posted September 16, 2004 12:12 PM         

It strikes me as ironic that these same people feel it is the US's job to be the global police, sticking their noses into everyone else's issues and setteling fights.

posted September 17, 2004 05:25 PM         

3 cents an hour

44 cents a day (for a 14-hour workday)

$3.10 a week (for a 7-day, 98 hour work week)

$13.43 a month

$161.16 a year

Highest Wage at Qin Shi

10 cents an hour

$1.40 a day (for a 14-hour workday)

$9.80 a week (for a 7-day, 98-hour work week)

$42.47 month

$509.60 a year

Legal Minimum Wage in Zhongshan City
(Which is already below subsistence levels)

31 cents an hour

$1.79 a day (for an 8-hour workday)

$12.51 a week (for a 5 day, 40 hour work week)

$54.22 a month

$650.60 a year

walmart's wages are illegal.

if people in the US believe that the minimum wage and working hours and conditions should be decent, why do they not believe that it should be that way for everyone?

why should walmart reap the benefits of being an American entity, benefitting from the wages of customers who can shop in its stores, while exploiting third world people?

battling walmart and battling iraq/afghanistan are entirely different enterprises. for whatever reason china can't enforce its laws, it doesn't give walmart the right to exploit its people.

posted September 19, 2004 12:49 PM         

quote:

---

The work is literally sickening, since there’s no health and safety enforcement. Workers have constant headaches and nausea from paint-dust hanging in the air; the indoor temperature tops 100 degrees; protective clothing is a joke; repetitive stress disorders are rampant; and there’s no training on the health hazards of handling the plastics, glue, paint thinners, and other solvents in which these workers are immersed every day.

14-hour shifts, 7 days a week, 30 days a month.
At the end of the day the workers return “home” to a cramped dorm room sharing metal bunk beds with 16 other people. At most, workers are allowed outside of the factory for just one and one half hours a day. Otherwise they are locked in.
Physical and verbal abuse.

Held as indentured servants, identification documents confiscated, allowed to leave the factory just 1½ hours a day.
800 workers fired for fighting for their basic rights.

Before entering the Qin Shi factory, management confiscates the identification documents of each worker. When someone goes outside, the company also takes away their factory I.D. tag, leaving them with no identification at all. If you are stopped by the local security police you could be detained and deported back to your rural province as an illegal migrant.

Qin Shi management also illegally withholds the workers first month’s wages, so it is only at the end of the second month that the workers receive, or may receive, their first pay. Because of all of the deductions and fines, many workers earn nothing at all after two months work, and instead, are actually in debt to the company.

---

posted September 20, 2004 09:03 PM         

Refuse to have anything to do with any thing (like a nation or person or corporation) that seeks to grow wealthier rather than healthier, larger rather than truer.

Do nothing to contribute to that cancerous growth.

Isolate it. Let it die.

posted October 08, 2004 12:01 AM         

However...

If Walmart didn't give all of those people jobs, they wouldn't have any money at all. They might be getting next to nothing, but atleast it's something.

I still don't think it's fair though, and I still think that those Chinese workers should be making as much as American Walmart workers are making.

posted October 08, 2004 01:49 AM         

Who knows, maybe nobody would care?

It just makes me sad. I don't care about the supposed benefits of it ... it would still have it's benefits, I suppose, if it wasn't going to exactly where they intend it to be, you know, with some respectful distance from the site.

As for Wal-Mart's policies in China ...
I think it is a mutual responsibility between the U.S./Wal-Mart and China. If one of us doesn't keep up our end of the deal then the other one should bring it to our attention. I don't see anything outlandish about that. If the Chinese are violating their own labor laws, that's awful. If the Chinese are violating their own labor laws in an American company over there, that's just as awful. If the company involved doesn't care enough about the people who allow it to make such a big profit to at least try to have the foreign labor laws followed ... that's just as disgusting as it is awful. This is, of course, assuming that human lives are still valued over profit ... human lives, not just American lives.

Now, I recall someone in this thread bringing up the notion that it can't necessarily be all that bad because the people choose to work there, etc. I suggest we remember that China is not America. The Chinese people do not live in a society like ours, with a government like ours, with the opportunities we have, etc. From an American perspective, it's easy to dismiss this kind of reprehensible behavior because it usually does not happen here as bad is it does anywhere else. Minimum wage is roughly, on average, between $5 and $6 dollars an hour here. Yes, the cost of living here is higher, but less than $900 a month isn't exactly going to make ends meet for everybody. But that's acceptable. Certainly, a couple of people on that income would be able to make it by together and we have many options and opportunities in the U.S. for promotion and raises and even other better paying jobs.
OK.
China is not the U.S. where, even though there are a considerable number of people living below the poverty line, there are comparatively few people living in devastatingly poor conditions and abject misery because of their government. It is a harsh difference. The same is relatively true in Mexico. My family here in the U.S. lived, for a very long time, beneath the poverty line and were considered poor by all accounts. In comparison to some of our relatives in Mexico, however, we were rolling in the dough. We had basic healthcare available, we had basic food, water, clothing, and shelter needs met. Those basic needs for us here are in many places luxuries or at least very much struggled for.
To say that a person in China is "happy" or "content" with the working conditions previously described simply because "at least they have a job" is stretching the lines of reason far too taut to hold. The may be happier working in abysmal conditions and being able to afford something than they are having no work and being able to afford nothing at all ... that is not being "happy" as in achieving a state of contentment and if you can't see the glaring disparage well, then, you must not have faced real and honest poverty in your life.
It is not okay to offer a homeless person rotting meat and moldy bread and expect them to be overjoyed at your generosity simply because they can do no better themselves, especially not when you can afford, reasonably, to spend a tiny bit more on something fit for human consumption. That is, assuming you are actually trying to be generous.
Can you truly imagine working in conditions like the ones cited, heck, even conditions a fraction better than those which would still be atrocious, and know that there is no promotion, no raise, no chance for something better for you, no other options? Perhaps it is the many options that we have that help us struggle through hard times here in the U.S., but how well would we fare knowing that the worst we can achieve is our best chance for success?

I am not saying that it is America's fault by any means. I am simply saying that perhaps it would be the kinder, more generous, and more human thing to investigate these claims and put people's lives and the quality of their live's above a profit margin. After all, if the United States can't afford to be kind and generous, then who can?

posted October 08, 2004 09:59 AM         

this isn't a choice to work. it's forced labor. if they are arrested without their permits, locked in the compound, and placed illegally in debt to the company, they have no choice but to continue to work for illegal wages.

posted October 12, 2004 02:33 PM         

I believe that a US Wal Mart starting wage is between $7 and $8 an hour.

Thank the Goddess that "at least these people have jobs" and "thats the governments responsiblity."

Whats neat, is that comparing a US and a China Walmart, the wage is still barely subsistence, according to the "standard of living" in each country. Regardless if its China or the US, the corporation is sucking the life out of humans and the communities they live in, JUST FOR PROFIT.

SICK