Randi Rhodes Forums

300 Foxconn Workers Threaten Suicide
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Foxcon ... 14470.html

Kotaku reports that 300 employees of a Foxconn plant in Wuhan, China, threatened to kill themselves by jumping off the roof in a mass suicide attempt. The threat took place on January 2 after the workers were denied an increase in pay.

This particular plant manufacturers the Xbox 360 console, and the uproar ignited by the raise denial actually caused production to be temporarily suspended for an undisclosed amount of time.

According to the report, the workers asked for the raise, but were flat out denied by Foxconn. Instead, they were given the option of keeping their jobs with no pay raise, or to quit and receive compensation. Most decided on the latter option, wanting out of the Foxconn environment with a little cash in their pocket.

But the agreement was supposedly terminated, and those who quit and expected money never saw a dime. So on January 2, they all headed to the factory rooftop and threatened to jump. It wasn't until 9pm the following day that they were talked into coming back down off the roof, reportedly coerced by the mayor of Wuhan himself.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has opened up an investigation, claiming that it takes working conditions in the factories that manufacture its products very seriously. "We have a stringent Vendor Code of Conduct that spells out our expectations, and we monitor working conditions closely on an ongoing basis and address issues as they emerge," the company said. "Microsoft is committed to the fair treatment and safety of workers employed by our vendors, and to ensuring conformance with Microsoft policy."

This isn't the first time Foxconn has dealt with suicides. Back in 2010, over a dozen Foxconn employees committed suicide, forcing the company to install suicide prevention nets at some of its facilities. In addition to the Xbox 360, Foxconn builds products for Sony, Nintendo, Apple and many other well-known vendors.

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Amazing how communism is such a bad thing in the American lexicon, but all of our stuff is made in a Communist country.

China is not a communist country any more. Visit Shanghai some time.

I mean, sure it still is run by a Communist Party as a one-party state that doesn't allow any other political parties to exist.

But, it's been obvious to people that what it really represents, for some capitalists, is their vision of the future.

Chinese workers can't form labor unions... they couldn't do it in "Communist" Poland either, that's how Solidarity got started ... why? Because the Party says they aren't necessary since it's a People's State. Yet, in China, they keep forbidding labor unions, while also employing more slave and serf labor as they reposition their economy to be the provider of cheap goods to the rest of the world.

The totalitarian controls of communism over free speech, expression, the press, etc. combined with a "free market" system where the real irony is that the owners of FoxConn can run their factory like a dictatorship.

Milton Friedman always said democracy and capitalism go hand in hand ... China, Chile, the Philippines, so many places are proof he was a liar ... to keep the injustices of capitalism going, and to keep the people mollified enough to put up with it ... you need dictatorship. Authoritarian or totalitarian, it doesn't matter, Ms. Kirkpatrick, to their victims they all feel the same.

In order to do something like installing a suicide prevention net speaks volumes about the character of the institution. How do I characterize the decision makers of this company?

*The public will see this as we care, which is good. They won't realize that this suicide prevention technique won't actually prevent people bent on suicide. But times are tough and we can't afford to take real prevention measures. We'll just move it out of the limelight as much as possible.

*The bad PR from these suicides has to stop. When these things happen its disgusting, it shuts down production and its gets a lot of negative press. If they are going to kill themselves we can't do anything about that, it just can't happen here.

*Oh yay I made bonus this month, now I'll have enough money to keep sending my kid to that great private school

I don't think any of the communist countries really ever were communist. The glorious revolutions were all subverted for personal power and gain of the anointed few...you need dictatorship, authoritarian or totalitarian, it doesn't matter.

I look at the economic theory of communism as a failed idea, and toss it in the trash along with the pure economic theory of capitalism.

There's no utopia, a blend of socialism for some things, and capitalism for others, seems to work best.

Phenomenal piece on "This American Life" this week - free podcast download available, and available streaming.

"Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory."

Mike Daisey is a monologuist who is in love with his many Apple products. He becomes obsessed with the report of an i-Phone that is found with 4 "test" shots left in the camera when the buyer opened it, pictures taken in the Foxconn Assembly plant.

In short, he heads to China, heads to the Foxconn plant (where more than 400,000 employees assemble our crap for Apple, Nokia, Samsung, and on and on and on). And he sets out to meet with and talk to Foxconn employees, at times under the watchful, "pissed" gaze of armed guards around Foxconn.

For those who know TAL, Glass does a brilliant job in the second "chapter" following up on Daisey's very lengthy report.

HIGHLY recommended.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/

I still think Marx was very good at social analysis and critique, and that's why he's still one of the pillars of modern sociology and social science.

As far as formulating an answer to the problems of society, well, I think it was flawed from the beginning, but even then, I'm not sure Marx would agree with the directions either Lenin & Stalin took his ideas, or Mao. In any case, it didn't matter. Every form of Communism today is basically either Stalinism or Maoism.

Marx may not have agreed with Social Democracy - far too bourgeouis a solution from his POV - but IMHO 20th century Social Democrats have come up with the best way of actually making Marxist ideas work.

I go around thinking I'm a Social Democrat.

Yeah, but in this country where people have a reflexive antipathy to the word Marxism, people don't seem to know three things.

1. Sociology considers Marx one of its five "pillars" (most influential thinkers).
http://maxweber.hunter.cuny.edu/pub/ere ... urces.html

2. Marxists != Communists. Communism today is either Marxism, modified by Lenin and Stalin, (Stalinist-Marxist-Leninism) or Maoism.

3. Social Democracy is also based on Marxism (but I'm not sure Marx himself would have liked it)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy

In the 19th Century, the term "Social Democrat" was used as a broad catch-all for international socialists owing their basic ideological allegiance to Karl Marx or Ferdinand Lassalle, in contrast to those advocating various forms of utopian socialism

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One of the key founders of contemporary social democracy was Eduard Bernstein, a proponent of reformist socialism and a revisionist of Marxism. Bernstein had originally been a Marxist and had held close association to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, but he saw flaws in Marxian thinking and began such criticism when he investigated and challenged the Marxian materialist theory of history.

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"The Workers are Animals. Let's Replace Them with Robots."




Among the billionaires at the vanguard of global capital, Terry Gou of Foxconn deserves special recognition for his honesty. "Hon Hai has a workforce of over one million worldwide and as human beings are also animals, to manage one million animals gives me a headache," said the chairman. His company has also begun building "an empire of robots" to replace a whining workforce.

To get a better sense of why the "animals" may be complaining, be sure to listen to Mike Daisey's extraordinary report on his trip to Shenzhen, home of a massive Foxconn factory.

Here's one excerpt:


http://balkin.blogspot.com/2012/01/work ... 4252684026



No doubt they're wincing at Apple headquarters and elsewhere over the latest controversy generated by consumer electronics contracting giant Foxconn, though this time at least the bad news doesn't involve exploding factories, poisoned workers, or a string of worker suicides.


http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2399109,00.asp

Bring Fair Trade to Electronics
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yu-zhou/a ... 40580.html

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So what to do? Fundamentally, the current model of corporate social responsibility system is flawed. Critics could demand that Beijing apply its own labor and environmental standards more rigorously. Yet monitoring millions of factories with expertise and vigilance is a challenging task, even under the best circumstances. China is a vast developing country with huge variations in regional economies and law enforcement. Most Chinese officials at the local level are not interested in giving factories there a hard time. Western ethical standards took decades, if not centuries, to establish; Chinese practices won't change quickly no matter how hard domestic or foreign critics insist.

But there is another possibility, a version of the fair trade system developed for coffee growers and some other agricultural products. In this system, a third-party investigation sets floor prices based on responsible humane and environmental protection methods. In the electronics industry, the suppliers could use such reference pricing to increase their bargaining positions, and buyers could pay above the fair prices to claim meeting ethical standards. This should not be difficult in the electronics industry, where those in the trade know very well the prevailing prices and costs of particular products. And prices could be revised regularly to reflect technological innovation or wage increases. If some suppliers try to cheat the system by charging the fair price, but with substandard practices, their competitors will soon find out and the negative publicity could lead to contract cancellation. The beauty of the system is to use the subcontracting networks to monitor the contractors as competitors would always be on the lookout for cheating. Fair trade price does not eliminate market competition but curb its worst excesses and reward the responsible players.

One barrier is the electronics industry's prevailing secrecy; its executives are reluctant to describe their supplier networks. However, the corporate responsibility movement already has eroded such secrecy, even for tight-lipped companies like Apple. This barrier should not be insurmountable.

Regardless of whether a fair trade system is the best alternative, it is important to recognize that we must move beyond the existing corporate social responsibility system monitored entirely by profit-maximizing corporations. If they are part of the problem, they cannot be counted on to fix it.

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Idealistic thinking. Like other industries, electronic manufacturing is a cloistered community. Competitors will not monitor cheating to embarrass another into compliance. They will mimic it to prevent the other from having an edge, or individuals will leverage it into better compensation packages.