beat him senseless with lead pipes after a wage dispute turned ugly.
The workers were enraged enough to kill Regency’s president K. C. Chandrashekhar after their union leader, M. Murali Mohan, was killed by baton-wielding riot police on Thursday. The labor violence occurred in Yanam, a small city in Andra Pradesh state on India’s east coast. Police were called to the factory by management to quell a labor dispute. The workers had been calling for higher pay and reinstatement of previously laid off workers since October. (Forbes)
Outcry over killing of a Bangladeshi labour leader
Haroon Habib
The alleged murder of a labour leader has invited international condemnation with a leading human rights body demanding that the Bangladesh government bring the perpetrators to book and stop such killings.
The victim, Aminul Islam (39), a well-known labour leader in the country's readymade garments sector, was found dead last week with severe torture marks on his body after his mysterious disappearance from near his workplace in Ashulia, on the outskirt of Dhaka. The family of Islam alleged that law enforcement agencies had tortured him to death and dumped the body. His body was exhumed following a court order.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a letter to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina that Islam, president of the Savar and Ashulia units of the Bangladesh Garment & Industrial Workers Federation, disappeared on April 4, and his tortured body was found two days later in Ghatail, 100 km from Dhaka. The labour leader, who was also an organiser with the Bangladesh Centre for Workers' Solidarity (BCWS), a non-government organisation for workers rights, had been detained in June 2010 and allegedly tortured by members of the intelligence agency, the HRW claimed .
“The brutal murder of the labour leader raises serious concerns of government involvement,”
(The Hindu)
Riot at Foxconn Factory Underscores Rift in China
By DAVID BARBOZA and KEITH BRADSHER
SHANGHAI — The images and video began to appear on Chinese social networking sites early Monday: buildings with shattered windows, overturned police cars, huge crowds of young people milling about in the dark and riot police in formation.
The online postings were from a disturbance late Sunday that shut down a manufacturing facility in Taiyuan in north China, where 79,000 workers were employed.
State-run news media said 5,000 police officers had to be called in to quell a riot that began as a dispute involving a group of workers and security guards at a factory dormitory.
The unrest was noteworthy because the factory site is managed by Foxconn Technology, one of the world’s biggest electronics manufacturers and an important supplier to companies like Apple, Dell, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard.
A spokesman for Foxconn said the company was investigating the cause of the incident. But analysts say worker unrest in China has grown more common because workers are more aware of their rights, and yet have few outlets to challenge or negotiate with their employers.
When they do, though, the results can be ugly and, because of social media and the Web, almost instantly transmitted to the world in their rawest and most unfiltered form.
“At first it was a conflict between the security guards and some workers,” said a man who was reached by telephone after he posted images online. The man said he was a Foxconn employee. “But I think the real reason is they were frustrated with life.”
The company said that as many as 2,000 workers were involved . . . (NYT)
when the sons and daughters of farmers spontaneously organize in factories is that considered creative labor - the old keep on keepin' on. . .