Season of Hardship Connects Struggling Workers in Two Worlds (photo: cop with club threatens child)

[Omaha Steve]

Edit on the cop issue in the title.

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/6800/season_of_hardship_connects_struggling_workers_in_two_worlds/

Wednesday Dec 29, 2010 11:20 am

By Michelle Chen


Bangladeshi police crack down on protesting garment workers. (Munir Uz Zaman/AFP/Getty Images)


Millions of Americans barely scraped by this holiday season, stuck in poverty-wage jobs or mired in unemployment. But the latest retail sector reports show that we did manage to shop a little more, perhaps because people are resorting to the material comforts of consumption to make up for the misery they've suffered as workers. And it's that appetite for consumer goods that has shaped the holiday wishlist of struggling workers on the other side of the world, who are growing increasingly impatient in their demands for a decent standard of living.

In China, local minimum-wage standards are rising incrementally as factory workers are increasingly eager to get a piece of the modified-capitalist pie. Beijing just announced a 21-percent boost starting in 2011, following a similar pay hike last summer, and several other provinces, like the trade hub Guangdong, have followed this trend in their recent wage reforms (though this doesn't necessarily mean that the laws will be followed).

Raising the wage floor is partially an effort to stimulate economic growth via consumption. But perhaps more importantly, it reflects the governent's concerns about escalating labor unrest, along with the private sector's anxieties about retaining workers and staving off rebellion.

The spontaneous strikes that rippled through China's auto industry over the past year alarmed both officials and employers, and resulted in modest gains for workers at multinational companies like Toyota and Honda, which openly capitalize on the country's absurdly low labor costs.

Employers, not surprisingly, claim that pushing up wages would impose an undue burden on their bottom line. And there are legitimate fears that rising labor costs, combined with arbitrary tax policies, could drive factories to simply move to cheaper regions, according to the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin. That's not to let employers off the hook, though. The main obstacle to achieving wage equity, CLB argues, is the lack of a truly democratic collective-bargaining system, which neither employers nor party officials have much interest in establishing:

So far however, the government has only used administrative means, raising the minimum wage, and coercion/persuasion when intervening in strikes and protests. What it has so far failed to do is to encourage employers and to empower employees to engage in collective bargaining that could establish decent and affordable wage levels and working conditions and practices that are acceptable to both management and labour.


FULL story at link.

[virgogal]

1. Was he actually beaten or was he threatened? I couldn't find

anything in the article that explained this picture.

[Dhalgren]

2. Does it really mater? It is a child and that is a pig with a club.

"Was he beaten?" Yes, he was fucking beaten...

[Whoa_Nelly]

3. The photo is disturbing

and perhaps serves as a point of global consumerism/corporate crime, as India may become the center for ownership to feed consumerism corruption between nations and China.
But...
Where in the story is Bangladesh mentioned outside of the photo?

Not saying anything about the OP here, just wondering about the bigger story.

[Dhalgren]

4. Here is at least one mention from the article:

"Yet recent violence in Bangladesh over wages highlights how labor tensions in the Global South are trending toward a mass movement. Earlier this month, thousands of workers demonstrated and blocked traffic at two factories outside Dhaka, outraged at the delayed implementation of a new minimum wage (which fell far short of union demands to begin with). In the aftermath of a bloody clash with police, the political volatility surrounding wage pressures appears to be reaching a breaking point across the region, and business interests are wising up to newly emboldened workers' willingness to hold both employers and government officials accountable."

"global consumerism/corporate crime" - nah, just plain old capitalism. Nothing is uglier in action...