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China Wanted Capitalism But it Also Got Strikes
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Peering in from the outside or through the looking glass at what’s going down on the other side is always a distortion of reality. We sit here in the west looking at the development, the changes and the progress of China and then the stark reality kicks in. Yes, China got capitalist. It got controlled neo-liberalist (if that can ever exist). They have tried anyhow to make it as much. But, along with that opening up came the strike force of the labor market. Unhappy workers, the masses tired of drudging day-in and day-out to the factories and donning their uniforms to go down the coal mines to fuel the burners blazing away under Beijing. In March alone, according to China Labor Bulletin (based in Hong Kong) there were no fewer than 119 strikes that took place in the country.
119 strikes might not seem like a lot given the scope and the demography of the country; but, when was the last time you heard of over a hundred strikes in the country you are sitting in? Even the French couldn’t top that one; and they are renowned for downing tools and taking to the streets. There are tons of strikes that they like to do: sit-ins, by rota, partial, sympathy, wild-cat strikes, go-slow or work-to-rule. Call it what you will. The Chinese are now doing it and following suit.
Although there are no official government statistics, the labor-rights group in Hong Kong is just about the only thing we might be able to rely on. There’s no wonder that the strikes are taking place. The workforce has shrunk by 920 million (National Bureau of Statistics) since 2012. The one-child policy has meant that the active population has taken a beating and been weaned off the multitude of workers that the factories had to make do with less. Less is more? Hardly, they are paying the price of all of that today. Parents are also not prepared to allow their only child to work their hind legs off in some factory and they have looked for better alternatives to factory drudge.
• Factories had to respond to that hole and to attract the workers back to the factories.
• Factory workers have had an increase that we haven’t ever seen in the West.
• It took us hundreds of years to get what they got.
• Since 2005, the official minimum wage in China has increased to 1, 3000 Yuan, or $210.
• Wages have increased by 80% since the financial crisis hit. They have tripled since 2005.
• The factories had to also provide perks. Yes, the Chinese workers wanted better.
• They didn’t want ‘less is more’, they wanted just MOAR.
• They got libraries and day-nurseries, they got sports facilities.
• They got a 2008 law that protected their severance pay.
• They got the 2011-social insurance law that strengthened the necessity for their employers to contribute on their behalf.
• They are nearly there to getting collective bargaining rules.
• Soon, China will be the workers’ paradise.
• The idea is that wildcat strikes will be a thing of the past in China if the workers get collective bargaining.
Strikers are not protected by the law and there is no right to strike. When, it turns out of the factory gates and ends up on the streets, those striking workers can be arrested (in theory) and thrown in prison. But, they won’t be, the workers have too much power since they are so few and far between today to do anything to them. Even China has succumbed to the age-old laws of supply and demand that regulate the market.
A shoe factory in Dongguan has been on strike for the past ten days now. Wal-Mart is dealing with a strike at one of its stores (closed since last month) and is still sitting round the negotiating table talking things out.
The workers will change the face of the market in China. China Labor Bulletin believes that the majority of the cases involving strikes could have been resolved beforehand if the management had communicated better. It looks like managers in China are going to have to listen, talk and answer to workers in the future in China. The supply of workforce is not suddenly going to increase and can only shift the power to the workers’ side in the coming months and years even more.
Any country that goes through its industrial revolution ends up with striking workers on their hands that are tired of not being paid more, of not being better looked after and that aren’t prepared to bow their heads in silence. And look! It still hasn’t finished. Here’s just one example:
• In the UK in 2013, 250, 000 working days were lost due to industrial action.
• The highest reached 1.4 million lost working days in 2011.
• The majority were in the public sector and defense industrial group (60% of the days lost).
Originally posted: China Wanted Capitalism But it Also Got Strikes
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Greece is consdering exporting it's unemployed youth. Up till now it was uncertain where to put them. Those poor bastards just can't win.
Personally I think it would be funnier than hell to see China overran by immigrants. Greeks would be to China like Mexicans to the US.
We speak chinese here you rotten duck egg!!
"The workforce has shrunk by 920 million (National Bureau of Statistics) since 2012."
That's a lot when you consider the total workforce in the country (urban and rural) is 919.54 million!!!
What a difference a preposition makes: "The workforce has shrunk to 920 million..."
I'm glad someone else noticed that. I thought that had to be a typo.
I guess you meant 1,300 Yuan = 210USD
a month, year, day???
Sorry....this is off topic but VERY, VERY INTERESTING !
Tyler(s).....need to check this out. A jet with small American markings owned in a trust to a Utah Bank for some mysterious person was found in Iran. And NOBODY wants to talk about it.
https://news.yahoo.com/hell-american-plane-owned-bank-utah-doing-iran-13...
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/04/18/whats-the-story-behind-this-m...
https://news.yahoo.com/nobody-sure-why-american-plane-ended-iran-0651093...
Officials in Iran only would say they are aware of the plane and that the passenger is "V.I.P."
HHHHmmmmm ???
Update:
There is one slight clue though. The jet was spotted in Zurich, Switzerland on January 22, 2014, right around the time of the World Economic Forum in Davos. That probably narrows the list down to 2,633 powerful people.
The plane was also in Accra, Ghana on January 3 and in Luton, England on October 1 of last year and February 16 of this year.
Could it be her ????
Valerie Jarrett
Jarrett was born in Shiraz, Iran, to African-American parents James E. Bowman and Barbara Taylor Bowman. Her father, a pathologist and geneticist, ran a hospital for children in Shiraz in 1956, as part of a program where American physicians and agricultural experts sought to help communitize developing countries' health and farming efforts. When she was five, the family moved to London for one year, later moving to Chicago in 1963
n 1991, as Deputy Chief of Staff to Mayor Richard Daley, she interviewed Michelle Robinson for an opening in the mayor’s office, after which she immediately offered her the job.[23] Michelle Robinson asked for time to think and also asked Jarrett to meet her fiancé, Barack Obama. The three ended up meeting for dinner. After the dinner, Michelle took the job with the mayor's office, and Valerie Jarrett reportedly took the couple under her wing and “introduced them to a wealthier and better-connected Chicago than their own". She later took Michelle with her when she left the mayor's office to head Chicago’s Department of Planning and Development.
the future is engineers going on strike not wanting to fix the robots , and there's a lot less engineers than low skilled factory workers.
of course the security robots will have an easy time coralling the engineers.
the best thing about silicon valley is how well they've deceived themselves into ignoring their subject status due to the rockstardom billionarism that passes for theology/religion out there.
the reason real religions thrive is because when all the billiionairism is gone, real people with real brains and real will to work wind up asking themselves how they could have made false idols just because times were good enough to ignore reality.
Aren't all idols false?
Meanwhile, from 2010 to 2013, ground beef went from 2.50 usd to 9 usd in Beijing. There have been some material improvements to be sure (the in-laws were born starving and live like American middle class now), but in recent years inflation there is out of control. Apparently street peddlers don't shout yi kuai (one yuan!) any more.
Um... only idiots buy "ground beef", anyone sane buys beef and then has it ground. From 2010 to 2013, beef prices have gone from about 15 rmb per 500g to 23rmb per 500g. $9? It's your own problem if you're being scammed into paying that.
Thanks for spelling out that the beef is bought whole, then ground. Americans don't have that practice so it's awkward to say "beef that is later ground"
Americans buy a lot of goods made in China and the cost of those goods are about to go up. This is another reason inflation is on its way. Never before has mankind diverted such a large percentage of wealth into intangible products or goods. I contend this is the primary reason that inflation has not become a major economic issue.
The modern economy that has evolved over the last several decades is loaded with interwoven contracts reeking of contagion. If faith drops in these intangible "promises" and money suddenly flows into tangible goods seeking a safe haven inflation will soar. Like many people I worry about the massive debt being accumulated by governments and the rate that central banks have expanded the money supply. More on how we have sowed the seeds for inflation to suddenly strike in the article below.
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2014/04/inflation-seed-of-economic-chaos....
When the state controls math and insists one plus one equals one, it's only a matter of time before mere common sense will turn against them. One alternative would be to promote one plus one equals none which is what the US and western "culture" has been guilty of promoting with their Brokeback Mountain humanism.
I won't venture a guess as to where this particular application of fallacy will end but it would certainly seem something has got to give.
I do know that one times one times one equals one, and perhaps we really do need to see things through another / different lens.
jmo.
I've never understood how the Yuan/dollar conversion rate barely changes but they have more inflation in China than in the U.S. Do you think, maybe, our gummint no honest?
"one plus one equals one..."
aren't they keen in chopsuey terms, such as:
"com2cap"?
Outsource to North Korea or Birmania. Or just give them some raise in nominal terms.
Can you smell the inflation here?
http://ethanmichaly.blogspot.com/2014/04/soft-landing.html