I have been a member of a Yahoo newsgroup letter from China Labor Watch for a few weeks now. During that time I’ve received two emails detailing evidence of massive worker exploitation occurring in factories contracted by Adidas Corp. and Foxconn Corp. to manufacture their products. These and other accounts contained on the CLW site need to be read in order to fully understand the severity of the situation, but to summarize the conditions for you, gentle reader, universally throughout the sweatshops of China, of which the above are but a drop in the bucket, are to be found huge factories that employ thousands of workers, often as many as 15,000 at a time. They are sheltered in crude, cold-water dormitories on the campuses of the factories, and cramped by dozens into rooms that are often theft-ridden as a consequence of low-morale and alienation. The company makes them pay for a meager, lousy breakfast, along with all of their meals. That’s how the day begins.
Work is routinely deleterious and poisonous, and workers are, at best, poorly protected. Toxic fumes are a constant of production. Hands and arms are lost everyday to the factories of China. Pay is dingier than the dormitories, and the normative rate of 750 rmb per month, if he or she is so lucky (about a hundred and ten bucks a month) comes only after toiling up to 14 hours a day, almost every day. Many are allowed just one day off a month. Overtime is virtually mandatory and is compensated at an average of less than 5 rmb per hour (< $0.75), if at all. Production quotas are strict and are to be met unless one should suffer unpaid overtime or a fine. Fines are rampant for a long list of petty indiscretions, both on the line and in the dorms, and the shadow of infraction is essentially inescapable. It is the praxis of the management of these factories to psychologically intimidate and humiliate their workers at every turn. Workers are run ragged and are completely exploited. Of all of this occurs in breach of Chinese law and International Labor Organization rules. Dickens wouldn’t have known where to begin. These workers barely make $3.50 per day. That’s optimistic.
Given that the vast majority of these workers migrate from villages where they were going to make but a dollar a day, they hold these jobs as best they can. This is China for hundreds of millions of Chinese, really.
Yet, all of this said, in the course of scouring the CLW web page I have been confronted by an enormous dilemma: on one hand, the facts revealed about the sweatshops utilized by these corps are infuriating and elicit intense indignation, but very significantly on the other, CLW prefers to place the onus for their existence on the international corporations rather than where it rightfully belongs; squarely on the shoulders of the CCP bureaucrats and their cronies in the executive suites of these Chinese manufacturing firms. Coming more to the point, directly in the lap of the Chinese mentality and reality responsible for instituting and enforcing these conditions. That is where the real problem resides, and only secondarily with the Western Multinationals taking advantage of it.
The dilemma unfolds in a second direction. Again, on one hand CLW are noble tribunes for performing this hard-ball investigative work that dearly needs to be done, and yeoman journalists for the manner in which they provide clearly presented and thorough details of the conditions on the killing floors of these factories. On the other they are guilty, guilty, damn guilty of playing the Chinese victim of foreign oppression.
Yet, I take a step back. The dilemma unfolds in a third direction: CLW, in naming names (Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, Disney, Nike, Adidas, Reebok, Puma, Hasbro, et al.) and chronicling a litany abuses carried out in these contracted factories spewing out goods on the cheap for the above, in a very definite sense has no real choice but to go after these Big Names and bring to the attention of its Western readership the injustices carried out on behalf of the aforesaid corporations. On the other, they take the easy road of an adopted and nauseous Western liberal slant that allows them to view the multinational corporations as the first and foremost sponsors of this Capitalist venality, which is, for once, simply not the case here. However, do not think for a moment, reader, that I applaud the multi-corps complicity in this. I want nothing to do with this. In my heart, I only pray for its relent.
Behind all of this is a Chinese exploitation class, and one exceedingly important point needs to be added to this. This exploitation of Chinese workers has Taiwan’s name written all over it. Foxconn is a Taiwanese corp. , though they have apparently moved HQ to Yantai, Shandong - a hot development zone. So is Pou Chen Corp (Chinese name: BaoCheng Group). It has 150,000 Chinese workers in its shoe industry producing shoes for Nike, Adidas, and New Balance. (see CLW report). Stella International is based in Hong Kong, but has connections with Taiwan. (See CLW report). In fact, a very significant portion of the sweatshops operating in the Main land and cited by CLW are the result of Taiwanese FDI companies that take their orders from HQ’s in the R.O.C., or Raked Over the Coals, as I like to call it. It makes you wonder who won the war. One thing is quite certain: no one in the executive suites of these Taiwanese firms is suffering financially or emotionally because of their involvement with the Western multinationals.
The disconcerting fact is, you don’t hear a single word about this on the CLW website. It seems CLW feels it’s a lot sexier to go after the western multinationals, but doesn't have any bullets to fire at the Chinese management. It's absurd. It's a travesty.
Keep one last thing clearly in mind; if these workers aren’t being bled to death by the Taiwanese, they are definitely being bled to death by the management of the S.O.E.s (state owned enterprises) who contract out to the multi-corps. The party bureaucrats and the factory execs are reaping enormous profits from all of this, such that they can no doubt drive to work in a BMW from their new Western-style gated villa and back to it each day without a whisper of guilt on their conscience. Ah, China’s new exploit…, ehem, I mean prosperity class. Recent figures indicate that the top executive to worker pay disparity in China is higher by about 20% or more than their American counterparts, who make 265 times more than the average American worker.
Yet, CLW says little or nothing about this.
To be continued...
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