Strike!

[faceless]

Trade union disputes happen all the time, but they tend not to get much coverage, so the plan for this thread is to add stories from all over about any and all industrial actions. Over the next couple of years I think there will be more and more situations developing, even taking into account the attempts by governments and corporations to stamp out unions... Here's one to start.

[luke]

[faceless]

he's in north London - I think he mentioned just recently that he joined the union though.

[JWDread]

The only force in this country at present is the construction industry .
If one were to start a union that actually works within the industry , and not the HSE , a fellow could stir all sorts of bother . Why are the unions on site not explaining to the workers , that it is not the immigrant , whom is dropping the wages , it is the subby , along with the gutter press , that is keeping the wages down , in fact dropping them . (I believe this is called divide and rule)
And as far as anything else goes , what does one expect , dumping the poor and disillusioned , of many countries , on the poor and disillusioned of any country .
An immigrant wants a better life for his/her family , why could any living person deny that .
We have not got enough tradesmen , or labour force to complete this Olympic project , but bloody hell , just what would happen if the construction industry united, and downed tools , yes , held the government to ransom . Do they (governments) , and have they not been playing dirty little games with peoples lives.
Being an anarchist , in my understanding of the term , and not by label , I should never wish to involve myself in the building of unions , not unless the likes of Kier Hardy and James Connelly , were to return from the dead . I am sure they , would see the advantage of the present situation and exploit it , just seems funny that it happens to be a so-called labour movement that has been leading us into this disastrous war ridden world . If I were to be a union man , then this is what I should be up to . In the words of the mighty Bob , Stir it up .
no gods no masters .

[Colston]

Dimitar Berbatov is on strike...

[SpursFan1902]

[faceless]

Here's a couple of press strikes. I wonder how many of the journalists at the Daily Mail or Sun are in the NUJ?

[cobweb]

HAHAHHAAA...the thought of Journalism and the sun in the same sentence...you crack me up Faceless.

[faceless]

haha yeah, I didn't even realise that there...

[luke]

Chinese working class kicks back

The Chinese working class is on the move: there is a wave of strikes taking place across China, and they're winning. Workers at Honda have won a 30% pay increase in the latest strike affecting that company, while workers at FoxConn have reportedly been offered a 100% increase in 'basic pay' (with strings attached) after strikes and a string of employee suicides. The strike at FoxConn is particularly auspicious since that company has so far demonstrated considerable success in maintaining a divided, weakened, timid workforce. Across the country, a series of hard-fought strikes have pitted workers against the usual double act of management and cops (strikes are effectively legal, but the Chinese police force is hardly more pacific than the LAPD, and management frequently beat insubordinate workers) resulting in injuries but also some signal successes. The analysis of the China Labour Bulletin suggests two factors here:

1) As ever, the militancy of these workers is driven by hyperintensive rates of exploitation. In recent decades, much of the surplus value accumulated by capital in China has been the result of unpaid labour, accumulated wage arrears that are never paid off. Otherwise, wages are so low that workers have to perform dozens of extra hours of overtime per month in order simply to live.

2) Most of the strikes involve smaller groups of workers, in the thousands rather than the hundreds of thousands. The absence of independent union organisation and the surveillance capacities of capital mean that workers find it very difficult to organise on a very large scale, which takes time, coordination and an apparatus of communication that those workers as yet lack. But two or three thousand workers in a single factory can much more feasibly halt production.

We have seen waves of strikes and direct action in China before but, Charlie Hore argues, these were mostly of a defensive character. Recent strikes have been offensive. The FT reports:

In fact, China has witnessed considerable industrial unrest in recent decades, much of it localised and attracting little publicity. The causes have tended to be unpaid wages or Dickensian working conditions. While the organisers of such strikes have often got into trouble, in many cases the authorities have taken a relatively relaxed attitude, provided the disputes remained small and non-violent, seeing them as a way of blowing off steam.

Mr Gilholm and other analysts, however, said the Honda strikes were a new development because they focused on wages rather than perceived abuses, meaning even well-run factories could become vulnerable to labour disputes.

“It is a new form of strike – a very symbolic event,” said Liu Cheng, a professor at Shanghai Normal University and an outside adviser in the drafting of the 2008 labour law. After wages had been held down for long periods, he said, “finally there is this explosion. It is because of workers’ growing awareness of labour rights, and more talk and debate about the subject.”

In the strike at the Honda plant in Foshan, notably, workers formed an organisation separately from the official union, with independently elected delegates to represent them vs management. They have also been using new technologies (which the Chinese working class has, after all, manufactured in bulk) to coordinate their actions. The success of those workers has inspired a series of similar actions within Honda, with workers in other plants demanding parity with Foshan. There is another factor that improves labour's bargaining power, and that is the labour shortages that have occurred in many areas as the Chinese government has battled recession by investing heavily in infrastructural projects. To attract workers, some cities have had to raise their minimum wage,which has led to workers in other cities demanding the same. These advantages are temporary - a sudden economic reversal could put workers on the back foot again. But they could produce a movement that will irreversibly alter the status of the Chinese working class.

The threat to capital, the Chinese state and the stock markets, is that a model of de facto independent trade unionism will start to be taken up and replicated among other Chinese workers, and will result in an increasing share of production going to the working class. More generally, it poses a potential long-term political threat to what has been one of the most advantageous states for capitalist investment and development in the world. The ability to appropriate basically free labour, to super-exploit migrant workers moving from the villages to the coastal slums, to accumulate some of the fattest profits in the world, has always depended on containing the expanding working class. For example, the migrant worker economy in China works much the same way as it does elsewhere. Millions of workers flee impoverished rural lives, where a basic safety net is being taken away, many of them relying on false identification papers to get a job. Once they've got a job, they often end up as part of a live-in work-force, sleeping in dormitories, eating collectively. They are a cheap labour force, producing for an export market. If they acquire political and economic rights - increase their class power in other words - their susceptibility to this kind of exploitation is greatly diminished. Foreign investors in the coastal 'boom' areas may, business papers warn, be frightened away by a period of industrial unrest. Since the CCP is not going to restore some mythical Maoist golden age, it will either have to break the strikes with repression, or find ways to accomodate the workers politically, offer some reforms without substantially threatening profits. Or it may lose control in the long run.

http://leninology.blogspot.com/2010/06/chinese-working-class-kicks-back.html

[Ash]

Nice article, thanks Luke.

So if the Chinese starts/resumes putting people in prison, then you can bet USA, EU countries will not moan about it.

As an economist I've learned one thing: businessmen do NOT like instability. They'd rather have stable govt and less of social welfare, not the other way round. I'm sorry for lumping them all togehter here. But I'm sure there are good people like Karl Winn and others.

[luke]

Striking female workers paid just £1 a day at factory which makes clothes for Gap and Adidas are beaten by riot police

Riot police used electric shock batons to beat women sweatshop workers when they stopped producing fashion labels for the UK and other Western nations in Cambodia today.

The image of heavily-armed police in protective clothing using their shields and batons to crush a strike by poverty-stricken women workers will do nothing to improve the tarnished image of designer label companies who run Asian sweatshops.

At least nine women were injured when more than 100 police, more than half in riot gear and armed with assault rifles, tried to force 3,000 women workers back into their factory.


Batons out: Nine garment workers were injured today in clashes with riot police in Phnom Penh as officials tried to end a week-long strike over the suspension of a local union official

Some women, who earn less than £1 a day, fell to the ground where they were attacked and stunned by police batons.

Workers in Cambodian sweatshops have risen up in recent protests against low pay and harsh working conditions, but today's walk-out was over the suspension of a local union official.

The factory, on the outskirts of the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, is owned by a Malaysian firm and produces garments for the big names of fashion and sport - Gap, Benetton, Adidas and Puma. The factory contributes to Cambodia's clothing, textiles and shoes exports which were valued at more than £1 billion last year.


Police used shields and electric shock batons as they tried to force workers back into the PCCS Garments factory, which produces items for companies including Gap, Benetton, Adidas and Puma

All four clothing and sporting companies linked to the factory have come under severe criticism from investigators for the harsh conditions endured and low wages given to their Third World employees.

Reports by charities such as Oxfam have found that the apparel industry, whether for designer labels or for garments that carry the names of big sporting companies such as Adidas, Nike and Puma, uses and abuses sweatshops.

Oxfam points out that workers in developing countries are paid minimal wages and are often forced to endure long hours in harsh and often dangerous conditions producing some of the world's most expensive and coveted brands.

It is the sportswear and garment industry that employs mostly women - and the demonstration at the Cambodian factory yesterday was evidence of that as by the hundred they poured out of the premises in support of their suspended union official.

Riot police rushed to the factory after a court order was given to them to clear the roads and force the women back to work.

The brutality the women suffered brought an end to their strike and they returned to the factory, part of an estimated 300,000 people who work in the garment manufacturing sector.

When they have saved enough of their meagre wages, they send what they can back to their impoverished rural villages, where people struggle on as little as 50 pence a day.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1298020/Cambodian-garment-workers-injured-clash-riot-police-Gap-Adidas-factory.html