As this issue of ALU is about wages, the editorial team decided it would be a good idea to see how long it would take a cleaner to buy one of the products s/he helps to sell.
Now almost a traditional target for anti-globalisation/anti-capitalist protesters, we chose McDonald’s, known throughout the world for union-busting, low pay, and cheap food.
Toys are big business. If we include computer games, the industry accounts for over $71 billion (all currency in this article is in US dollars) annually in retail sales. This is the equivalent of every child on earth spending $34 per year on toys – ranging from a high of $372 in North America to a low of $1 in Africa. In the United States, where over 40 per cent of all toys are consumed, retailers shift over three billion units per year comprising over 125,000 separate designs.
Last year, over 280 Chinese workers in a single textile factory located in South Korea demonstrated to demand payment of the legal minimum wage. The 280 workers were receiving as little as their counterpart workers in a subsidiary Korean-invested factory in China, where the cost of living is considerably less than in South Korea.
Leung Chau-ting, Chairman, Hong Kong Federation of Civil Service Unions; President Hong Kong Clerical Grades Civil Servants General Union (CGCSGU), and Chan Wai-keung, First Vice-President of the CGCSGU
19 March 2002
ALU How many members do you represent, what is the rate of representation, and what kind of workers are they in general?
Singapore, the only Southeast Asian country to avert a recession during the Asian Crisis, became the only Southeast Asian country to fall into a recession, or to quote the Trade & Industry Ministry on 18 May 2001, a “technical recession”. The city-state enjoyed a prolonged period of economic growth between 1986 and 1997 averaging 8.6 percent per annum. However, after the Asian financial crisis, Singapore’s GDP is more volatile
From the novel The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressel (published 1914),
this story traces a year in the life of a group of painters and decorators in the town of Mugsborough in the early twentieth century. Haunted by fears of unemployment, the men struggle to keep their jobs at any cost but, in the course of events, some of them begin to realise that their condition of miserable poverty is neither ‘natural’ nor ‘just’.
The gainful employment of the Fresh Graduate is one of Singapore’s emerging areas of policy concern. In 2000 the number of graduates without work stood at 6,500. By 2001 the total number of unemployed with tertiary education stood at 20,800 (Labour Market 2001 Report, Ministry of Manpower). That 10,700 of this group were tertiary graduates below the age of 30 means that Singapore’s Fresh Graduates face a grim reality ahead and could become a New Poor.
Together with China Labour Bulletin (CLB) and the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions, the Hong Kong Liaison Office of the international trade union movement (IHLO) is launching an international campaign in preparation for 4 June 2002, commemorating the 13th anniversary of the Chinese government’s bloody repression of workers and students near Tiananmen Square.
We social movement activists in Taiwan, are devoted to realising a democratic, equal, and peaceful society. Here we would like to express our sincerest sympathy for all victims of the terrorist attacks on 11 September.
We, just like you, are strongly opposed to attacks that inflict heavy casualties on civilians. Terrorist atrocities will never be of any help to achieve justice and peace, but do tremendous harm to people’s mutual understanding and solidarity all over the world and even justify and intensify the rulers’ oppression and domination.
Is the Internet a common shared public resource, which symbolises free speech in society or is it just a medium to enhance corporate globalisation and a delivery system for neo-liberal agenda? This was one of the issues discussed in the Asia Internet Rights Conference which was held in Seoul from 8 to 12 November 2001.
Informal work and informal workers are not a new phenomenon. They have been in existence since the beginning of work itself. Even after industrialisation and its development, informal work has co-existed with the formalisation of the economy. In large parts of the economies of Asia and Africa for example, informal work has been the source of livelihood of the majority of workers. Government policies are largely responsible for proliferating informal work in many countries.
The effect of globalisation on workers and other low-income people in New Zealand (NZ) has been devastating. It is as if a nation were asset-stripped, its manufacturing trashed, and its workforce pauperised.
Union members at posh 5-star Shangri-La Jakarta Hotel have been locked out since December 2000 for protesting over the illegal dismissal of their SPMS union president. All these innocent workers want is to return to work with union recognition by the company. (See ALUs 37 and 38 for details)