Posted on 10/24/2004 2:36:17 PM PDT by TapTheSource
Abused and neglected, migrants are the muscle of China's economic miracle. They build the skyscrapers and expressways, they make the cheap export goods, they drive the trucks and lug the steel and cement that has lifted China into its boom years. They do the toughest and dirtiest jobs that nobody else will do. It is their labour that allowed China to become the factory to the world.
CHINA'S SLAVE LABOURERS
They have no social or medical insurance, no unemployment or housing benefits, no trade unions, no education rights for their children, and no written contracts with employers. They live in monitored and controlled compounds...must beg permission to go outside. They sleep in crude dormitory rooms of 20 square metres, usually shared with 15 to 20 workers. They earn as little as $1 for a 12-hour day, far below the supposed minimum wage. They work for six or seven days a week, sometimes for days and nights without a break...More than 70 per cent of migrant workers are owed money by their employers who hire thugs to assault those who demand their wages.
Low wages, cruel bosses, no rights By GEOFFREY YORK, Globe and Mail, Oct 22, 2004
Beijing — It's a steamy evening in the cramped dormitory room where Huang Benlin spends his nights, and violence is on his mind. He is a small wiry man in a grease-stained shirt, a migrant worker from a small village in Sichuan province who has suffered 24 years of low wages, exploitation, long hours and cruel bosses. Now, he is plotting his revenge. One of his bosses, the owner of a trucking company, has refused to pay him 4800 yuan (about $720 Canadian) in owed wages. For a migrant, it is a huge sum of money — almost as much as Mr. Huang normally sends home from a year of hard labour in Beijing's construction zones.
He went to the courts, struggled through a year of legal procedures, and lost at every level. His former boss had bribed the judges, and the prosecutors were indifferent. So now he is ready for a more brutal response. "I'll go to my ex-boss for one last talk," he muses. "I know he won't give me my money, but I'll use the chance to scout out his place. Then I'll come back at night to destroy the trucks. I'll smash them with heavy tools, or I'll ambush the trucks on the road." Mr. Huang, a weather-beaten 39-year-old with a wife and two children back home in Sichuan province, has persuaded himself that an act of vengeance will force the authorities to pay attention to him. "The police will arrest me, but they'll ask me why I did it. And finally they will have to listen to the injustices that I suffered."
In the desperate world of China's migrant workers, it almost makes sense. Violence often erupts between the labourers and their employers. Usually, of course, it is the bosses who win. On at least five occasions, Mr. Huang's bosses have hired thugs to assault those who demanded their wages. Of the 10 workers who never got their wages from the trucking boss last year, Mr. Huang was the only one who took action. His workmates gave up and went home. They were unwilling to file a lawsuit, which costs a month's wages or more. Mr. Huang is a rarity: a migrant who fights back. "We feel like slaves," he says. "We have to obey our bosses or we won't get our money. We're always under their control. There's always a feeling of insecurity. It's like being a prisoner."
Though often abused and neglected, migrants are the muscle of China's economic miracle. They build the skyscrapers and expressways, they make the cheap export goods, they drive the trucks and lug the steel and cement that has lifted China into its boom years. They do the toughest and dirtiest jobs that nobody else will do. It is their labour that allowed China to become the factory to the world.
The flood of peasants into China's cities is the biggest migration in human history. Already, some 200 million have abandoned their impoverished villages to move to the booming centres. Another 500 million could be on the move in the next half century. Yet their working conditions are often horrendous. Under the Communist system of residence registration, migrant workers are controlled by an apartheid-like system that discriminates against those who lack a city residence permit. A complex web of discriminatory laws and policies has made it almost impossible for peasants to obtain an urban residence permit, so most migrants have a semi-legal or illegal status. Lacking legal rights, they are easily exploited by ruthless employers. They have no social or medical insurance, no unemployment or housing benefits, no trade unions, no education rights for their children, and no written contracts with employers — even though Chinese law supposedly guarantees these rights. They live in monitored and controlled compounds, where they must beg for permission to go outside. They sleep in crude dormitory rooms of 20 square metres, usually shared with 15 to 20 workers. Many earn as little as $1 for a 12-hour day, far below the supposed minimum wage. They often work for six or seven days a week, sometimes for days and nights without a break. Most are paid only $60 to $125 a month — much of which goes to pay for their food and bed and the stacks of permits they need in order to work. Their wages have barely increased over the past decade, even as the cost of living rises. Without any unions, they must resort to violence or expensive lawsuits if a boss refuses to pay their wages.
Employers are legally required to pay the migrants every month, but they routinely delay their wages until the end of the year, when the migrants return home for the Spring Festival — and even then they find excuses to avoid paying. More than 70 per cent of migrant workers are owed money by their employers, according to national surveys. An astounding $15-billion in unpaid wages is owed, primarily in the construction sector. One sociologist notes that the unpaid migrants can be accurately described as slaves, since they toil at their jobs for nothing more than a dormitory room and a couple of meals a day. If so, China has at least 10 million slaves.
The unpaid wages are a mounting concern for Beijing, which worries they will become a source of social unrest. A growing number of unpaid workers have held dramatic protests. Dozens have climbed onto buildings or construction cranes, alone or in groups, and threatened to jump. Hundreds have blockaded or picketed their employers. At least one worker protested by setting himself on fire. At a factory in Guangdong province, about 6,000 workers rioted for 36 hours this spring when they didn't get the pay they were promised. Gao Mingyu, a migrant from Henan province, led a group of 50 migrants to work on a construction site in Beijing in 2002. Five months later, the project was finished, but their wages were never paid. "At the beginning, I went to the company offices every day, inviting them for meals and sending them cigarettes, but none of them gave us our wages," Mr. Gao recalls. "They were so bad-hearted. So I went to various government agencies, but they all said I had to go to court. A court case would cost 2500 yuan and that's impossible for us to afford. "Finally, a judge was sent to hear our case. But the bosses actually denied they had hired us — and the judge seemed to believe it. They must have bribed him. Now I'm living with friends and I can't even afford a meal, but I don't dare to go back home without getting our wages."
Migrants such as Mr. Gao and Mr. Huang are crucial to the Chinese economy. Every year, they send about $55-billion back to their home villages, where the average income is only a few hundred dollars a month. More than 40 per cent of peasant income is now derived from migrant labour. Yet there is widespread discrimination against migrants in the cities. They are harassed by police who arrest them or demand bribes because they lack residence permits. Millions of migrants are arrested and sent back to their home villages every year. Most cannot send their children to urban schools because of heavy fees and other restrictions. Feng Shouli, a migrant from Jilin province, wanted to send his son to one of the three schools near his Beijing workplace. "But one of them charges an annual fee of more than 20,000 yuan, which I can't afford," he says. "The second school is only for Beijing-registered children. And the third claimed they had no room for my son, although they were obviously lying. So we went to a special school for migrant workers, but I was astonished by the conditions. The classrooms were dirty, the equipment seemed to be salvaged from a dump, and the children were wild and filthy. It was more like a shelter than a school. So I sent my son back to his home town for school."
Yet despite the blatant discrimination and hardship, the flow of migrants to the major cities is expanding. Even now, only 37 per cent of China's population lives in the cities, whereas in most developed countries the population is 75 per cent urban. China hopes to catch up to the developed world by 2050, which would require more than 500 million peasants to move to the cities. As China becomes integrated into the World Trade Organization, an estimated 8 million peasants will become surplus every year.
In an effort to defuse the tensions, the Chinese government has issued new regulations to punish employers who fail to pay migrants. It has eased the traditional restrictions on travel by peasants, making it easier for them to work in the cities, and abolished a decree that allowed the police to detain migrants at random. But the new decrees have been ineffective, and it is unclear whether they are enough to placate the growing army of restless and alienated migrants. Beneath the legal disputes, the migrants feel a deeper anger at their exploitation and low status. They know they are despised by the big-city middle classes. And they are often desperately lonely, far from their families, usually returning home just once a year. Mr. Huang badly misses his wife and two teenage children, back home in the small farming village of Xinhua (New China) in rural Sichuan. He hasn't seen them for almost two years as he devoted all his energies to his legal fight in Beijing.
He was stunned by the first ruling in his case. The judge, in a brief visit to investigate the dispute, disappeared into a private room with the trucking-company boss for several minutes, apparently to receive a bribe. A few weeks later, the judge dismissed the lawsuit. "I felt terrible, I was almost crying," Mr. Huang recalls. Each of his legal appeals since then has failed. "Let him sue," his ex-boss sneered when The Globe and Mail phoned him. "Look at how he loses. I will win for sure." Mr. Huang had assumed that Chinese laws would be better respected in Beijing, since it is the national capital. Instead, he found the laws ignored.
"I don't trust the law any more," he says. "It's so time-consuming and the result is always bad. It's obviously a very unfair system. They just defend their own. Even here in the capital of China, the law is never enforced." Giving up on the legal route, Mr. Huang is obsessed with violence and vengeance. He has been deterred from action by a friend, who persuaded him that his life would be ruined if he was arrested. But he keeps brooding on the idea. "Some day I will do it," he says ominously. "I'm just waiting for the moment. I have to get my money back. My ex-boss is still refusing, but one day he will pay, and he will pay a heavier price than me." With his court hearings effectively over, Mr. Huang decides to return home for a brief visit to his family. He puts on his best outfit: brown loafers, faded jeans, and a cheap grey suit jacket. A jar of tea is stuffed in the jacket pocket, and in his battered suitcase is a set of school books for his children. He can't afford a gift for his wife. "It's pathetic, I know, but she realizes we have financial hardships now," he says.
His home in the village is a two-storey mud-and-cement house, built with the proceeds of his migrant labour. There is no running water, no heating, no telephone, and only a few naked bulbs for light, but it's the best home they've ever had. His wife tends their cotton and wheat crops, raises the children, and works at a noodle factory for $2 a day in her spare time. This is largely a village of women and old men. Most of the younger men, including all three of his brothers, have gone away as migrant labourers. His wife, Tian Xiaohua, is shocked when she sees her husband. Always a skinny man, he has lost another five kilograms because of the stress of his legal battles. "My heart choked," she confesses later, but she says nothing to him. His silver-haired mother is not so reluctant to speak her mind. "Look how thin you are," she frets as soon as she spots him. "You must not have eaten well." He mumbles a reassurance. "I'm not thinner. Anyway it's fashionable now to be slim." But she is having none of it. "You should stay at home, don't go away again."
His wife, too, is hoping he will drop the legal action. "I want him to let it go," she says. "That boss is like a gangster. If he keeps asking for his wages, he could be in physical danger." Mr. Huang disagrees. He is determined to keep fighting. He believes that an explosion is coming — and it might engulf more than just his former boss. "There's an injustice in this society," he says at dinner in their darkened house that night. "We common people, the labourers, have done a lot to improve China's economy. We've done a lot more than the officials. If the injustices continue, we common people will be very disappointed. And our tactics could change."
WRONG...
A Constitutional Republic... is what we are or supposed to be..
Boy... them RATS really brain washed you're ass.. Probably washed a few other parts as well.. A pure democracy or an unpure one... its all the same MOB RULE..
Damn you have a hard head..
ROSEBUD!..
Now I've gone and done it..
China better learn this lesson. And really, they are fools not to. There is huge buying potential out there if they would just pay the workers talked about in this article enough to enjoy and least some free spending - And that is the lesson of Henry Ford.
Does not the ORIGINAL constitution allow for the people to vote for its congressional leaders? If it does, we have always been a democratic, albeit constitutional, republic. Must you deny our own constitution to hold fast to your monarchist ways?
Those pics are of housing thrown up by the construction workers before they begin work on the building. They tear them down and move them with them to the next site.
Actually, that housing is better - or at least as good - as what they had in the country. Only they are at least getting money now - and saving it.
I watch these houses go up and it reminds me of a friend of mine that use to go around the country building Thrifty Drug stores. He had is pickup truck and his travel trailer. But, he was putting considerably more money in the bank.
"China better learn this lesson. And really, they are fools not to. There is huge buying potential out there if they would just pay the workers talked about in this article enough to enjoy and least some free spending - And that is the lesson of Henry Ford."
I think the Communist Chinese, as Communists, are strictly opposed to the development of a strong middle class. The reasons for this are obvious. A strong middle class could actually challeng their hold on power. Thus, slave labor.
This is written by a bleeding heart reporter who doesn't understand capitalism. China is experiencing prosperity because of their switch to a free market system. This WP article shows a better picture:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48818-2004Sep24.html
Also from http://www.neoperspectives.com/welfare.htm
Third world countries have one great advantage: cheap labor. You may read the press whining about 'sweatshop labor', but keep in mind Adam Smith's golden rule of economics: a transaction will only take place if both sides mutually benefit. So, it is obvious that these people working for these companies improved their conditions by working for them, or else they would choose not to work there. Now, as more and more companies move into the area to take advantage of this cheap labor a few things occur. First, the people they are employing have more money then before (if they didn't then why would they take the job?). Second, the new factories requires construction, electricity, and transportation of their exports. Third, foreigners, who are used to high standards of living, must be brought in to supervise the investment and they must be housed and paid. Fourth, the companies have to pay taxes.
All of this translates into more demand for local companies and more spending in the local economy. Also, the new tax revenues are invested into schools, roads and infrastructure. Perhaps some local people are promoted to positions of authority in the foreign investment and they learn new skills. Since the schools are better funded, due to the increasing tax revenues, more students graduate and more go to college. We might also think that kids won't have to start work as young and work as hard as they used to because their parents are making more money - either working for the foreign companies, or from the general cash influx into their normal occupations. But how can this be? 'Sweatshops' and foreign investment = more educated kids working less when they are younger? This is different then the hysteria we often hear.
At any rate, as the population becomes more educated and infrastructure continues to improve, some of the foreign investors might think, "hmmm.. we can do something with a little more skill over here too and pay the people here less then at home!". Then we have a situation similar to India, where jobs open up in software developing, technical assistance, and more advanced manufacturing operations. Eventually, the price of labor has risen so much that the low wage manufacturing centers have to leave the country - people won't work for a price that is profitable to the company. As the 'sweatshop' manufacturing center pulls out of the formerly third world country what does it leave behind? Despair and destitution, or a skilled educated workforce and a humming modern economy? This is how prosperity advances. (246) [check out this great article on this in a Washington Post article on China]
They might be opposed to it but it has already happened. About 250 million of them in that middle class. And they are not complaining.
My monarchist ways ?.... LoL....
Nazi germans voted.. as did they in Iraq with Sadaam..
Actually; NO; only men could vote(in some states) and not all men at that..
The founders knew politically ignorant house wives would bring us to foundering ultimately to become a democracy.. as has been happening since 1913..
Chew on that awhile your Fifeness(Barny)..
"Actually; NO; only men could vote(in some states) and not all men at that.."
True, only male property owners could vote. Not unlike the Roman republic, which selectively allowed certain classes of citizens the vote. That, my dear friend, is limited democracy. Limited by what? The Constitution!
with china and india's populations, they essentially have an infinite supply of cheap labor. there isn't going to be any significant bidding up of wages in countries where starvation is the prime motiviator to make people work.
What a fimiliar story.
"Sounds like America many years ago...and it took some very brave individuals and dangerous acts to get the government to protect the rights of the "working man."
May they have their success too, and I hope that it is less bloody.
Capitalism is a great motivator, even for the governments which are in collusion with the businessmen who feed them from their profits.
No it isn't.. a democracy is defined by centralized government. In OUR republic the states are soverign and the fed is a vassal servant controlled at their whims. In a democracy the states or provinces are the vassals controlled at the feds whims..... like in URP and Canada..
THATS WHY....
Democracy is the road to socialism. Karl Marx
Democracy is indispensable to socialism. The goal of socialism is communism. V.I. Lenin
The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.- Karl Marx
When people ask what I have against unrestricted free trade, "China" is what I tell them.
Listen, I love capitalism. There is currently no better economic system on Earth (though it is not perfect), and capitalism provides the most profit/wages for the greatest number of people. Capitalism provides a much needed stimulate, a REASON for people to work harder and smarter than they would under a limited command economy like socialism/communism. There is also far greater degrees of personal liberty inherent in the practice of capitalism than the flawed-at-conceptual-levels socialism.
But all this does not disguise the fact that there are few hard and fast rules in economics. Call me naive, but I believe that sometimes you just have to stand up as a unified nation for what's right, governmental or corporate trade be damned. I believe that certain nations should be placed off limits to the reception of U.S. corporate funds ( and U.S. businesses prohibited from trade with said nations), until such a time as that nation's dictatorial leadership passes away or has changed it's policy/attitudes. There would be three measures for determining such a nation, and China is definitely one of them:
a.) internal policy is brutal; rife with human rights violations (and the genocidal "one-child" policy of forced abortion in China's case).
b.) there is little chance of peaceful regime change without external pressure.
c.) said nation is on record (per members of it's ruling regime) as being hostile to the U.S. Sworn enemies are addressed here.
The proposed "guest worker" program is criminal. Are we to be a slave labor society? If those who employ illegals were fined every day,for every illegal they employ,they would stop employing illegals,and the illegals would stop coming. It's a lie that these are jobs no American would do. If these employers paid their employees a little more,and treated them a little better they would have no difficulty finding legal applicants. Besides,with the proposed "guest worker" plan ALL jobs,where the employer says they can't get enough applicants for what they are offering would be thrown open. Is your job safe,or will your employer decide it's time to make it a minimum wage job,so they can bring in someone from outside of this country?
[ /Sarcasm ]
Reallocating or transferring labor costs is starting to catch up with some US companies; missed deliveries, poor quality and high shipping costs have become a common nightmare.
grilling out and waiting for the next PAYING CUSTOMER OPPORTUNITY
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