Wage slavery

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/disney-world-in-which-chinese-children-toil-for-76-hours-a-week-2130870.html

Staff at two factories making Disney toys for Westerners employed children between the ages of 14 and 16 in breach of local labour laws and the entertainment giant's own code of conduct, according to a report by China Labour Watch (CLW), a US NGO.

Along with their adult colleagues, the children worked 12-hour days in "unacceptable conditions", the 25-page document says. One factory was making Winnie the Pooh and Piglet toys and the other was making Disney dolls and stamps. They also made goods for other companies.

CLW said it launched the undercover investigation because problems had been found at factories producing Disney-branded goods in the past. In 1996, another NGO, the US National Labour Committee, found abuses at suppliers in Haiti in a report called The US in Haiti: How to get Rich on 11c an Hour.

Last year, CLW found breaches of working hours, wage and contract laws at a factory in Guangdong that was producing Disney gifts after a 17-year-old worker, Liu Pan, was crushed to death in machinery. CLW claimed the factory was hiring workers as young as 13. To uncover current conditions, CLW randomly selected two plants making Disney-branded merchandise, sent in undercover investigators and interviewed staff.

According to the report, working hours were excessively long: two four-hour stints daily between Monday and Saturday were typically followed by another four hours of compulsory overtime in the evenings, adding up to 76 hours a week. The children also worked these hours, up to 330 a month, including 150 of forced overtime, it said, adding they sometimes worked seven days in a row.

Workers were supplied with gloves for handling hazardous chemicals but allegedly did not wear them because it made their work rate too slow. As a result, some of them had developed skin rashes, while for some, layers of skin were "falling off".

Staff complained they found it difficult to resign, and could do so only at set times, leaving with less pay than they were owed. There were "harsh and unreasonable" discipline practices, and dormitories – housing typically 12 workers each – were said to be dirty and smelly. Daily food at one of the factories consisted of two vegetable dishes and one meat meal. The report said: "In all of the meat dishes, one can only see two small pieces of meat or fish. Regardless of what kind of food or oil it is cooked in, workers often detect food additives, hair or cockroaches."

Although members of staff were allowed to join a trade union, they were not aware it existed and were not members. There was no safety training, no fire drills and "fire hazards existed", the report said. After deductions for accommodation, meals and drinking water, one factory paid 1,100 yuan (£103) a month – about three yuan an hour.

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=517848&in_page_id=2

British factories producing clothes for High Street retailers are little more than illegal sweatshops where workers are treated like slaves, an investigation will claim today.

Many are paid as little as £2.50 an hour, less than half the minimum wage of £5.93, according to the report. The workers are regularly threatened with the sack if they do not work faster to meet tough targets set by aggressive supervisors.

In some cases, the firms appear to circumvent legislation by putting a higher rate of pay on wage slips, but paying employees for far fewer hours than they actually work.

The shocking exploitation, more commonly associated with sweatshops in the third world, was discovered by an undercover reporter who spent three months working in a factory run by Sammi Leisurewear in Leicester.

The reporter saw branded clothes destined for New Look, BHS, Peacocks, Jane Norman and C&A being either made or packed there.

He discovered that many essential safety guidelines were being ignored.

The only fire exit was completely blocked and the main exit was partially obstructed by boxes. The sewing machines had no safety guards, the work area was too cramped and there was no supply of drinking water, he found.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1285980/Revealed-Inside-Chinese-suicide-sweatshop-workers-toil-34-hour-shifts-make-iPod.html

In what's been dubbed the 'i-Nightmare factory', the scandal focuses on two sprawling complexes near Shenzhen, two decades ago a small fishing port and now a city of 17 million people. This is the epicentre of operations for Foxconn, China's biggest exporter, which makes products under licence for Apple using a 420,000-strong workforce in Shenzhen. They have 800,000 workers country-wide. And as Jobs was speaking in San Francisco, new measures were being secretly introduced at Foxconn to prevent the suicide scandal from worsening and damaging Apple sales globally. Astonishingly, this involves forcing all Foxconn employees to sign a new legally binding document promising that they won't kill themselves. The document, a copy of which has been obtained by the Mail, states that all employees (or their dependants) must promise not to sue the company as the result of 'any unexpected death or injury, including suicide or self torture'. The owner of this massive, highly controlled iPad and iPhone factory has also decided to install something he's dubbed 'ai xin wang' - which translates literally as 'nets of a loving heart' In reality, these 'loving hearts' are 10ft high wire fences on the roofs and 15ft wide nets at the base of all buildings. The human traps are to prevent people jumping to their deaths and smashing themselves on the pavements below.

[[strawman]]

It's ok, they're being paid. Slavery is unpaid labour. Are they held captive? No, can they leave of their own free will? Yes, end of story.

If it keeps my clothes cheap - so be it. Minimum wage was always a vile tool used by socialists - I'm glad people are finding a way round it.

[[/strawman]]

Taken directly from the comments pages.

edited 11th Nov '10 4:33:53 PM by Shichibukai

I wonder what factors hinder the effectiveness of unions in China.

The oppressiveness of the system there, I would think. Contrary to popular belief, the PRC is rather more fascist these days than socialist, which means worker's rights are right out.

"The shocking exploitation, more commonly associated with sweatshops in the third world, was discovered by an undercover reporter who spent three months working in a factory run by Sammi Leisurewear in Leicester."

in Leicester.

in Leicester.

in Leicester.

in Leicester.

Leicester is an English city

edited 11th Nov '10 5:03:51 PM by Shichibukai

Ouch. Weren't we over having sweatshop in the first world nations? Decades ago?

So you would think Pvt Num 11.

Never put it past the greedy to step on someones neck because they can and because it makes them money.

If I recall Disney has a rather dismal record when it comes to its products.

edited 11th Nov '10 6:19:40 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Dude, we have underground textile mills in the USA. The pay tends to be better, as in quite a bit over the American minimum wage,but that's not much consolation if you have brown lung. You really, really should know enough not to be surprised by this sort of thing.

And don't even get me started on illegal labor south of the border, which probably doesn't steal very many jobs I would be glad to have, but does result in some piss poor pay in a first world nation.

edited 11th Nov '10 6:38:18 PM by Roman

I knew about wage slavery well before I made this thread. The only thing that's surprising is when people deny it's slavery.

Some sweatshops save on long-term capital expenditure by paying unfortunate labourers to use outdated and dangerous machinery at a risk to their health, sometimes paying higher wages so that they will shut up and work.

This is what Foxconn is up to. It is still cheaper for them to keep better paid workers in hazardous, demoralising conditions than change the workplace to meet western regulations.

edited 11th Nov '10 7:47:17 PM by Shichibukai

There was a story I read a few years ago, about workers who held their eyelids open with clothespins so that they didn't fall asleep after working 16-hour shifts. One of the workers said that she wished to save up enough of her meager pay so that she could open a factory of her own.

She did not say whether or not her employees would themselves have to clothespin their eyes open.

It's sad when children are employed in conditions like that to make... Disney princess merchandise. Oh, the irony.

You're not dreaming hard enough, kids!

edited 11th Nov '10 7:48:59 PM by LoniJay

They need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and make the smart decisions about their lives, of course.

I don't know what's worse/more amusing about this thread. That China actually enforces some form of labor laws or that many people's responses here are all "didn't we get rid of this X decades ago" or strawman shite about not dreaming enough.

Also, Disney is a known repeat offender for this type of shite. They'll never change.

edited 11th Nov '10 7:54:45 PM by MajorTom

Sorry, I was trying to make a comment on the contrast between Disney's marketing and thei actions (not that it's really surprising, I suppose). I wasn't actually trying to suggest people really thought that...

...Well, now I know why I dislike Disney...

This kind of crap is unacceptable, pure and simple. EDIT: I was well aware that it went on elsewhere - but I thought developed nations had outright made running one of these shops pretty much a thing of the past.

Guess I was wrong.

edited 11th Nov '10 8:14:25 PM by pvtnum11

What's worse is that companies in supposedly "developed" nations use things like this to justify treating workers worse. In other words, "China does it, so we can too."

^^^ So you're actually going to make light of abusive working conditions and throw out strawman accusations rather than acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, there might be a flaw in the sort of psuedo-objectivist hardcore capitalistic philosophies that breed these conditions?

I guess that's the easy way to debate when you live in a world where anybody who isn't a staunch laissez-faire capitalist must by nature be a naive bleeding-heart communist radical.

I'm sorry, I think you're misunderstanding me. I made a sarcastic comment about Disney, but I wasn't trying to make light of the situation or defend those who support it.

If I've given that impression it wasn't intentional, and I apologise.

edited 12th Nov '10 1:00:19 AM by LoniJay

That is horrible indeed. But, honestly, I am not sure what can be done.

I mean, if people agree to work in such conditions, it means that every other choice they currently have is even worse, right? And, if companies are made to improve their standards, they might just decide that it is not profitable for them to employ these people at all - they'd rather hire someone closer to home if it ends up costing them the same. So they might simply close these factories, and people will be left jobless. Again, if being unemployed or being employed at some different workplace realistically available to them would be preferable to the horrible conditions they endure, why would they stay?

I am no expert, of course, and economics never been my strong point. Is it possible to make factory owners to improve the conditions and do not make employees lose their jobs at the same time?

Yeah. Read Charles Dickens. Compare to now. It can be done, it's just a matter of everyone agreeing to use the same standard. The problem isn't absolute cheapness, the problem is relative cheapness, aka competitiveness. If everyone is under the same constrains, then the absolute salaries can be risen.

And it's not necessarily the best choice they have: only the first choice they could get. When you are a wage slave, you are only paid enough to survive so you can come work tomorrow. Looking for other jobs or unionizing is impossible. Especially if you are illiterate, or an immigrant. It's even worse if you are illegal because you have no rights whatsoever: you are outside of the law, nobody cares if you are killed (if you kill you'll be expulsed though).

...Actually, I'll take back my comment on being ignorant - I remembered something I had read close to twenty years ago.

Illegals coming over from Asia will usually be forced to work in a sweatshop to pay back the "ticket" they used to get over here, on some rickety tramp freighter. I remember reading about the plight of a boat-load of folks from... somewhere. Cold noodles and rice, no air conditioning, and crammed in like sardines - only to look forward to working off their debt in some sweatshop, in the land of liberty.

Seriously, what the hell guys...

The "boat people" from Vietnam.

^^^^^@Loni: Sorry, I was actually directing that comment at Major Tom. I just put the wrong number of ^s. My bad. I'm pretty sure I counted right this time, though!

edited 12th Nov '10 1:51:42 PM by TheBadinator

I think the particular example I read about was from elsewhere than Vietnam, actually. I want to say it was China, but I honestly can't recall. it was an old "US News and World Report" article.