New-age slavery that goes unnoticed in India and ChinaTwo interesting articles about two emerging ‘super-powers’ are worth mentioning. One is an investigative report by Observer on how poor workers are exploited in Indian sweat shops meant for some of the well-known British companies. The other is a hard-hitting and wonderful article by award-winning British journalist Johan Hari on China’s factories where human beings work like machines for trans-national corporations.
Both the articles talk about new-age slavery camouflaged as development and prosperity, how workers are exploited, overworked and underpaid in sweat shops in India and China.
Poor workers, who migrate from states like Bihar with families, are employed at the Indian factories for some of the leading British brands like Marks & Spencer, Gap and Next. They are paid half the legal overtime in gross violation of labour laws. When they protest they are threatened or asked to leave, a practice defined under international law as forced labour and outlawed around the world. Here, the perennial Indian menace of middle men are playing the dirty game, with the workers being paid 25 paisa an hour.
The situation in China is really awful. Workers at the sweat shops for companies that make computers and swanky electronic gadgets meant for making life enjoyable for the `first world’ too are paid paltry wages (an instance is 20p an hour).
Hari tells the story of 27-year old Yan Li, a worker at a gigantic factory, which manufactures i-Pads and Playstations. His family said his shifts used to last for 24 hours and sometimes stretched to 35! One night, after a marathon shift, Li dropped dead. According to his family, he never had any health problems; they showed up only after he started working. The same night, another worker committed suicide, the tenth this year.
Death from overwork has become so common in China there is a word for it: guolaosi. Estimates show that 600,000 workers die every year in China, overworking for making goods for the 'other' world.
And the workers are employed in deplorable conditions; there are 10 workers in each room, and each dorm houses 5,000, with no showers; they are given a sponge to clean themselves with. A typical shift begins at 7.45am and ends at 10.55pm.
The conditions are so harsh it can very well be compared to Hitler's camps. Hari writes: “Workers must report to their stations 15 minutes ahead of schedule for a military-style drill: "Everybody, attention! Face left! Face right!" Once they begin, they are strictly forbidden from talking, listening to music, or going to the lavatory. Anybody who breaks this rule is screamed at and made to clean the lavatories as punishment. Then it's back to the dorm.”
You are not even allowed to answer the call of nature? This reminds me of the chilling account in the brilliant book, No Logo, by Naomi Klein. She describes how women workers in Mexican export plants are required to prove that they are menstruating through such humiliating practices as monthly sanitary pad-checks (page 222). Employees are kept on 28-day contracts, the length of the average menstrual cycle - making it easy, as soon as the pregnancy comes to light, for the worker to be dismissed. Women's reproductive rights are curbed lest it'd affect the productivity.
In one of the special economic zones in the Philippines, seamstresses sewing garments for Gap, Guess and Old Navy say they sometimes have to urinate in plastic bags under their machines. There are even rules against talking and even smiling. (page 211)
In his report, Hari also describes the poignant story of 17-year-old Liu Pan operating a machine that made cardboard for big-name Western corporations. When he tried to clear its jammed machinery, he got pulled into it. His sister said: "When we got his body, his whole head was crushed. We couldn't even see his eyes."
The Chinese dictatorship allows only rich people to form organizations. If you are worker and try to form a union, you run the risk of being jailed for 12 years. But things are changing with labourers across China forming unions. Across 126,000 Chinese factories, workers have formed unions, demanding higher wages, a humane work environment, and the right to organise freely. Are Indian comrades listening?
Photo: Factory workers in China assembling fiber optic systems.
Steve Jurvetson/Wikimedia Commons
Indian comrades are in utopian world! see the rise of the red menace in their own fiefdom, west Bengal. they cant do anything about it, and they are trying to impress the public that Mamta Banerjee is hand in glove with them.
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