Labour

Foxconn admits labour violation at China factory Foxconn, the world’s biggest contract electronics maker, has admitted student interns worked shifts at a factory in China that were in violation of its company policies. The firm, which makes products ……

Bangladeshi Factory Workers ‘Peacefully’ Kidnap Boss, Get Back Pay They Were Promised | The Contributor 

Bangladesh’s garment factories have been in the news as saddening examples of globalism’s worst throughout 2013, but a story from one Bangladesh factory is finally yielding some feel-good news — even if it took a kidnapping. As first seen in Salon, Reuters is reporting that workers at a garment factory released their boss after holding him for 18 hours in his office and their promised bonuses were finally paid.

According to Reuters:

The incident was the first involving the forced confinement of a factory boss in months of confrontation between management and workers earning minimum wages equivalent to $38 a month, half what Cambodian garment workers earn.

A trade union leader said the incident was a “positive development” as workers had achieved their aim “peacefully.”

Just last week, a fire broke out at yet another Bangladeshi garment factory, killing at least 10 people and injuring scores of others. A building collapse in April killed more than 1,100 people and shined a spotlight on the country’s $22 billion garment industry.

Eastern Front, 1944 http://wp.me/s3pmhL-4902

This is the rare testament of one of the few survivors of the Pol Pot regime, under which the Khmer Rouge killed 1.7 million people. Sathavy Kim recounts the treacherous days in 1975 following the invasion of Phnom Pen by the Khmer Rouge. She and her extended family fled together, working the black market until they had not a single possession to trade for food. They were rounded up with the other non-peasants, identifiable by their lighter skin and soft hands as upper-class, and forced to live with a family of workers until further word. The villagers took them in reluctantly, and there was much resentment. They had to work the rice fields where they suffered the cuts and backache of harvesting rice. Soon after that the internments began and the camp system was ready to receive its first victims. Deported at age 21, Savathy Kim spent four years of her life as prisoner of a “Korngchalat”, a forced labour camp. In 1998 she finally went back to the place where the camp stood, and the memories returned. She remembered her life as Borgn Tha, the name she was forced to use under Pol Pot, and began to write.

A few kilometers out into the desert, behind all the fancy landmarks, shiny mega malls, 7 star hotels, and tourist attractions of Dubai are the half-star accommodation areas for the guys who helped build and maintain the fancy landmarks, shiny mega malls, 7 star hotels and tourist attractions. These guys wash cars they will never drive, transport goods for shops they can’t afford to buy anything in, and help run a city they don’t even really live within.

Well paid engineers had better working and living conditions, 1883. Courtesy of Canadian Pacific Archives; Front Street, Yale, BC, during the construction of the CPR, c. 1882. Courtesy of Royal BC Museum, BC Archives; Chinese railway camp; from the Onderdonk albums, c. mid-1880s. Courtesy of Royal BC Museum, BC

After a long and difficult voyage across the Pacific Ocean, a short trip across the Georgia Strait to mainland British Columbia, and a boat ride up the Fraser River, the new arrivals disembarked at Yale where they would begin their work for the CPR. During the gold rush Yale was a prosperous town, but declined when the gold rush ended. It regained its prosperity during the time of the railroad construction. The town was the site of Onderdonk’s household and headquarters, and of a large camp that housed as many as a 1,000 workers. Other similar sized camps were located at Savona’s Ferry and Port Moody.

The treacherous Fraser Canyon and Hell’s Gate lay north of Yale, and the river beyond the town was impossible to navigate. The rest of the journey to the work sites was on foot. The Chinese were divided into groups of 30 men. Each group had a cook, an assistant cook, a Chinese record keeper who kept track of work hours and other details, and a white foreman or “herder” who dealt directly with the record keeper. Once the groups were formed they made their way to Lytton on uphill mountain trails with supplies suspended on shoulder poles or in large packs on their backs. Often holding onto a rope, they climbed in single file up the mountains to the work sites.

Two sections of the railroad - Port Moody to Yale (145 km, 90 mi.) and Lytton to Savona’s Ferry - (113 km, 70 mi.) were built using primarily Chinese labour. Chinese, white and aboriginal labour worked on the section from North Bend to Lytton (42 km, 26 mi.), while mostly white labour worked on the section from Yale to North Bend (45 km, 27 mi.).

A court has granted compensation to a mother who was sent to a Chinese labour camp after she sought punishment for her daughter’s attackers, reports say.

Tang Hui was awarded 2,941 yuan ($479, £317) as compensation for “infringing against her personal freedom” and “causing mental damage”, Xinhua said.

She campaigned for harsher punishments for the men who kidnapped and raped her young daughter.

Public outcry followed after Tang Hui spent over a week in a labour camp.

However a spokesman for the court in Changsha, the provincial capital of Hunan province, told Agence-France Presse news agency that it rejected her request that police who sent her to the labour camp write a formal apology.

The spokesman said that the “relevant people had apologised in court”.

This is the rare testament of one of the few survivors of the Pol Pot regime, under which the Khmer Rouge killed 1.7 million people. Sathavy Kim recounts the treacherous days in 1975 following the invasion of Phnom Pen by the Khmer Rouge. She and her extended family fled together, working the black market until they had not a single possession to trade for food. They were rounded up with the other non-peasants, identifiable by their lighter skin and soft hands as upper-class, and forced to live with a family of workers until further word. The villagers took them in reluctantly, and there was much resentment. They had to work the rice fields where they suffered the cuts and backache of harvesting rice. Soon after that the internments began and the camp system was ready to receive its first victims. Deported at age 21, Savathy Kim spent four years of her life as prisoner of a “Korngchalat”, a forced labour camp. In 1998 she finally went back to the place where the camp stood, and the memories returned. She remembered her life as Borgn Tha, the name she was forced to use under Pol Pot, and began to write.