Foxconn trade union a sham

Oh dear. The highly publicised trade union at Foxconn, the factory whose output includes Apple iPhones, is not as worker-friendly as the PR makes out.

The official trade union federation, All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), of which Foxconn's is a member. is hardly likely to lead a walk-out. Any effective collective union activity in China has been unofficial and therefore illegal.

Now there's an election looming for union leaders and serious flaws in the process range from the farcical to banana republic.

Josh Eidelson writes in Salon:

When the Chinese factory giant Foxconn – famous for mass suicides and military-style management – announced recently that it would begin allowing workers to elect their own local union leaders, it brought a wave of positive press for its Western customers like Apple. But will it make any difference for Foxconn employees, the workers who make wildly popular products such as iPhones?

“The precedent we have for these democratic union elections is not very encouraging,” said Eli Friedman, a professor of international and comparative labor at Cornell. Even if “they’re run reasonably well, and you get some kind of activist” elected as a local union leader, “the problem is when they actually try to do anything for their members, they – as in many places – will face retaliation from management.” Worse, “oftentimes higher levels of the trade union, or the government, will collaborate with management to either make this person’s life incredibly difficult, or just force them from office.”

Western companies profiting from shameful sweatshop labour kicked up when China made a stab at improving workers' rights.

China’s federal government passed a major pro-labor law in 2007, and has since encouraged minimum wage increases by municipalities. The laws were blasted by U.S. business groups, which warned that they would hurt investment in China. Friedman credits the laws to the desire of some in the Chinese government to dampen worker protests while transitioning to a higher-wage economy with greater domestic consumer demand.

But the laws haven’t calmed China’s strikes. Instead, the five years since the new labor law went into effect have been marked by an upsurge in strikes: tens of thousands of walkouts per year, without legal protection, by workers acting independently of the ACFTU. What gives?

Microsoft Xbox using teenage "slave labour"

Xbox game Halo 2

I really want an XBox. As one of the gamers who finally reached the end of the wonderful dark Doom II a decade ago, I know the thrill of the kill, the adrenalin high, the emergence into daylight after a solid night's combat and seeing the cityscape changed to a Doom scenario. I, too, have felt the compulsion to walk up to Camden Town Hall's forbidding architecture and hit the spacebar, BFG at the ready.

But I can't have one. Not just because this is one displacement activity too many in what should be a busy and creative life, but because Microsoft have followed in the footsteps of other infamous toy-manufacturers and are facing allegations of teenage "slave labour" exploitation.

One group of teenagers in China is being paid 37 pence per hour in 15-hour shifts to ensure that other groups of teenagers in the West can have their fun. Sucking the life out of their 16- and 17-year old workers making mice and XBox controllers, conditions in Microsoft's KYE Systems factory in Dongguan sound atrocious.

The Telegraph reports the US National Labour Committee's findings:

"The factory is very crowded. In one workshop measuring around 105ft by 105ft, there were nearly 1,000 workers. In the summer, temperatures can exceed 86 degrees and workers leave their shifts dripping in sweat. It is only when the foreign clients show up that management turns on the air conditioning," the report's authors alleged, citing testimony from workers.

China has been trying to clean up its manufacturing act, with only 3,000 toy factories surviving out of 8,000 due to rising standards. But the news that a giant corporation like as Microsoft is still using such antedeluvian facilities is disturbing. It was due to pressure from the American Chamber of Commerce, backed up by the Europeans, that China did not push through its planned relaxation of the state stranglehold on trade unions. But China has to stand up to its powerful Western customers and restore some credibility, not to mention pride, by ensuring its workers enjoy the very best conditions.

So many companies seem to be slipping backwards after paying initial lip-service to decent working conditions. It's a lesson that we have to keep the pressure up. I used to love shopping at Primark, that cornucopia of up-to-date fashion beloved by working-class women on low incomes, but the company lost its Ethical Trademark Initiative mark when it was caught using underpaid illegal labour.

When I look at their frocks, I see the scrawny undernourished whey-faced souls who have to slave long hours in cramped, badly-lit, under-ventilated conditions to make me look good. It's like Soylent Green, feeding us the lives of other workers and we aren't even supposed to care. Whatever way the corporations are treating other workforces is the way one day that they might be treating us. That's what I see staring back when I look into Primark's shop windows.

And THAT's when I want to hit the spacebar and let loose with my BFG.

UPDATE: Apple not much better. Staff in China on suicide watch.

Microsoft Xbox using teenage "slave labour"

Xbox game Halo 2

I really want an XBox. As one of the gamers who finally reached the end of the wonderful dark Doom II a decade ago, I know the thrill of the kill, the adrenalin high, the emergence into daylight after a solid night's combat and seeing the cityscape changed to a Doom scenario. I, too, have felt the compulsion to walk up to Camden Town Hall's forbidding architecture and hit the spacebar, BFG at the ready.

But I can't have one. Not just because this is one displacement activity too many in what should be a busy and creative life, but because Microsoft have followed in the footsteps of other infamous toy-manufacturers and are facing allegations of teenage "slave labour" exploitation.

One group of teenagers in China is being paid 37 pence per hour in 15-hour shifts to ensure that other groups of teenagers in the West can have their fun. Sucking the life out of their 16- and 17-year old workers making mice and XBox controllers, conditions in Microsoft's KYE Systems factory in Dongguan sound atrocious.

The Telegraph reports the US National Labour Committee's findings:

"The factory is very crowded. In one workshop measuring around 105ft by 105ft, there were nearly 1,000 workers. In the summer, temperatures can exceed 86 degrees and workers leave their shifts dripping in sweat. It is only when the foreign clients show up that management turns on the air conditioning," the report's authors alleged, citing testimony from workers.

China has been trying to clean up its manufacturing act, with only 3,000 toy factories surviving out of 8,000 due to rising standards. But the news that a giant corporation like as Microsoft is still using such antedeluvian facilities is disturbing. It was due to pressure from the American Chamber of Commerce, backed up by the Europeans, that China did not push through its planned relaxation of the state stranglehold on trade unions. But China has to stand up to its powerful Western customers and restore some credibility, not to mention pride, by ensuring its workers enjoy the very best conditions.

So many companies seem to be slipping backwards after paying initial lip-service to decent working conditions. It's a lesson that we have to keep the pressure up. I used to love shopping at Primark, that cornucopia of up-to-date fashion beloved by working-class women on low incomes, but the company lost its Ethical Trademark Initiative mark when it was caught using underpaid illegal labour.

When I look at their frocks, I see the scrawny undernourished whey-faced souls who have to slave long hours in cramped, badly-lit, under-ventilated conditions to make me look good. It's like Soylent Green, feeding us the lives of other workers and we aren't even supposed to care. Whatever way the corporations are treating other workforces is the way one day that they might be treating us. That's what I see staring back when I look into Primark's shop windows.

And THAT's when I want to hit the spacebar and let loose with my BFG.

UPDATE: Apple not much better. Staff in China on suicide watch.

Victoria's nasty little secret

I found this expose of revolting labour practice at fancy underwear specialists Victoria's Secret at Random Pottins. Thanks, Charlie. For all my lingerie needs I shall be sticking to good old M&S ... DOH!

Organisations like PETA are quick off the mark when it comes to cruelty to animals. How about cruelty to humans?

Bob Dylan advertises for their New Angels collection, singing, "I'm sick of it all". Could this be a subtle reference to exploitation of VS workers? Maybe the old scourge of America's conscience is getting stuck in to something a bit more current and closer to home. Or maybe the times they really have a-changed.

Wear Victoria's Secret? I'd rather go commando.


Subject: Ask Victoria's Secret to stop its abuse of foreign guest workers in Jordan
Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 17:27:09 -0500 (EST)
From: National Labor Committee NLC@mail.democracyinaction.org

This holiday season ask Victoria's Secret to stop its abuse of foreign guest workers in Jordan and to immediately free six Victoria's Secret workers imprisoned under trumped-up charges.
D.K. Garments, Al Hasan Industrial CityIrbid, Jordan.

D.K. Garments is a subcontract factory with 150 foreign guest workers (135 from Bangladesh and 15 from Sri Lanka), which has been producing Victoria's Secret garments for the last year. None of the workers have been provided their necessary residency permits, without which they cannot venture outside the industrial park without fear of being stopped by the police and perhaps imprisoned for lack of proper documents.

The Victoria's Secret workers toil 14 to 15 hours a day, from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 or 10:00 p.m., seven days a week, receiving on average one day off every three or four months. All overtime is mandatory, and workers are routinely at the factory 98 to 105 hours a week while toiling 89 to 96 hours. Treatment is very rough, as managers and supervisors scream at the foreign guest workers to move faster to complete their high production goals.

Workers who fall behind on their production goals, or who make even a minor error, can be slapped and beaten. Despite being forced to work five or more overtime hours a day, the workers are routinely shortchanged on their legal overtime pay, being cheated of up to $18.48 each week in wages due them. While this might not seem like a great deal of money, to these poor workers it is the equivalent of losing three regular days' wages each week.

Workers are allowed just 3.3 minutes to sew each $14 Victoria's Secret women's bikini, for which they are paid four cents. The workers' wages amount to less than 3/10ths of one percent of the $14 retail price of the Victoria's Secret bikini.

The workers are housed in primitive dorms which have only irregular access to water. During winter months, when the temperatures can drop to freezing, the workers' dorms have neither heat nor hot water. Many workers fall ill from the constant cold.

SIX WORKERS IMPRISONED ON TRUMPED UP CHARGES

In early November 2007, when a new style of Victoria's Secrets women's underwear arrived, management set a mandatory production goal of 2,800 pieces per 10-hour shift for each assembly line of 22 sewers. It was almost impossible to reach this goal, as the workers were allowed just five minutes to sew each garment. Then on November 11, management suddenly increased the production goal to 4,000 pieces in 10 hours, an increase of 1,200 garments--or 43 percent more--with no increase in wages. Now, in effect, each worker would have to sew 18.2 garments an hour, or one every 3.3 minutes, which was impossible.

The workers protested the sudden, arbitrary increase. They wanted to speak with management, to explain how such an extreme production goal was not only unjust, but impossible to achieve. Management responded by having six of the most outspoken workers protesting the sudden production goal increase imprisoned--apparently on trumped-up charges.

The Following Workers Have Been Imprisoned Since November 11, 2007Mr. Kamal Factory ID # 467Mr. Farook Factory ID # 553Mr. Motin Factory ID # 589Mr. Delwar Factory ID # 563Mr. Mostafa Factory ID # 544Mr. Shohel Factory ID # 505

The workers begged management to free their unjustly imprisoned friends and co-workers. Management refused and the workers stopped working at 10:30 a.m. on November 12. The strike continues.

The owner of the factory is now threatening to have all the guest workers forcibly deported back to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The owner says food and water will be cut off and following that, the workers will be forcibly removed from the dorms.

The workers paid anywhere from $1,500 to over $3,000 to purchase three-year work contracts in Jordan--an enormous amount of money in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Workers had to go deeply into debt, borrowing the money on the informal market, often at five to ten percent interest per month, If the workers are deported, they will never be able to pay off their debts, and they and their families will be ruined.

BACKGROUND:I. 14 to 15 Hour Shifts / Seven Days a Week(Workers at the factory 98 to 105 hours a week)
7:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. (Work, 5 1/2 hours)
12:30 p.m. - 1:30 p.m. (Lunch, 1 hour)
1:30 p.m. - 6:30 p.m. (Work, 5 hours)
6:30 p.m. - 6:45 p.m. (Break, 15 minutes)
6:45 p.m. - 9:00 or 10:00 p.m. (Work, 2 1/4 to 3 1/4 hours)

II. 75 Cent-an-hour Minimum Wage
75 cents an hour
$5.97 a day (8 hours)
$35.84 a week (48 hours)
$155.30 a month
$1,863.62 a year

III. The legal regular work week is eight hours a day, six days a week, for a total of 48 hours. All weekday overtime must be paid at a 25 percent premium, or 93 cents an hour. Work on Friday's--the Muslim holiday--must be paid at a 50 percent premium, or $1.12 an hour.On average D.K. Garments foreign guest workers are forced to work 5 1/4 overtime hours each weekday in addition to 13 1/4 overtime hours on Friday, the weekly day off. Each day the workers are being shortchanged of 2 3/4 hours' overtime pay legally due them, or $18.48 a week. In effect, this is the equivalent of losing three days' regular pay each week, which is an enormous amount of money for these poor workers.

Please write The Limited/Victoria's Secret and urge them to respect workers rights in Jordan.
[Write to the person / address below; edit the sample text as appropriate.]

Leslie Wexner, CEOLimited Brands Inc.3 Limited Pkwy. Columbus, Ohio 43230 United States
Phone: (614) 415-7000 Fax: (614) 415-7080 E-mail: http://us.f836.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=tkatzenmeyer@limitedbrands.com

Dear Mr. Wexner,
Please stop the abuse of Victoria's Secret's foreign guest workers at the D.K. Garments plant in Irbid, Jordan, and immediately release six workers imprisoned under trumped up charges.

STOP PRESS: Not only are they bad on labour rights, they're also ecological vandals.

By mailing more than a million catalogs a day, Victoria's Secret is leading the way in global forest destruction. Approximately 395 million catalogs are mailed by Victoria's Secret each year--that's more than one million a day. Almost all of these catalogs are produced from virgin fiber paper with little or no recycled content. Paper for these catalogs is destroying Endangered Forests like the great northern Boreal forest of Canada. Victoria's Secret is also destroying forests in the Southern U.S. The Southern U.S. is one of the most biologically diverse regions of our country where nearly six million acres of forest are logged each year, primarily for the production of paper.

Sponsored by Wetlands Activism Collective
Phone: (201) 928-2831 Email: activism@wetlands-preserve.org

Also found this about gay action in support of Palestinians at Victoria's Secret Weapon.

Victoria's nasty little secret

I found this expose of revolting labour practice at fancy underwear specialists Victoria's Secret at Random Pottins. Thanks, Charlie. For all my lingerie needs I shall be sticking to good old M&S ... DOH!

Organisations like PETA are quick off the mark when it comes to cruelty to animals. How about cruelty to humans?

Bob Dylan advertises for their New Angels collection, singing, "I'm sick of it all". Could this be a subtle reference to exploitation of VS workers? Maybe the old scourge of America's conscience is getting stuck in to something a bit more current and closer to home. Or maybe the times they really have a-changed.

Wear Victoria's Secret? I'd rather go commando.


Subject: Ask Victoria's Secret to stop its abuse of foreign guest workers in Jordan
Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 17:27:09 -0500 (EST)
From: National Labor Committee NLC@mail.democracyinaction.org

This holiday season ask Victoria's Secret to stop its abuse of foreign guest workers in Jordan and to immediately free six Victoria's Secret workers imprisoned under trumped-up charges.
D.K. Garments, Al Hasan Industrial CityIrbid, Jordan.

D.K. Garments is a subcontract factory with 150 foreign guest workers (135 from Bangladesh and 15 from Sri Lanka), which has been producing Victoria's Secret garments for the last year. None of the workers have been provided their necessary residency permits, without which they cannot venture outside the industrial park without fear of being stopped by the police and perhaps imprisoned for lack of proper documents.

The Victoria's Secret workers toil 14 to 15 hours a day, from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 or 10:00 p.m., seven days a week, receiving on average one day off every three or four months. All overtime is mandatory, and workers are routinely at the factory 98 to 105 hours a week while toiling 89 to 96 hours. Treatment is very rough, as managers and supervisors scream at the foreign guest workers to move faster to complete their high production goals.

Workers who fall behind on their production goals, or who make even a minor error, can be slapped and beaten. Despite being forced to work five or more overtime hours a day, the workers are routinely shortchanged on their legal overtime pay, being cheated of up to $18.48 each week in wages due them. While this might not seem like a great deal of money, to these poor workers it is the equivalent of losing three regular days' wages each week.

Workers are allowed just 3.3 minutes to sew each $14 Victoria's Secret women's bikini, for which they are paid four cents. The workers' wages amount to less than 3/10ths of one percent of the $14 retail price of the Victoria's Secret bikini.

The workers are housed in primitive dorms which have only irregular access to water. During winter months, when the temperatures can drop to freezing, the workers' dorms have neither heat nor hot water. Many workers fall ill from the constant cold.

SIX WORKERS IMPRISONED ON TRUMPED UP CHARGES

In early November 2007, when a new style of Victoria's Secrets women's underwear arrived, management set a mandatory production goal of 2,800 pieces per 10-hour shift for each assembly line of 22 sewers. It was almost impossible to reach this goal, as the workers were allowed just five minutes to sew each garment. Then on November 11, management suddenly increased the production goal to 4,000 pieces in 10 hours, an increase of 1,200 garments--or 43 percent more--with no increase in wages. Now, in effect, each worker would have to sew 18.2 garments an hour, or one every 3.3 minutes, which was impossible.

The workers protested the sudden, arbitrary increase. They wanted to speak with management, to explain how such an extreme production goal was not only unjust, but impossible to achieve. Management responded by having six of the most outspoken workers protesting the sudden production goal increase imprisoned--apparently on trumped-up charges.

The Following Workers Have Been Imprisoned Since November 11, 2007Mr. Kamal Factory ID # 467Mr. Farook Factory ID # 553Mr. Motin Factory ID # 589Mr. Delwar Factory ID # 563Mr. Mostafa Factory ID # 544Mr. Shohel Factory ID # 505

The workers begged management to free their unjustly imprisoned friends and co-workers. Management refused and the workers stopped working at 10:30 a.m. on November 12. The strike continues.

The owner of the factory is now threatening to have all the guest workers forcibly deported back to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The owner says food and water will be cut off and following that, the workers will be forcibly removed from the dorms.

The workers paid anywhere from $1,500 to over $3,000 to purchase three-year work contracts in Jordan--an enormous amount of money in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Workers had to go deeply into debt, borrowing the money on the informal market, often at five to ten percent interest per month, If the workers are deported, they will never be able to pay off their debts, and they and their families will be ruined.

BACKGROUND:I. 14 to 15 Hour Shifts / Seven Days a Week(Workers at the factory 98 to 105 hours a week)
7:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. (Work, 5 1/2 hours)
12:30 p.m. - 1:30 p.m. (Lunch, 1 hour)
1:30 p.m. - 6:30 p.m. (Work, 5 hours)
6:30 p.m. - 6:45 p.m. (Break, 15 minutes)
6:45 p.m. - 9:00 or 10:00 p.m. (Work, 2 1/4 to 3 1/4 hours)

II. 75 Cent-an-hour Minimum Wage
75 cents an hour
$5.97 a day (8 hours)
$35.84 a week (48 hours)
$155.30 a month
$1,863.62 a year

III. The legal regular work week is eight hours a day, six days a week, for a total of 48 hours. All weekday overtime must be paid at a 25 percent premium, or 93 cents an hour. Work on Friday's--the Muslim holiday--must be paid at a 50 percent premium, or $1.12 an hour.On average D.K. Garments foreign guest workers are forced to work 5 1/4 overtime hours each weekday in addition to 13 1/4 overtime hours on Friday, the weekly day off. Each day the workers are being shortchanged of 2 3/4 hours' overtime pay legally due them, or $18.48 a week. In effect, this is the equivalent of losing three days' regular pay each week, which is an enormous amount of money for these poor workers.

Please write The Limited/Victoria's Secret and urge them to respect workers rights in Jordan.
[Write to the person / address below; edit the sample text as appropriate.]

Leslie Wexner, CEOLimited Brands Inc.3 Limited Pkwy. Columbus, Ohio 43230 United States
Phone: (614) 415-7000 Fax: (614) 415-7080 E-mail: http://us.f836.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=tkatzenmeyer@limitedbrands.com

Dear Mr. Wexner,
Please stop the abuse of Victoria's Secret's foreign guest workers at the D.K. Garments plant in Irbid, Jordan, and immediately release six workers imprisoned under trumped up charges.

STOP PRESS: Not only are they bad on labour rights, they're also ecological vandals.

By mailing more than a million catalogs a day, Victoria's Secret is leading the way in global forest destruction. Approximately 395 million catalogs are mailed by Victoria's Secret each year--that's more than one million a day. Almost all of these catalogs are produced from virgin fiber paper with little or no recycled content. Paper for these catalogs is destroying Endangered Forests like the great northern Boreal forest of Canada. Victoria's Secret is also destroying forests in the Southern U.S. The Southern U.S. is one of the most biologically diverse regions of our country where nearly six million acres of forest are logged each year, primarily for the production of paper.

Sponsored by Wetlands Activism Collective
Phone: (201) 928-2831 Email: activism@wetlands-preserve.org

Also found this about gay action in support of Palestinians at Victoria's Secret Weapon.