Profits Are Booming. Why Aren’t Jobs?

New York Times ^ | January 8, 2011 | Michael Powell

[arrogantsob]

Marx was speaking of the impact on the imperialist empires which the European capitalists had set up. He understood and supported the role free trade would play in breaking up those structures. As he specified “In this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, I am in favor of Free Trade...”

He did not support it because it improved the standard of living of both trading partners or because it increased wealth in both.

His mistake was in not recognizing that free trade does not increase the antagonism between the capitalist and the worker since both profit from increased production. This was the biggest mistake he made in his economic analysis as to why the capitalist system would fall. The proletariat did not encounter the increase emiseration he predicted so the world revolution never occurred. He did recognize capitalism as the most revolutionary force in the world at that time so since free trade raised capitalism to higher heights it was revolutionary as well. He understood that it worked against the anti-democratic regimes in Europe and was destructive of repressive forces. Perhaps you don't know anything about European history in the 17th and 18th centuries and think you could drag that little bon mot into the discussion without me putting it into context and showing yet again that your argument is specious.

[arrogantsob]

All you have been claiming is free trade is government sponsored or negotiated trade.

Free trade is what arises when governments get out of the way and allow individuals their freedom.

It is just as stupid to believe a “Free Trade” agreement delivers free trade as to believe the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea is democratic or a republic. Believe me there is no free trade there either. They follow your economics of government control.

[arrogantsob]

Baloney. If Wells Fargo laundered money then it committed a crime not allowed under any free trade agreement.

But since you produce little but hysterical hyperbole for any of your claims, I doubt you have any evidence of criminal activity. It is about as truthful as the claim that free trade is behind sex slavery.

[hedgetrimmer]

Free trade is what arises when governments take kick backs and perks to get out of the way and allow corporations their ‘freedom’ to use slave labor, among other things.

[arrogantsob]

“Free trade is what arises when governments take kick backs and perks to get out of the way and allow corporations their ‘freedom’ to use slave labor, among other things.”

Totally false. No corporation uses slave labor. Nor are bribes a factor in true free trade. It is free.

[hedgetrimmer]

Previous to the Monterrey Consensus (which you should have familiarized yourself with by now as a free traitor) American banks weren't doing business in Mexico was mentioned earlier on this thread

Then, via "free trade" agreements, they were allowed have illegals open accounts in the US then access their funds in Mexico, in Wells Fargo and Bank of America branches there.

This of course made it possible to do this:
How a big US bank laundered billions from Mexico's murderous drug gangs
"Wachovia[now Wells Fargo] had my résumé, they knew who I was," says Woods. "But they did not want to know – their attitude was, 'Why are you doing this?' They should have been on my side, because they were compliance people, not commercial people. But really they were commercial people all along. We're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars. This is the biggest money-laundering scandal of our time.

"These are the proceeds of murder and misery in Mexico, and of drugs sold around the world," he says. "All the law enforcement people wanted to see this come to trial. But no one goes to jail. "What does the settlement do to fight the cartels? Nothing – it doesn't make the job of law enforcement easier and it encourages the cartels and anyone who wants to make money by laundering their blood dollars. Where's the risk? There is none.

What did the fellow say in 1862? "Free trade", drugs trade and secession, all hand in glove, all hand in glove.

It was believed that the foul elements North and South, and the illicit traders of the world beside, could be brought together in the business of free trade and smuggling.

[hedgetrimmer]

No corporation uses slave labor

Mattel

[hedgetrimmer]

No corporation uses slave labor

Victoria's Secret.

I don't have time to post them all. You lose.

[arrogantsob]

It is a lie so who cares?

[arrogantsob]

Total BS.

[arrogantsob]

“Then, via “free trade” agreements, they were allowed have illegals open accounts in the US then access their funds in Mexico, in Wells Fargo and Bank of America branches there.”
None of that shows that anti-money laudrying laws can be violated. Transactions above a certain size have to be reported. None of that has anything to with true free trade.

[arrogantsob]

Now you are using The Guardian to carry your argument and you call ME a communist? LoL.

And it was not Wells Fargo anyway but Wachovia which was not following the law.

[hedgetrimmer]

The department of labor report is a lie?

Mattel’s Real Toy Story: Slave Labour in Sweatshops This is London ^ | August 16, 2007 | This is London

Posted on Wednesday, August 15, 2007 6:31:17 PM by JACKRUSSELL

This week Mattel recalled nearly two million Chinese-made toys over concerns they contain excessive levels of lead paint and loose parts.

Dirt-cheap labour and a massive expansion in capacity means China makes more than three-quarters of the world's toys, with an export value in excess of £7 billion.

But increasingly, there is evidence of inadequate safety standards, poor quality control and slave labour.

Here, in an extract from his book about the toy industry, Eric Clark reveals the real cost of cheap toys from China.

Behind high fences, sprawling factory compounds stretch mile after dusty, depressing mile along the congested roads.

Guarded gates control entry and exit.

Adjoining many of the blocks are identical concrete boxes - the washing at the chicken wire-covered windows, adding flashes of colour, is the only indication that these are the dormitories for workers.

Here in the Pearl River Delta, China, the pollution levels are on average two or three times those permitted in the West.

But without places like this, with its swirling red dust, toxic rivers and thick, choking smog that hovers everywhere, stinging eyes and throats, the modern toy industry would not exist.

This is the hidden face of the trade where toys are produced for a few pence each by vast numbers of young Chinese people toiling in sweatshop conditions.

Between shifts the workers, mostly young women, their faces set in exhaustion, shuffle from building to building.

Shifts can last more than 15 hours a day, seven days a week - unlawful but far from uncommon.

The dominance of China in toy production is staggering.

There are about 8,000 factories employing some three million workers spread over six areas, of which the Pearl River Delta is by far the largest.

Virtually all the familiar Western toy names - led by U.S. giants Mattel and Hasbro - are made here. These workers make 80 per cent of all America's toys.

In children's picture books, Santa's beaming elves may still be making the toys, but the reality is that for elves we should read migrants - millions of them who have travelled by bus from rural areas up to three days' journey away, part of the biggest movement of people in human history.

Since the migration began, more than 50 million have passed through the factories of Guangdong province, where the Pearl River Delta lies.

If it is almost impossible to comprehend the scale of the movement of people, it is even more difficult for a Westerner to imagine the daily life of one of these toy workers.

Conditions obviously vary, from the acceptable to the unimaginably awful, but it is possible, from a host of reports and interviews conducted well away from factory premises, to construct a composite of the life and working conditions of one of the workers.

Li Mei is worn out, so she looks older than her 18 years.

Her skin is bad from too little daylight and she has many healing and still-open cuts on her hands.

Her neck, chest and forearms are heavily mottled with the raised red patches of allergy caused by toxic chemicals, which she scratches as she speaks.

She coughs a lot, and has chronic aches and pains, frequent headaches and blurred vision.

All these ailments have appeared during the past two years.

Li Mei is a migrant from the rural province of Western Sichuan.

At first, she is thrilled to be one of the dagongmei - the working girls - and to leave the hamlet where there are no roads and only limited electricity.

But she is frightened because the factories have a reputation as sweatshops. Many return with disfigurements and illnesses.

And there was the fate of Li Chunmei.

Lin Chunmei, 19, was a 'runner' in the Bainan Toy Factory, rushing stuffed animals from one worker to the next for each step in production.

It was said she ran 16 hours a day, seven days a week, for two solid months.

Lin Chunmei was paid the equivalent of 7 pence an hour.

She collapsed one night, bleeding from nose and mouth, and was found hours later. She died before the ambulance arrived. Her parents were told it was an 'unknown death' and received a small sum in compensation.

But the villagers said it was the new disease, death from overwork.

Li Mei is certain nothing like this will happen to her: she is strong, accustomed to physically demanding tasks such as drawing water and cutting wood.

Her parents have borrowed heavily to buy the various personal documents she needs.

In four or five years, she plans to go home, buy a house and get married. She thinks about this all the time.

The factory where she toils is one of three buildings in a compound with high fences and a sliding metal gate, where two guards check everyone going in and out.

Beside it stands a warehouse and dormitory block. Li Mei's dormitory is on the eighth floor, a small room about 12 by 23 feet.

There are 32 rooms like it on this floor.

It is lit by a single fluorescent bar - her wages have the electricity costs docked - and the floor is concrete.

Double and triple bunk beds made of metal take up every inch of wall space.

During peak periods, when the factory takes on extra staff, girls often sleep two to a single bed.

Under the window, a grubby sink has a single tap. A notice is stuck to the wall, rules which another girl reads to her.

There are many, so she can remember only a few: 'No step on grass, offenders will be fined 50 yuan (£3.30).'

'No male or female staff going to the other gender's dormitory. The offender will be fired.'

Li Mei waits in a long queue of girls for the bathroom that two dozen people use to shower and wash their clothes.

She is still there at midnight, when everyone in the village has long been asleep, but the workers are only just off shift, too tired even to grumble as they wait in line.

Sometimes, the girl beside her says, 'there is no water even to brush your teeth, and the toilet is horrible.' The water (which, like lavatory paper, Li Mei is charged for) is cold.

By 2am she is finally in her lower bunk bed, separated from the hard surface by a straw mat even thinner than the one she uses at home.

Next morning she has no breakfast, for it is a meal she has to buy and prepare herself.

At 7.30am, in factory uniform of blue blouse with a white collar over trousers with her ID card displayed (she would be fined two days' wages if it was lost), she follows her guide through passages lined with cardboard boxes.

The air in the spraying and colouring department is filled with paint dust and smells sourly of chemicals -acetone, ethylene, trichloride, benzene.

The windows are fitted with wire mesh, the exits locked to prevent pilfering.

Noisy ventilators add to the din of the machines so the team leader has to shout to be heard.

Li Mei is given a blue apron and shown how to paint the eyes of the dolls with four pens of different sizes: she has to paint one every 7.2 seconds - 4,000 a day.

By the end of the second day, Li Mei's cotton mask and gloves are thick with paint particles and difficult to use.

She asks for new ones but is refused.

During the first few days, she finds the heat combined with the smell of chemicals repulsive.

She feels sick, has stomach-aches and is dizzy.

Once, when she faints, her section leader tells her to rest, rub on some herbal ointment then return to work.

Li Mei sneezes constantly and her eyes stream.

The bosses move her to the moulding department.

She feels a blast of heat - she is told later it rises to 104F - when the door is opened.

She is told to watch the other workers and then begins to stamp out parts of plastic dolls with repetitive movements performed many times a minute, 3,000 times a day.

Gloves are issued but no one can wear them - it is unbearably hot and they make it difficult to handle the tiny plastic parts: once the production line starts, her hands and eyes cannot stop for a minute.

Li Mei has to learn a lot of rules because she will be fined for any infringement.

Her section leader tells her there is to be no chatting, joking, laughing or quarrelling.

She must not disturb anyone's work, nap, or read a newspaper.

She must not fail to punch her work card, nor must she punch in for another worker.

She will lose two hours' wages for each minute she is late, and for half an hour she will lose a day's pay. For poor quality work, she may be dismissed or fined.

So she works carefully - and that means too slowly, so she is fined two days' pay.

Like most workers, Li Mei knows within a month that she is being unlawfully exploited.

She soon has wounds on her hands and elbows, and burn marks on her uniform.

When she is moved to a job trimming the plastic toys with small sharp knives, she often cuts herself, once so badly that her hand bleeds heavily - but the medical box is locked.

So she binds the wound up in cloth.

Worse things happen: workers in the die-casting and moulding departments lose fingers and even arms, while hole-making workers often have their hands punctured and crushed because they have no reinforced gloves.

With her tiny pay and all her debts, Li Mei cannot save.

She cannot resign from the factory but must apply for 'voluntary automatic leave'.

This means she would be severing the 'work contract' at her request.

As punishment she must forfeit one-and-a-half months' wages.

Without that, she does not have enough for the fare home. Li Mei says: "I'm tired to death and I don't earn much.

"It makes everything meaningless." All she can do is go on.

"When we are working at the factory, we belong to the factory."

The American toy industry dominates the whole of the globe.

It is a $22 billion business. Every year it puts almost 3.6 billion toys into the home market alone, including 76 million dolls, 349 million plush toys, 125 million action figures, 279 million Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars.

Yet the toy business is no longer fun and games.

It's a harsh, corporate world, driven by social and demographic changes, concerns about stock prices and fierce battles between global brands.

By law, the maximum any Chinese worker should be on the assembly line is 53 hours per week.

But the China Labour Bulletin, a Hong Kong-based journal supporting independent unions and workers' rights, says 80 hours is common.

"Mattel has no way to know the truth about what really goes on here," said one worker. "Every time there is an inspection, the bosses tell us what lies to say."

This was supported by others who said that managers promised them extra pay if they pretended that they worked only eight hours a day, six days a week.

One government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, revealed that when government officers or foreign business executives visit the factories, the managers are tipped off beforehand and under-age workers are sent home.

In August 2006, the Chinese press carried the story of a female migrant worker who died from brain-stem bleeding after reportedly working non-stop for 21 hours in a toy factory in Zengzheng county in Guangzhou.

But it is unrealistic to expect that Chinese manufacturers will voluntarily improve conditions for workers.

The crux of the problem is this: by demanding that their suppliers produce goods at ever cheaper prices and demanding deadlines, the toy industry is almost forcing them to act illegally, despite the codes of practice it struggles to impose on them.

For consumers, this presents a dilemma which was neatly summed up for me by a couple pushing a loaded trolley down the toy aisles of a large superstore last Christmas.

"They're probably made under awful conditions but what do you do?" they asked. "Accept it, or leave the kids with nothing."

The answer is not a boycott of Chinese toys.

Forcing factories to close and throwing millions of people out of work would harm the very people it was meant to help.

Instead, we must protest to the toy companies that we won't accept playthings for our kids which have been produced under horrific conditions and at the expense of workers.

After all, as this week's recall of Chinese-made toys shows, we too could end up paying a high price just for the benefit of buying cheap toys. TOPICS: News/Current Events; Click to Add Topic

[hedgetrimmer]

Red Chinese Slave Labor Floods NAFTA Marketplace With Cheap Goods

HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE ^ | Aug 21, 2006 | Jerome R. Corsi

Posted on 08/21/2006 10:15:55 AM PDT by hedgetrimmer

The NAFTA marketplace unrestrained in the pursuit of cheap labor has driven an increasing volume of manufacturing off-shore to Communist China, where slave prison camps offer a cost of labor that is hard to beat.

Chinese made goods ranging from electronics to toys and clothes are daily sold in mass marketing retailers such as Wal-Mart, Home Depot, K-Mart, Target, Lowes, and dozens of other U.S. corporations. Cheap goods from Communist China increasingly line the shelves of the NAFTA marketplace under marquee product trade names that bear no relationship to the Chinese slave labor that manufactured, produced, or otherwise assembled the goods.

Key to this thriving under-market is a flagrant disregard for human rights, on the part of the Communist Chinese, who still permit the exploitation of slave labor. U.S. capitalists and consumers as well turn a blind eye to the human suffering and abuse involved in producing the under-market cheap goods flooding the American retail market from China.

The Chinese slave labor camps set up first under Mao in the 1950s are known as Laogai. Writing for the Human Rights Brief at American University’s Washington College of Law, Ramin Pejan explains that the Laogai system consists of three distinct types of reform: convict labor (Laogai), re-education through labor (Laojiao), and forced job placement (Jiuye). The political nature of these Chinese prison labor camps is clear.

The PRC (People’s Republic of China) uses Laojiao to detain individuals it feels are a threat to national security or it considers unproductive. Individuals in Laojiao may be detained for up to three years. Because those in Laojiao have not committed crimes under PRC law, they are referred to as “personnel” rather than prisoners and they are not entitled to judicial procedure. Instead, individuals are sent to the Laojiao following administrative sentences dispensed by local public security forces. This vague detainment policy allows the PRC to avoid allegations that the individual’s arrest was politically motivated and to assert that they were arrested for reasons such as “not engaging in honest pursuits” or “being able-bodied but refusing to work.”

Pejan notes that even though they have completed their sentence some 70 percent of the prisoners are forced to live in specifically assigned locations where they continue to work in the prison camp. In a cruel slogan that brings to mind the “Arbeit Mach Frei” entrance to the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz, Penan notes that Laogai is an abbreviation for Laodong Gaizao which translates from Mandarin as “reform through labor.”

Despite U.S. government efforts to keep Chinese slave labor goods from entering the U.S. market, the Laogai Research Foundation maintains that China represses open investigation of forced labor camps and the practice continues:

Due to strong resistance from Western nations against forced labor products, in 1991 China’s State Council re-emphasized the ban on the export of “forced labor products” and stipulated that no prison is allowed to cooperate or establish joint ventures with foreign investors. However, the State Council’s move was merely a superficial one, and prisoners today still produce forced labor products in great numbers. The Chinese government grants special privileges to enterprises using labor camps and prisons, to encourage and attract foreign investment and export. Prisoners are forced to manufacture products without any payment, and are often forced to work more than 10 hours a day and sometimes even overnight. Those who cannot fulfill their tasks are beaten and tortured. The forced labor products these prisoners produce are exported throughout China and the world.

The Laogai Research Center “believes that as long as the Chinese Communist Party’s dictatorship exists, the Lagoai will continue to serve as its essential mechanism for suppression and prosecution.” The Laogai Research Foundation documents more than 1,000 Chinese slave-labor prison camps still operating today, with a prison population estimated at several millions.

A U.S.-China Security Review Commission Policy Paper on Prison Labor and Forced Labor in China concluded that the U.S. Customs Service “cannot conduct independent investigations in China” to determine if goods imported into the U.S. were made in Chinese forced labor camps. Despite numerous treaties, memoranda of understanding, and laws, the Commission concluded that China simply refuses to supply the information needed to make factual determinations:

… we understand that since 1996 the Customs Service has sent thirty letters to the Chinese Ministry of Justice regarding either visits or investigations of prison facilities in China that were suspected of producing goods for export to the United States. In most cases, the Chinese Ministry of Justice failed to respond to such letters.

The Customs Service has told the Commission that the difficulty in enforcing Section 307 to block the importation of goods made by prison labor in China does not arise from the U.S. statues. The difficulty arises because the PRC is not abiding by the 1992 and 1994 agreements it negotiated with the U.S. government.

The Congressional-Executive Commission on China published in its 2005 annual report a conclusion that: “Forced labor is an integral part of the Chinese administrative detention system, and child labor remains a significant problem in China, despite being prohibited by law.”

Just above the slave labor camps is a vast Chinese under-market where millions of Chinese work for meager wages under constantly abusive work conditions. Today China makes approximately 75 percent of the world’s toys. As noted by the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), U.S. companies such as Disney, Mattel (maker of the Barbie doll), Hasbro, McDonald’s (Happy Meal toys), and Warner Brothers utilize factories in China to produce toys for virtually all major U.S. retailers, including Toys-R-Us, Wal-Mart, and Target, as well as for direct marketing. Still, the AHRC documents that working conditions in the Chinese toy manufacturing industry are abysmal, just one notch above 21st century slave trade standards. Consider this AHRC description of a Chinese toy worker’s story:

Average age of a worker in a typical Chinese toy factory: between 12- and 15-years-old.

Typical wage of workers in Asian toy factories: from as little as 6 cents an hour up to 40 cents an hour (in U.S. dollar terms).

Typical number of hours worked in a day during busy periods: up to 19.

Typical number of days worked per week: 6.

Young workers work all day in 104-degree temperature, handling toxic glues, paints, and solvents.

Workers weakened by illness and pregnant workers, who are supposed to have legal protection, are forced to quit.

The typical profile of workers in these factories involves single young women migrants from rural areas to the cities in search of jobs. With more than 1 billion Chinese vying for an economic existence, the Chinese under-market thrives in a competitive environment of labor over-supply. One mistake, even in an abusive labor environment, can exclude a Chinese uneducated and unskilled worker from future employment, especially when thousands wait in line for the job.

Increasingly well documented is the continuing Communist Chinese persecution of Falun Gong cult practitioners. A July 2006 report released by Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas and former Canadian MP member David Kilgour has alleged continuing Communist Chinese organ harvesting achieved by murdering imprisoned Fulong Gong practitioners. The report’s conclusions were clear:

We believe that there has been and continues today to be large scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners.

We have concluded that the government of China and its agencies in numerous parts of the country, in particular hospitals but also detention centres and “people’s courts,” since 1999 have put to death a large but unknown number of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience. Their vital organs, including hearts, kidneys, livers and corneas, were virtually simultaneously seized involuntarily for sale at high prices, sometimes to foreigners, who normally face long waits for voluntary donations of such organs in their home countries.

We have previously argued that the projections of increased containers with cheap Chinese under-market goods headed for U.S. mass marketing retailers is the demand driving the construction of NAFTA super-highways and the opening up of Mexican ports as an alternative to west coast ports including Los Angeles and Long Beach. Reform the labor market in China or enforce traditional “anti-dumping” international trade restrictions against the entry of under-market goods and the need for NAFTA super-highways four football-fields wide open to Mexican ports operated by the Communist Chinese is largely gone.

As of yet, the black market in organ purchases has remained largely underground, hidden from public view. Today the American people remain largely unknowledgeable and/or uncaring over the massive human rights abuses in the Chinese labor under-market including slave forced prison labor, all for lower priced toys, sneakers, T-shirts, and electronics. Do we really think there will remain a bright moral line between using Chinese slave labor—a form of slow death for the under-market workers so abused—and outright murder of political prisoners that is required to promote an international market in human organs for the international elite with ample ready cash in hand?

Unbridled capitalism can be counted on to press for erasing national boundaries that are perceived by free trade enthusiasts as speed bumps on their way to unlimited profits. How different today are the photographs Michael Wolf has taken of under-market labor in China from the photographs of Lewis W. Hine and Jacob Riis, who documented the human exploitation we tolerated in this country prior to the rise of the U.S. labor movement?

[hedgetrimmer]

Wells Fargo knew about it and did nothing, in fact they like the liquidity that dealing in drug money brings. They now own Wachovia.

[hedgetrimmer]

No only sovereign laws which free traitors despise were violated.

[arrogantsob]

More crap of course. Wachovia did this before Wells Fargo obtained it.

Banks, of course, have little to do with free trade in any case except in the world of delusion which you inhabit.

[arrogantsob]

As miserable as the lives of the people in the article are they are better than in the rural areas they escaped.

They are not slaves.

I guess you are unaware of how miserable the lives of billions of people are in the underdeveloped world.

But you would rather whine about the loss of business and jobs because of overpaid US workers. Even if they lose their jobs they are better off than those in the third world. They don’t starve or go without help. China has no help to give.

Americans have it fantastically good compared to the countries you wish to punish by restricting trade and whom you slander by calling them “slaves”. Americans live like KINGS compared to half the world. Only in the world of the clueless is our economy as horrible as you claim even if it could be much better without a Marxist president.

These people are not poor and miserable because of trade with the West but because they are surrounded by immense poverty and misery.

BTW one of the reasons China is so poor and underdeveloped is because it never had free trade. Either the Emperors or the British completely controlled its trade. It is a perfect example of what can happen because trade is not free.

[arrogantsob]

Convict labor is not slave labor. There are millions of convicts who labor in the US. Are they slaves? According to anyone other than the New Black Panther Party that is?

Once again you are attacking the instrument which can alleviate the massive human suffering in China and proposing ways to make it worse by removing the employment they can attain through freer trade.

We can agree that there are people who should not be detained in Chinese jails but we also cannot enforce Chinese law.

But we can make everything much worse by tighter controls on trade. Admit it you don’t give a crap about Chinese suffering and would like to see it worsen.

[arrogantsob]

Now you are confusing free trade with anarchy.