We want to take this week to discuss MOVING FORWARD GLOBAL FACTORIES the size of US cities in our US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES----and look at those global banking 1% NGOs PRETENDING to work for our 99% US WE THE PEOPLE and new to US immigrants. As we say often, all of what was US left social progressive non-profits fighting for labor, justice, environment have these few decades been captured to FAR-RIGHT WING GLOBAL BANKING 1%----with leaders working AGAINST what was US strong, broad opportunity and access no matter in governance, communities, economy.
This model of GLOBAL FACTORY built in China over several decades represents only ONE GLOBAL FACTORY. MOVING FORWARD will see each US state taken by several of these massive global factories to the point all real estate will be tied to that factory and headquarters as a FOOTPRINT---and anything for miles around will be controlled by that global corporate campus. There is NOTHING GOOD tied to these development for ANY population group----only the global 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS benefit from these massive INDUSTRIAL ZONES operating under a ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE.
When our US 99% allow the discussion on schools be tied to whether they are air conditioned and be silent on goals of global neo-liberal corporate schools apprenticing children to child slave labor----it gets hot in these global factories-----WE ARE NOT DISCUSSING GORILLA-IN-THE-ROOM education policies.
Factory of the World - Factory City - More than 17,000 workers at this factory in China
Published on May 14, 2016
Factory of the World - Factory City:
More than 17,000 work at this factory in China. What's it like to live where you work? For most of us, that's unthinkable. But imagine living and working at the biggest factory in the world? They live there. They eat there. Their children attend school there. But most of all, they work there. They are the 17,000 employees of EUPA, a "Factory City" in the southeast corner of China. EUPA's massive workforce pumps out 15 million irons per year, millions of sandwich grills, microwaves, coffee makers and blenders. Now they are about to take the manufacturing world by storm with their introduction of solar powered products. From the 2500 microwaves that come off the line each day to the four tons of rice served daily in the five cafeterias, we showcase the process and the personalities that keep this massive machine well-oiled. The show will focus not only on how the goods are made, but how the Factory City operates.It's a novel concept for the rest of the world. But it's become a way of life in China, where a new industrial revolution is unfolding on a scale the world has never seen.
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It is critical for our US 99% WE THE PEOPLE and our new to US immigrants no matter black, white, or brown citizens to STOP allowing these captured NGOS pretend to support our US 99% and immigrants while MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE for only the global 1% US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES.
Every NGO listed below work for global banking 1% having backed these few decades CLINTON GLOBAL BANKING 1% NEO-LIBERALS as every labor, justice, environmental policy installed over 300 years was dismantled, corrupted, or ignored. When a global banking 5% freemason/Greek player living just for today not caring they will be thrown under the bus leads these groups as FAR-RIGHT WING and not LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE the US becomes third world 1000BC extreme wealth extreme poverty....no future for families of those 5% players as well as all our 99% WE THE PEOPLE.
Our young adults and new to US immigrant citizens may know these group names from when they were actually doing REAL LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE public policy work. As always the grassroots 99% of WE THE PEOPLE really wanting to work for women rights, labor rights, reproductive rights, civil rights and liberties rights, environmental rights worked hard last century to install strong social progressive policies making the US tied to FREEDOM, LIBERTY, JUSTICE, PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS, REAL DOMESTIC FREE MARKET ECONOMY in world history.
THESE FEW DECADES OF ROBBER BARON SACKING AND LOOTING OF AMERICA TAKING US TO COLONIAL STATUS----REVERSED THE ROLE OF THESE GROUPS FROM REAL LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE TO FAR-RIGHT GLOBAL BANKING 1% KILLING ALL THE GAINS OF OUR 99% IN ALL POPULATION GROUPS.
They are NOT taking us back to early 1900s US labor and justice activism----they are supporting MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD for only the global 1% and US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES.
NARAL / PLANNED PARENTHOOD /SIERRA CLUB / LEAGUE OF CONSERVATION VOTERS / FRIENDS OF EARTH / NATIONAL WOMEN'S LAW CENTER / NATIONAL COUNCIL OF JEWISH WOMEN / LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE / MOVE ON / CREDO / JOBS WITH JUSTICE / AFL-CIO /GREENPEACE / AMERICAN AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL.
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First, the video we shared showing a GLOBAL FACTORY was propaganda. What was made to look clean, organized, with smiling supervisors and a global factory having only 17,000 workers is NOT what is MOVING FORWARD here in US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES.
Sure, FOXCONN created those JOBS, JOBS, JOBS our global banking 5% freemason/Greek players pretending to be LEFT SOCIAL BENEFIT----but those jobs were enslaving. No amount of LABOR ORGANIZING in far-right authoritarian nations will bring WORKER RIGHTS as in US last century and the AFL-CIO----having become INTERNATIONAL, not American ----KNOWS THIS.
'Foxconn is great at creating jobs. In China, it took a labor-intensive model of manufacturing, enlarged the scale beyond imagination, and prospered. Its Shenzhen factory complex, Foxconn City, once employed close to a half-million workers'.
Second, there is NO WAY to be left environmental when the goals are building massive concrete global factories the size of large US cities. The factory footprint is just the start as they control all of economic activity surrounding these massive campuses.
SAN FRAN is of course GLOBAL TECHNOLOGY pretending DEEP, DEEP, REALLY DEEP STATE is all about being GREEN----this technology is NOT GREEN----and this technology does not have any 99% populist goals.
We cannot have a CLIMATE CHANGE summit while global banking 1% are expanding global factory campuses all over the world especially in Africa, Arabia, and the AMERICAS. None of these 'GREEN' groups ever mention STOPPING MOVING FORWARD or ending designation of US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES. They are not jumping up and down shouting THOSE GLOBAL FACTORIES WILL KILL OUR US ENVIRONMENT----they pretend technology will mitigate damage.
San Francisco hosts global climate summit — will it make a difference?
San Jose Mercury News· 21 minutes ago
This week, thousands of political leaders, scientists, activists, journalists, celebrities and...
MADE IN AMERICA is not American----it brings overseas global banking 1% economics and societal structures to US killing our US Constitution, our 3 branches of governance, our BILL OF RIGHTS and 300 years of American history in fighting for civil liberties and rights for all 99% of WE THE PEOPLE.
Jul 30, 2017, 12:01am
America, The World's Next Factory Floor
Gordon G. Chang Contributor i
I write about Asia, especially the Chinese economy.
On Thursday, Terry Gou, the chairman of Hon Hai Precision Industry, signed a memorandum of understanding with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker in Milwaukee.
Hon Hai, better known by tradename Foxconn, agreed to spend $10 billion constructing a factory producing liquid-crystal display panels. The screens will be used for televisions and displays in cars and health care and other devices.
Foxconn, the world’s largest contract manufacturer of consumer electronics, turns out products for, among others, Apple, Dell, BlackBerry, Hewlett-Packard, Nokia, and Sony.
The Milwaukee signing followed Wednesday’s White House announcement by Gou and President Trump of the deal.
For the moment, America’s political leaders are talking about the jobs the Foxconn plant will create for Americans. U.S. workers, once the victims of “outsourcing,” are now the beneficiaries of “reshoring,” the return of manufacturing to the U.S.A. These days, manufacturers want to be as close as possible to impatient consumers and corporate customers.
OH, REALLY????? BENEFITING FROM RESHORING????
But there is also another reason that will soon fuel reshoring: perceptions of growing trade and geopolitical risk.
At this moment, however, all the talk is about jobs. Taiwan-based Foxconn says it will initially put 3,000 to work at the Wisconsin facility. The company plans to eventually employ 13,000 there at an average pay of almost $54,000.
And if you don’t think you will work for Foxconn, you can still benefit. Governor Walker believes the plant will create 10,000 construction jobs and about 22,000 indirect ones. As Alan Tonelson, a Washington-D.C.-based trade expert, noted in comments to me about the Foxconn investment, manufacturing has a “huge jobs-multiplier effect, by many estimates, the economy’s biggest.”
Foxconn’s plans certainly pleased President Trump. At the White House ceremony with Gou, the American leader put it this way: “American jobs—that’s what we want.”
Foxconn is great at creating jobs. In China, it took a labor-intensive model of manufacturing, enlarged the scale beyond imagination, and prospered. Its Shenzhen factory complex, Foxconn City, once employed close to a half-million workers.
His company in China started in coastal areas—Shenzhen is next to Hong Kong--and then, when wages soared and workers refused to travel to the coast for employment, he opened new facilities in the Chinese hinterland, most notably Chengdu in Sichuan province.
And to solve seemingly intractable personnel problems--at one point he had to erect nets to catch suicidal workers jumping off factory dormitory buildings in Shenzhen--he led the way in automation, installing robots, called “Foxbots,” in army-sized contingents.
Since then, he has also tried to diversify by moving to locations outside China. Initial efforts have not met with success, largely because it has been hard to replicate the factors that make Chinese manufacturing so cheap and efficient.
Gou’s company famously announced plans for India, Indonesia, and Vietnam but has been roundly criticized for not carrying through. Moreover, you can scour central Pennsylvania for the $30 million Foxconn facility announced in 2013, but you will not find it. Dow Jones’s MarketWatch site says, with justification, that the company has a “history of broken promises.”
Some observers, therefore, have wondered whether the Wisconsin factory will ever open its doors. Yet there are reasons why it will. As an initial matter, Tonelson, the trade analyst, says Gou seems motivated to build products in the U.S. to eliminate tariffs.
And there are two obstacles that Gou cannot overcome if he stays in China. First, there is the belief that, for competitive reasons, companies need to be close to customers and delivery times must be as short as possible. Two-week ocean crossings and several more days for unloading, Customs clearance, and reloading at Long Beach are increasingly considered unacceptable.
“In the new world,” Josh Boak and Paul Wiseman of the Associated Press write, “making products in faraway low-wage countries like China can be a disadvantage: It can take too long—weeks, months—to ship finished products to the United States.”
Weeks? Months? At some point, shipping finished products to the U.S. may not be possible. And that brings us to the second reason Foxconn has every reason to locate production to American soil: trade and geopolitical risk. Once thought to be minimal, such risks loom larger as companies are beginning to realize that patience with China has run thin in the American electorate and even in Washington.
The unexpected collapse of trade negotiations between China and the U.S. on the 19th—Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross did not try to hide the failure of the U.S.-China Comprehensive Economic Dialogue this month—suggests that Sino-U.S. relations are going to deteriorate fast.
And the deterioration will be seen in other areas. Ties could reach the breaking point because of, for instance, China’s support of North Korea, its attempts to grab the territory of neighbors, and Beijing’s cyberattacks against American networks.
All of these are important, but what could end decades-old relations is the killing or maiming of American service personnel. A Chinese pilot last Sunday endangered the crew of a U.S. Navy EP-3 reconnaissance plane in international airspace over the East China Sea by first flying under the slow-moving American craft and then pulling up only 300 feet in front of it, nearly causing a collision. The EP-3 normally carries a crew of 24.
China for two decades has caused dangerous intercepts in the skies and on the seas with distressing frequency, fortunately without American injuries or loss of American life. Yet should the Chinese harm Americans in the future—and it looks like just a matter of time before one of China’s pilots or sailors badly miscalculates—there could be long-term disruption in trade across the Pacific.
Therefore, Terry Gou looks prudent, avoiding business-killing risks by planning to build a rather large factory in a state called Wisconsin.
He obviously knows where his ultimate customers are.
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Now, whatever US population group calling itself RIGHT WING REPUBLICANS thinking TRUMP is really a right wing conservative and not simply the same CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE for only the global 1%-----we need ALL US 99% to WAKE UP and come together as US CITIZENS.
When global banking 1% pretend each independent US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE will be its own REPUBLIC-----they are LYING, CHEATING, AND STEALING our US 99% WE THE PEOPLE'S future. Each of these US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES will operate under a global 1% TRIBUNAL-----there is no REPUBLIC in MOVING FORWARD.
'The Milwaukee signing followed Wednesday’s White House announcement by Gou and President Trump of the deal'
Those academics having followed the move of US corporations to FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES overseas watched the 5Ws of how these global factories and economic zones have operated and nowhere do we see the 99% of WOMEN winning. Global banking 1% is selling CASTE STRUCTURES making our US 99% especially those dastardly global banking 5% players think the structure of CHINA'S POLITBURO will exist in MOVING FORWARD. This is why today in US we have all those FARM TEAM PLAYERS fighting to be the next city council or state assembly pol----when all those structures will disappear MOVING FORWARD.
TODAY, in US all those far-right global banking FAKE LABOR AND JUSTICE organizations are pretending to fight for $15 AN HOUR in these US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES----we even have a few US cities passing these temporary bills----when those global banking 1% LABOR AND JUSTICE organizations KNOW there will be no US standards of life in these zones.
Global Factories
Dreaming of becoming the best at the center of the Korean machinery industry
Geith, headquartered in Slane, Ireland, is a leading manufacturer of attachments for construction, excavation and demolition. It designs and produces attachments as heavy as 1~85t such as buckets and quick couplers. Geith products boast high market shares in Europe (more notably U.K. and France) and are also shipped to North and South America via the Statesville Plant where Doosan Portable Power is located.
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For those US REAL LEFT academics watching US corporations moved overseas in 1990s Clinton/Bush/Obama -----we KNEW in 1990s as our US cities were left to become FAILED STATES stagnant economies now huge ghettos that the MASTER PLAN back then was to bring these global multi-national factories back to US ----no longer AMERICAN-----but owned by global 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS. So, why did AMERICAN politicians allow US manufacturing to move overseas knowing China would dominate world manufacturing? First, to kill the American domestic economy bringing US to colonial FAILED STATE status. Second, to take these several decades to use Asian 99% as slave labor, something not allowed during US 20th century.
So, is CHINA really taking over the world and the world economy because it is moving into Africa and the US? No, as with Chinese FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES filled with multi-national corporations----the land lease and economic structures are controlled by global banking with 50-60 year LEASES ---the life of the infrastructure of global factory cities. The only reason to bring Asian global corporations to US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES is to install GREAT LEAP FORWARD ---MOVING FORWARD ----far-right wing, authoritarian, militaristic, extreme wealth extreme poverty LIBERTARIAN MARXISM in US. To do that global banking 1% CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA have to totally eliminate our US Constitution, 300 years of FEDERAL court rulings, and that is indeed what a US SUPREME COURT, state court, and local court has been doing these few decades.
All of US national LABOR AND JUSTICE organizations whether labor, women, disabled, environmental----whether Jewish, Protestant, Catholic, Muslim knew the MASTER PLAN OF MOVING FORWARD US CITIES DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES since the Clinton era 1990s.
The leadership of these organizations simply FLIPPED from being REAL left social progressive to being far-right wing global banking 1% ----
Please Goggle this article to see what a raging global banking THE ECONOMIST has to say about CHINA and its DOMINANCE.
Global manufacturing
Made in China?
March 20th, 2012 THE ECONOMIST
Asia’s dominance in manufacturing will endure. That will make development harder for others
BY MAKING things and selling them to foreigners, China has transformed itself—and the world economy with it. In 1990 it produced less than 3% of global manufacturing output by value; its share now is nearly a quarter. China produces about 80% of the world’s air-conditioners, 70% of its mobile phones and 60% of its shoes. The white heat of China’s ascent has forged supply chains that reach deep into South-East Asia. This “Factory Asia” now makes almost half the world’s goods.
China has been following in the footsteps of Asian tigers such as South Korea and Taiwan. Many assumed that, in due course, the baton would pass to other parts of the world, enabling them in their turn to manufacture their way to prosperity. But far from being loosened by rising wages, China’s grip is tightening. Low-cost work that does leave China goes mainly to South-East Asia, only reinforcing Factory Asia’s dominance (see article). That raises questions for emerging markets outside China’s orbit. From India to Africa and South America, the tricky task of getting rich has become harder.
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When Clinton/Bush global neo-liberals and neo-cons signed leases in Chinese FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES taking US corporations overseas to be made into MULTI-NATIONAL global 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS corporations---NOT AMERICAN------what kept those multi-national corporations from saying WE ARE NOT LEAVING creating hostility inside those massive economic zones? The degradation of environment, natural resource access, the Chinese military overseeing security in those Chinese zones.
What is different in MADE IN CHINA MADE IN AMERICA?
Same land leases ---same degradation of environment and depletion of natural resources----the difference lies in allowing Chinese global 1% control security and major infrastructure oversight. Remember, the US is MOVING FORWARD to colonial status with global 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS not caring about SHARING a colonial AMERICAN WESTERN HEMISPHERE. We would see this happening in Eastern Europe/USSR.
“If we had guidance from someone to show us how to do it right, like the UAW, this place would be an amazing place to work,” he said'.
What we KNOW is this-------overseas FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES in Asian nations allowing some sort of LABOR UNION organizing had 99% of workers shouting those labor groups did nothing for them. There is no goal of bringing US standards of wages, work conditions, quality of life to US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES and our labor unions KNOW THIS.
Why does US need foreign investors when global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS Tribe of Judah---Knights of Malta owe the US tens of trillions of dollars in massive corporate frauds under CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA?
Will China Save the American Economy?
Though Trump is skeptical of globalization, more investors from overseas are building factories and creating jobs. Will they find the U.S. a hospitable place for business?
Alana Semuels
Jun 27, 2017 THE ATLANTIC
MORAINE, Ohio—For years, Donjian Xu and her husband operated a sleepy Chinese restaurant in this industrial suburb of Dayton, cooking up American-style Chinese food like sweet-and-sour chicken and beef with broccoli for customers who would stop in on their lunch break.
Then, three years ago, a new crowd started coming into Dragon China: Chinese natives who missed home and were craving something different than the hamburgers and pasta that everybody seemed to eat in Ohio. The Chinese, mostly businessmen, would come in and order things not on the menu—noodle soup with vegetables and fish balls, for example. Sometimes, Cao Dewang, a famous self-made billionaire from China, would come in and sit at the corner table with his deputies, and “that’s when we [would] need to make something really special,” Xu told me.
Dewang visits this Ohio town because it’s the home of the American factory he built for his Chinese company, Fuyao Glass. He spent $700 million in 2014 to rehabilitate a shuttered General Motors plant, where Fuyao now makes automotive glass that it sells to U.S. automakers. Fuyao employs 2,000, the majority of whom are Americans. “This place could be the next General Motors if it’s done right,” an employee named Larry Yates, who worked at the GM plant for 25 years, told me. “I want to see them do well and succeed.” Hundreds of Chinese executives work here, too, and, having brought their families from China, are buying homes and cars and enrolling their children in local schools.
Chinese investors are investing heavily in the United States. In 2016, Chinese businesses spent $46 billion on foreign direct investment in the United States, a threefold increase from the $15 billion they spent in 2015, according to the Rhodium Group, a research firm that analyzes global investment trends. Chinese-owned firms now support more than 140,000 jobs nationwide, nine times as many as in 2009.
President Trump has made reversing or resisting globalization a cornerstone of his economic policies and ideology, issuing executive orders directing the executive branch to hire and buy American, pulling out of trade deals such as the Trans Pacific Partnership, and promising to renegotiate NAFTA. But much of the economic activity being generated around the country comes because of globalization, not in spite of it. Globalization helped bolster economies around the world, including China’s, and is now allowing a class of wealthy people and companies from those economies to invest in the United States, creating jobs in depressed regions like Ohio.
Foreign companies are responsible for many of the jobs in states like Ohio today--they employ 18.5 percent of manufacturing workers in the U.S., according to the Brookings Institution. Other foreign companies creating jobs in Ohio include the Danish firm Xellia Pharmaceuticals and the German auto-parts supplier Borgers. “People typically think of trade or globalization as a one-way street in which they're on the losing end—if you listen to the president talk about this, you would come away thinking that we've only lost in this equation,” Joseph Parilla, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, told me. “Nobody has talked about the infusion of capital that comes from foreign companies that are supporting a ton of jobs in the U.S.”
But the increased investment comes with some growing pains. Chinese executives told me it’s hard to get American factories to become as efficient as Chinese ones, partly because Americans work fewer hours than Chinese workers do—on average, the Chinese work 2,200 hours a year, compared to 1,790 for the United States. They also say there are not enough qualified workers in manufacturing in Ohio, and that workers are unreliable.
Workers have their own complaints, as The New York Times reported recently. Workers say that Chinese companies operating in the U.S. don’t adhere to American labor standards and working hours. The workers complain about poor treatment, and one worker recently sued Fuyao on behalf of herself and others, alleging that the company didn’t pay them overtime. Another man alleges that Fuyao exposed him to chemicals that gave him blisters and made it difficult to breathe. The workers also say that Fuyao isn’t investing in training them, which is leading to low productivity at the factory. Fuyao disagreed with the criticisms, telling me that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) had investigated the claim of chemical use and found no violations, and that its policies on overtime and paid leave are straightforward.
Dayton—and Ohio—needs plants like Fuyao to succeed. New-business creation is faltering in America, with the number of new start-ups at 40-year lows. Foreign investment could be a key to creating new jobs for Americans. The question is whether foreign companies will continue to find America worth their investment.
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In the cavernous white lobby of the Fuyao factory on a recent morning, a handful of people in suits sat under a Chinese flag, filling out job applications. They were seeking open positions at Fuyao, which had just announced that it was raising its hourly wage by $2 in order to attract new workers and decrease turnover. That drew in people like William Oliver, 31, who has an associate’s degree and was applying for a position on third shift (11 p.m. to 7 a.m.) so he could work at Fuyao while he attended school. Once he heard about the raise, he told me, “I knew I had to come down here.”
Not long ago, companies were decamping for overseas locations like China and Mexico, where they could save millions in labor costs. In 2004, factory workers in China made $4.35 an hour, compared to $17.54 that the average factory worker made in the U.S., according to the Boston Consulting Group.
THAT IS PURE FICTION COMING FROM GLOBAL HEDGE FUND HARVARD CORPORATION. $4 DOLLAR AN HOUR IN CHINA?
But labor expenses are rising in China. According to the Chinese Business Climate Survey, put out by the American Chamber of Commerce in China and the consulting firm Bain & Company, businesses there cite rising labor costs as their top problem. That’s in part because worker organizations are gaining strength, and strikes and labor disputes are becoming more common. Today, Chinese manufacturing wages adjusted for productivity are $12.47 an hour, compared to $22.32 in the United States, according to the Boston Consulting Group.
LABOR UNIONS GAINING STRENGTH IN CHINA? BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP MYTH-MAKING AND PROPAGANDA.
Wages aren’t the only costs in China that are rising. The price of electricity has increased 15 percent since 2010, and industrial land is becoming more expensive too. Taxes are high as well: Dewang, the head of Fuyao Glass, said in an interview late last year that he had moved his plant to the U.S. because China had the “world’s highest taxes.” (Actually, income taxes are higher in many Scandinavian countries than in China, and the corporate income-tax rate in China is 25 percent, which is lower than in the U.S.) “Apart from labor costs, everything else is cheaper in the U.S. than in China,” he has said.
These factors alone would be enough reason to give companies pause about locating factories in China. But there are other reasons Chinese businessmen are looking outside of their own country for investment opportunities. There are so many cash-flush investors in China that there are fewer good opportunities to buy companies, and so people with money have fewer places to put it, said Eswar Prasad, a professor of trade policy at Cornell. Such investors might have once put their money into U.S. securities, but the rate of return is low, so they’re turning their attention to buying foreign companies instead. (Most Chinese investment abroad comes in the form of outright purchases of other companies; the Fuyao factory stands out in that the company decided to build its own products there, rather than acquire an existing business.)
Many investors also want to diversify their portfolio by investing in companies outside of China, said Daniel Rosen, a founding partner at the Rhodium Group. And investors are worried about a weaker Chinese currency in the future, so they are making big bets while their money still goes relatively far. It’s not just in the U.S.: Chinese outbound foreign direct investment reached $200 billion in 2016, with deals in Europe, Africa, and South America as well. In total, the Rhodium Group calculates that China invested $46 billion in the U.S. in 2016, almost three times as much as the U.S. invested in China that year.
“The U.S. is seeing the same pattern of increasing Chinese investment that is taking place worldwide,” Rosen told me. Often, investors buy existing companies overseas simply as an investment—96 percent of Chinese investments in the U.S. in 2016 were in acquisitions, according to the Rhodium Group. The Chinese manufacturer Haier bought General Electric’s appliance division last year, for instance, and a consortium of Chinese investors bought the printer company Lexmark. Plants like Fuyao are different. They are what Rhodium calls “greenfield” investments, which means the company builds a new plant from the ground up and hires new people. These have represented a small share of Chinese investments in advanced economies like the United States, but are “likely to continue rising significantly in the year ahead,” Rosen said.
With greenfield investments, Chinese companies often bring their own executives to come in and run operations. I met one such person, a 35-year-old named Wei Liu, at the Dragon China restaurant on a recent weekday, where he had stopped for a quick lunch. Liu had brought his wife and daughter to Dayton, a town he’d never heard of, to improve his career prospects, he told me. “If I work here, I will have more chances,” he said, as he waited for his food. He likes living in America, though he says Dayton isn’t as diverse as other American cities he’s been to, and he doesn’t love the winters.
Fuyao made a greenfield investment in Ohio because it wanted to be closer to its customers, which are auto companies building cars in the United States, Jeff Liu, the president of Fuyao Glass America, told me. The U.S. auto market is currently booming, setting a new record for sales last year, and Fuyao wants to become a bigger part of the distribution chain. Shipping glass from China was expensive and dicey, as the product would sometimes break, which in turn made the process more costly, he said.
Fuyao spent around $700 million to get the plant up and running, bringing hundreds of Chinese workers to Dayton to set up the plant and supervise new hires. Now, it’s turning its attention to hiring more Americans, and to becoming a “truly American company,” Liu told me. “We want to be the best employer in this town,” he said.
* * *
To be the best employer in town, though, Fuyao needs to be able to stay open, and so far, the factory isn’t making money. Fuyao has been working on its factory since 2014, but it still isn’t running at full capacity. Fuyao Glass America posted a $41 million loss in 2016, the company said in its annual report.
Some of the losses were because the company had to spend so much money on equipment to get the plant running, Liu told me. But productivity per worker in Moraine is 10 to 15 percent lower than it is in China, he said, adding “We have a big gap to catch up to China, but we’ll get there.”
Chinese companies also struggle to operate in an environment where there are a network of safety regulations that do not exist to the same extent in China. “It’s an example of the challenges of working on a more advanced economy where workers have much broader protections and safety standards and rights than is normal back in China,” says Rosen, of the Rhodium Group.
The company says it can’t find enough skilled people to fill open positions, Liu said, even when it raised the wages by $2 an hour. Most workers aren’t trained in automotive glass in the Dayton area, and many aren’t accustomed to working in the heat of the factory. Turnover has been high at the Fuyao plant so far, with workers quitting, and managers complain that American workers often show up late and take too much time off.
Upper-level management is mostly Chinese, and two American managers were fired from the plant in November, according to The New York Times. Dewang, the Fuyao chairman, told the Times that the workers “didn’t do their jobs but squandered my money.” (One of the managers has since filed a lawsuit alleging that he was fired because he wasn’t Chinese.) Dewang responded to the Times story in Chinese national media, calling it “false,” and saying that the company invests in technology to make the plant safer, that it trains its workers, and that most of the management and administration is American. Fuyao told me that no one has been terminated based on their nationality, and that only one of the two managers was terminated; the other left on his own accord.
U.S. workers have a different work ethic than Chinese workers do, said Daniel Curran, a former president of the University of Dayton who serves on Fuyao’s board. “Many of the Chinese workers are used to longer hours. It's not uncommon to see over time,” he said. “U.S. workers are used to essentially an eight-hour day. Not all American workers want to be working on the weekends. That's part of our culture.”
It’s possible that the U.S. workforce is not as skilled at manufacturing as it used to be. Many of the people who worked in manufacturing in the 1980s, before the wave of offshoring, have since retired, and younger people don’t have as much experience in factories. The economist Tyler Cowen has argued that Americans are more averse to adjusting to change than they were in the past, which potentially makes them less likely to take jobs in new fields. “You could say we got a little spoiled” as America created better and better jobs, Cowen told me. While Cowen sees this as a negative, it’s the result of a positive development: American workers are no longer interested in low-paying, backbreaking jobs like picking crops, for example. “People are not willing to become a wreck by age 60 or 65 anymore,” he said. But it makes life more difficult for employers who don’t want to (or can’t) pay workers more or improve the jobs that are available.
Cowen also pointed me to a study published last year in the Journal of Hand Therapy that indicates that today’s workers might be physically weaker than American workers of the past, which would explain some of why it’s harder to find good factory workers. Men younger than 30 have weaker hand grips than their counterparts in 1985 did, the study found. Grips might have gotten weaker because men are no longer accustomed to working in manufacturing or farming, but are instead prepared to sit at desks and work on computers.
For their part, workers say that Fuyao isn’t as productive in the U.S. as it is in China because the jobs are dangerous and unpleasant, and because Chinese supervisors have trouble communicating with U.S. workers. (Having the Google Translate app is a must for anyone who interacts with Chinese supervisors. “They understand English—they just can't communicate comfortably,” one worker, Tim Jernigan told me. “So we pull out [Google Translate] and we start typing and they look over your shoulder, and that's how we communicate.”) Additionally, U.S. labor standards prohibit some of the behavior that is commonplace in Chinese factories that may make them more efficient there. “There’s two sets of safety standards at play here,” said Yates, the Fuyao worker, who is 49 and thin. “I wouldn’t want my worst enemy working here now.”
For example, American and Chinese supervisors discipline American workers who fail to wear safety glasses, while Chinese supervisors frequently ignore the rules. Jernigan, who was among the first of the workers hired by Fuyao, told me some Chinese workers climb over equipment like furnaces without safety harnesses attached, which American workers wouldn’t do. Chinese workers often don’t use protective shields when they are supposed to. “They’re just so used to doing it that way,” he said.
I briefly visited the plant floor, where forklifts carried sheets of glass between blue and yellow machines. Numerous posters reminded workers to follow the “5 S’s: Sort, Straighten, Shine, Standardize, and Sustain,” which is a Japanese process for workplace organization. The whole plant was extremely hot—a result of the furnace that heats the glass—and there’s not much ventilation. I saw many more machines on the plant floor than I saw people.
After OSHA visited Fuyao in eight separate inspections, it proposed $226,937 in penalties. OSHA found machine-safety violations that potentially exposed workers to amputation, as well as electrical hazards, and a lack of personal protective equipment. It also said that the company failed to train workers about hazardous chemicals in use, and that it had unmarked exits. Fuyao settled with OSHA in March, agreeing to pay penalties of $100,000, the government said.
REMEMBER, OUR FEDERAL OSHA HAS NOT BEEN ENFORCING WORKPLACE SAFETY THESE FEW DECADES---IT WILL LOWER ITS STANDARDS TO CHINESE VERY QUICKLY.
Workers say safety hazards exist because Fuyao doesn’t bother to invest in training workers. Another worker, a 57-year-old named Ronald Blake, said he had expected to get in-depth training once he was hired at Fuyao, even though he’d worked at a car plant previously for 13 years. But he has learned very little about how to do his job. “You have to be real persistent about asking questions, to get you to tell you why they’re doing what they’re doing,” he said, about learning on the plant floor. “I want to do things the right way.”
There are other complaints: Fuyao recently changed its vacation policy so that people earn time off with every hour they work, rather than guaranteeing workers a certain number of days a year. It also changed the attendance policy so that people don’t get the bonuses they once did for coming to work every day. “Every time I get close to reaching the maximum, they change it,” another worker, Teodore Searcey, told me.
These types of complaints aren’t uncommon among American workers who are employed by Chinese firms. A Chinese copper company set up a factory called Golden Dragon Precise Copper Tube Group in Alabama in 2014. The company had similar complaints about workers: the company’s chairman told The Washington Post that the quality of the workers there “is not very good.” The plant was, at first, unsafe, with oil leaks that made the ground slippery, and a lack of safety guards on machines, and so in December of 2014, the workers voted, 75 to 74, to form a union, according to Dan Flippo, the director of the United Steelworkers’ District 9, which now represents Golden Dragon. “It was a sea change for a Chinese company to come in and start from scratch,” he told me. “There are just cultural differences.”
* * *
Foreign companies operating in the U.S. have long had to adjust to methods of doing business here. In the 1980s, when Japanese firms first started making cars in the United States, the Japanese firms worried about a lack of American efficiency, with one Japanese senior politician saying that American workers were “too lazy” compared with those in Japan. American workers complained about not having enough input into the way the factory worked, according to Harley Shaiken, a professor at the University of California Berkeley. “There is clearly a learning curve when you’re moving to a new place,” he said.
JAPAN HAS BEEN A FIRST WORLD DEVELOPED NATION FOR SEVERAL DECADES WHILE CHINA IS HAPPY BEING THIRD WORLD -----THEY HAVE NO INTENTIONS OF CHANGING.
Initial Japanese forays into the U.S. market had mixed results. Toyota launched its first major manufacturing investment in the U.S. in a joint venture with General Motors that was called NUMMI. Initially, the U.S. workers struggled to adapt to the Japanese “lean production” model, but over time, the collaboration began to work well, said Shaiken, who authored a white paper on Nummi in California for a state commission after the plant shut down during the recession.
The plant became one of the most productive in the country, and U.S. companies learned from Japan’s manufacturing techniques. But one of the biggest reasons NUMMI worked was that U.S. workers were able to give input to Japanese managers about how they thought the factory should be run, Shaiken said. That made the workers more invested in the manufacturing process—and it made the manufacturing process better as well. Japanese automakers learned from this experience, Shaiken said—even when companies opened non-union plants, they established ways for workers to be involved in the production process.
Chinese companies have generally not yet made the effort to incorporate U.S. workers into decision-making, Shaiken said. “They are saying the plant is not as productive, yet they are using techniques that almost assuredly will result in it not being productive,” he said. “In effect, the Chinese are ignoring a quarter-century worth of extensive experience in manufacturing.”
Workers at the Fuyao plant have an idea for how to fix some of these problems: They want to form a union. They say they want to have more input into the process of making automotive glass. That way, they can push back against unsafe orders, and can contribute to making the plant more efficient. Yates and other workers meet on Wednesdays after their shifts at a United Auto Workers (UAW) office a few blocks from the plant, which shares a building with a carpet-cleaning company. I met Yates and a few other workers there close to midnight, where they sat around a table and talked about how to get their message out to other Fuyao workers. “What it boils down to is that we don’t have a say-so in any of this,” Yates said. “If we had guidance from someone to show us how to do it right, like the UAW, this place would be an amazing place to work,” he said.
Dan Flippo, of the United Steelworkers, said that his workers’ relationship with their Chinese employers improved significantly after the union was formed. “Golden Dragon has been much more cooperative after we got the election behind us and a contract in place,” he said. “We honestly have a decent relationship with them now.”
The UAW doesn’t yet have enough support to hold a vote at the Fuyao plant. A recent union meeting attracted just about 100 workers—the plant employs about 1,500 production workers. But forming a union isn’t the only way that workers could get more of a voice at Fuyao. German car companies operating in the U.S. have supported the idea of “works councils,” in which workers and management meet and discuss operations, for example. At NUMMI, the Japanese company, workers were expected to speak up whenever they saw a problem that prevented them from doing their jobs properly, according to John Shook, who is now an industrial anthropologist, but who then worked for Toyota.
All of the American workers I talked to said they wanted to Fuyao to succeed. They understand the value of having manufacturing jobs in today’s economy, and that many communities would fight for a large plant of Fuyao’s size. But they say Fuyao needs to better adjust to being in America. “Are they going to try to run this like it’s in China, or like it’s in America?” Jernigan, the worker, said. “Americans are used to doing it a certain way, and Chinese are used to doing it a certain way. We have to meet in between.”
It could be difficult for Fuyao to make such wholesale changes to the way it does business, especially with continued pressures from China to turn a profit. But investors like Dewang need plants like Fuyao to be profitable, if they are going to make money in the United States. They still haven’t figured out how to make the factory work. In the end, it may come down to understanding how to operate these American plants with Chinese characteristics. Listening to the American workers may be a start.
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OF COURSE THEY ARE GOING TO RUN THIS AS THEY DO IN CHINA FOR GOODNESS SAKE
“Are they going to try to run this like it’s in China, or like it’s in America?” Jernigan, the worker, said. “Americans are used to doing it a certain way, and Chinese are used to doing it a certain way. We have to meet in between.”
It could be difficult for Fuyao to make such wholesale changes to the way it does business, especially with continued pressures from China to turn a profit'.
At the same time we are reading global banking 1% players saying China is taking over AFRICA. We have discussed the destruction of Africa's natural infrastructure these few decades by OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS global corporations----building WALLS all over Africa designating FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES. So, again, there is no invasion of CHINA into these AFRICAN FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES. Africa as a continent will be fleeced of any and all natural resourced after the coming several decades of being a FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE. It will be left as a DARK CONTINENT under ONE WORLD GOVERNANCE.
Yes, global banking 1% are MOVING FORWARD AFRICA as a far-right wing, authoritarian, militaristic, extreme wealth extreme poverty LIBERTARIAN MARXIST economic structure filled with GLOBAL FACTORY DEVELOPMENT----LIVE WHERE YOU WORK 18 HOURS A DAY.
No one KNOWS better than the global 1% of ARABIC that Africa, near-and middle east will be uninhabitable MOVING FORWARD CLIMATE CHANGE.
No, China is not dominating the world's economy----they are simply being used by global banking 1% European KINGS to kill Western Europe and North American governance structures built over several centuries ----AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT, AGE OF REASON, I AM MAN MAGNA CARTA.
'China Sees Africa as Opportunity to Show Global Leadership Status' – Scholar
© AP Photo /
Opinion
17:53 21.07.2018(updated 18:00 21.07.2018)
Chinese President Xi Jinping has arrived in the United Arab Emirates as part of a five-nation trip to the Middle East and Africa, during which he’ll also visit Senegal, Rwanda, South Africa and Mauritius. Sputnik discussed his trip with Lina Benabdallah, assistant professor of politics and international affairs at Wake Forest University in the US.
Sputnik: Why do you think China is so interested in Africa? It is still viewed as an underdeveloped continent in terms of economy. Of course, it's very rich in natural resources. Is that the primary drive or how do you see China's interest on the African continent?
Lina Benabdallah: I think it is a combination of a lot of things. I mean, first of all, you mentioned the natural resources, but I think it is a combination of a lot of things. The African continent is huge. There is a growing, sizable middle class in a lot of countries; you can imagine that that represents a big market for Chinese goods. So it's not just a place for natural resources, it's also a place to think of Chinese goods targeting the different African countries' middle class.
READ MORE: Drawing Closer: China to Host First Africa-China Security, Defense Forum
Relations between China and African counterparts have also been increasingly turning towards military and security relations, so that's very interesting as well. So I would say natural resources, economic interests, but also security. China is interested in Africa because it's also an opportunity for China to show global leadership, to play a role in international peacekeeping, in conflict resolution and providing peace and security. It's a place for Chinese diplomacy and Chinese foreign policy to not just experiment, but also to gain experience and to gain global leadership status.
Sputnik: What do you think about competition between China, the EU and the US for influence in Africa?
Lina Benabdallah: I think that China has been for the past 10 to 15 years gradually increasing its presence in Africa; I think it is very serious player by now. I think there are several places in which China, the US and the EU can cooperate, but there are other areas where there is clear competition. There have been interests in trying to triangulate the relations and trying to work towards certain goals, providing development aid, for example.
READ MORE: China Bolstering Africa Expansion by Selling Arms to the Continent
There are lots of places where "more is better," but it's definitely the case that more recently we see China as playing a more assertive role and as playing a very serious competitive role in Africa; not only in the economic sector, but also, more recently, in sectors as diversified as assistance, military and security relations.
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Where we do not see Chinese global factories filling the economy is in Eastern Europe----USSR and those Eastern block nations. Russia is not making its sovereign economy COLONIAL------we are watching as the FLIPPING OF EARTH'S GLOBAL ECONOMY FROM WESTERN HEMISPHERE TO EASTERN HEMISPHERE is MOVING FORWARD.
Chinese global 1% have been partners these several decades of ROBBER BARON sacking and looting of America by global 1% EUROPEAN OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS hit our US sovereignty. There is no competition between these regions other than rebuilding 1000BC eastern trade routes.
The AMERICAS and AFRICA are simply being colonized ---tribute states for natural resources and slave labor takes all US 99% WE THE PEOPLE black, white, and brown citizens to being those Chinese FACTORY WORKERS/SWEAT SHOP WHITE COLLAR PROFESSIONALS ---no labor unions need apply.
Again, REAL left social progressives have known this was the MASTER PLAN of US cities since 1990s----and so too have those US national NGOs tied to LABOR, JUSTICE, ENVIRONMENT.
Both North America and Africa can maintain its sovereignty if they STOP MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE. Existing natural resources CAN BE CONSERVED for our future generations.
Sidestepping the U.S. Dollar, a Russian Exchange Will Swap Rubles and Renminbi
By ANDREW E. KRAMERDEC. 14, 2010
On Wednesday, a Moscow securities exchange is scheduled to open direct trading between the Chinese currency, the renminbi, and the Russian ruble. If the market develops, it could eventually cut the dollar out of a portion of Russian and Chinese trade.
Although China’s business with Russia is only a sliver of what it does with the United States, there is room to grow: Russia is the world’s largest energy exporting nation, and China a big consumer as the world’s second-largest economy, behind the United States. And yet when a railroad tanker of Russian oil crosses the border into China, the transaction is settled in dollars.
The new currency exchange is meant to start changing that. The trading system will operate through the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange, or Micex, which is Russia’s largest stock exchange and also handles foreign currency transactions. It will be the first trading in the Chinese currency outside mainland China and Hong Kong.
“We are pioneers,” a Micex spokesman, Nikita N. Bekasov, said in a telephone interview. In the long term, if other nations moved in the same direction, trading in renminbi outside China could diminish demand for the dollar. Chinese companies exporting to Russia or other countries could instead buy local currency directly, without the need for dollars as a common currency to conduct their business.
MOSCOW — Russia and China are poised to take a small but symbolic step in their expanding economic relationship, a move that in the long term could make the dollar less relevant to business between the two nations.
The initial volumes on the Russian exchange, though, are expected to be tiny. And they will be tailored to serve Russian banks with clients doing business in China, rather than speculators wishing to build up a portfolio in renminbi, anticipating that its value will appreciate. The United States is among Western nations that have pressured China to let the renminbi appreciate.
Initially, the Micex renminbi-ruble session will last one hour each morning, timed for trading with banks in Russia’s Far East near the Chinese border, many time zones ahead of Moscow.
Exchange officials say they expect only several million renminbi, or about half a million dollars, to change hands daily. The trade is reciprocal, as China in November opened an exchange for rubles and renminbi in Shanghai.
“It has symbolic value,” said Peter Westin, the chief economist at Aton, a brokerage firm in Moscow.
The development coincides with the opening of a trans-Siberian oil pipeline that is expected to expand Russia’s trade with China by freeing up railroad capacity for exports of coal, metals or other commodities, and could make it easier to do business along the remote border.
Cutting the dollar out of this emerging bilateral trade has been a policy goal of the Russian president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, who wants to establish the ruble as a reserve currency held by central banks, to diminish its volatility.
To mark Wednesday’s occasion, the Chinese ambassador to Russia, Li Hui, plans to strike the opening bell at Micex and then attend a celebratory brunch.
“We thought about trying to make Chinese food,” Mr. Bekasov said of the planned festivities, “but instead decided to make Russian food because it would be more interesting for the Chinese.”
“If China places some part, even a small part, of its reserves in rubles, this is a major boost to the global fortunes of the ruble,” Yaroslav Lissovolik, chief economist at Deutsche Bank in Moscow, said in an interview.
“Clearly the dollar will remain the key pillar of the global financial architecture,” Mr. Lissovolik said. “But this is one of the ways some of the emerging markets want to raise the profile of their currencies.”
The initial daily trading session is mostly intended to test the market and the settlement systems for the Chinese currency, whose export is restricted by Chinese capital controls, the Micex spokesman, Mr. Bekasov, said.
Renminbi are hard to obtain outside China, because of Beijing’s anticipation that their value will rise if China succumbs to American pressure to liberalize its currency. Several banks from China, which will be identified at the opening session on Wednesday, have agreed to support liquidity on the Russian market by providing renminbi, Mr. Bekasov said.
The Micex has a history of establishing market rates between currencies: It opened in January 1992, just a few weeks after the collapse of the Soviet Union, as a trading platform for banks wanting to create a market-based exchange rate between the dollar and ruble.
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Here we see East India with a raging global banking 1% neo-liberal ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE----MODI. He is not allowing Chinese GLOBLA FACTORIES into EAST INDIA because INDIA is not being made a COLONIAL ENTITY as is North/South America and Africa.
MODI is shifting global economics from WESTERN HEMISPHERE to EASTERN HEMISPHERE because that is what MOVING FORWARD has as a goal. Global banking 1% of East India has its share of GLOBAL FACTORIES being built inside US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES as well as China. Again, there is NO INTENTION of labor, civil rights, environmental groups protecting US sovereignty---these national groups NEVER MENTION STOPPING MOVING FORWARD ending designation of US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES.
East India well on its way to installing same far-right wing, authoritarian, militaristic, extreme wealth extreme poverty LIBERTARIAN MARXISM killing 99% of East Indian citizens.
'What is a vibrant democracy like India doing in the company of countries like Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan'?
TRUMP is simply MOVING FORWARD same global banking 1% Clinton/Bush/Obama goals of ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE killing the US taking it to colonial status.
Nov 29, 2017, 10:09pm
Why Is Democratic India Joining Russia And China's 'Anti-Western' Club, The SCO?
Salvatore Babones Contributor i
I write about Asia's role in the global political economy.
India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in Russia this week for his first conference as a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The SCO is often dismissed in the West as a "dictators' club": out of its eight members, five are rated "unfree" on the widely-used Freedom House democracy scale, two are rated "partially free," and the last one is ... India.
What is a vibrant democracy like India doing in the company of countries like Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan? The short answer is that India has been hedging its bets, pursuing closer strategic ties with the United States and Japan while maintaining its long-term security links with Russia.
The start of SCO
The SCO was founded in 2001 by Russia and China to keep the former Soviet republics of Central Asia from falling under American influence. The seemingly quick and easy U.S. victory in Afghanistan put the pressure on Russia and China to consummate the marriage quickly. Russia's Vladimir Putin was a young and energetic leader determined to restore his country's place in the world, and a weak and isolated China was looking for all the friends it could get.
Fast forward 15 years and Putin is now the beleaguered junior partner of China's Xi Jinping. Chronically low oil prices, tightening economic sanctions, and the rapid rise of China have dramatically worsened Russia's strategic position. Russia is desperate to find a way to balance China lest its central Asian client states be tempted to switch over to the Chinese camp.
Enter India. India may be a rapidly modernizing, English-speaking, democratic country, but its army still drives Russian T90 tanks, its air force still flies Russian Sukhoi jets, and its navy's lone aircraft carrier is the Soviet surplus INS Vikramaditya, née Admiral Gorshkov, née Baku (the Russians had to change the name when Baku became the capital of independent Azerbaijan).
India's business elite has close ties with the U.S., but India's security analysts worry about only two things: Pakistan and China. India has fought six wars since independence in 1947: four with Pakistan and two with China. And that doesn't include minor skirmishes like this summer's Doklam Plateau standoff.
To make matters worse, Pakistan and China have a longstanding All Weather Friendship that far outstrips Pakistan's reluctant and half-hearted collaboration with the U.S. in the war on terror.
India as a counterweight
India is understandably nervous about encirclement, and looking for all the powerful friends it can get. So Russia took the opportunity to pull India into the SCO as a counterweight to China. China responded by insisting that its ally Pakistan be included too. As a result, both countries were admitted to the organization this June at the SCO heads of state meeting in Astana. Balance achieved.
Or perhaps not. Pakistan doesn't change much in the balance at the SCO, which already has four other Muslim-majority police states as members.
India is different. As a vibrant democracy with an independent civil society and an unruly free press, India may not play by the SCO's authoritarian rules. It is unlikely to cause trouble, but it is also unlikely to fall into line on the security issues that are the mainstay of the SCO's program.
With the SCO already riven by ethnic conflict between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, water disputes between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, and a running political battle between the presidents of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, it is hard to see how the organization will be able to accommodate a new member that has traded punches with China and live fire with Pakistan in the short period between being admitted and attending its first summit.
Russia wanted India in the SCO to prevent the organization sliding under China's control. Instead it is likely to complete the organization's slide into irrelevance. As of last week, the agenda for the meetings to take place November 30 and December 1 had reportedly not yet been finalized. The eight heads of government meeting in Sochi will certainly talk about something, but it's difficult to imagine them agreeing on much.
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We like the mention of MEDIEVAL in this article discussing Chinese labor conditions in a Western European nation----but MOVING FORWARD is not medieval----it is 1000BC DARK AGES.
We have discussed often the MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE in Western Europe with GREECE being hit hardest FIRST. Greece has lost all national sovereignty from WORLD BANK/IMF bail out terms after global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS sacked and looted that nation during ROBBER BARON few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA.
The difference between DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM and REAL left social democracy is seen right here. Global corporate campus MARXISM is far-right wing and enslaving ---the 99% of citizens having no freedom, liberty, justice or labor/workplace protections while FAKE elections pretend to be open to all 99% of Greek citizens. Whereas Greek labor unions last century were able to organize workers to gain rights and wages as in US----that will not happen in MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE. Below we see here in Greece just what is MOVING FORWARD in US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES today.
-'Theoretically, trade unions are not banned yet'.
Hmmmm, COSCO is tied to managing US PORTS------as PORT OF BALTIMORE------look what's coming US LONGSHOREMEN!
OH, REALLY?????? and this is MOVING FORWARD in all US PORTS in US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES not jobs, jobs, jobs? – 'How about the port as a big employment opportunity?
'(Giorgos Gogos, Secretary General of the port workers union answers this question)
– Beforehand, the Piraeus container terminal employed 400-500 people. Now it’s 700. No more than 250-300 new jobs- flexible, badly paid and dangerous'.
03/06/2013
In Piraeus, Chinese investment brings Chinese labour standards.
Ex-employee reveals harrowing conditions at Cosco container terminal in Greece (Prin newspaper)
Mpatsoulis Cosco
Chinese labour standards in Europe.
A daily reality for hundreds of employees, hired by subcontractors/slave traders, forced to work at abysmal security conditions and fired at a moment’s notice, in case they complain about medieval work relations.
Dimitris Batsoulis, kicked out for requesting implementation of workplace safety regulations, has now gone to court against his former employer. This is his story
Interview by Leonidas Vatikiotis
-What are labour conditions like at Cosco?
When Cosco came to Greece it did things differently than normal employers. It did not hire full-time workers, it signed no collective agreement, it did not train its personnel, it just started doing business. It works as haphazardly as possible. Now, out of 600-700 employees, around 200-250 are working full time, with contracts privately imposed, not collectively negotiated. Their employer is a Cosco subsidiary called SEP in Greeks or PCT (Piraeus Container Terminal). The rest are hired by a complex web of subcontractors, again with privately “negotiated” contracts, very low paid. The money those people receive each month is fixed in advance (it corresponds to 10, 12, sometimes 16 workdays) irrespective of when they are called to work – nightshift, Sundays, anything goes. The main subcontractor, Diakinisi, has hired 4-5 other smaller subcontractors providing personnel, so that between each employee and the company there are 2 or 3 intermediaries. Out of one man’s wages, 2-3 layers of contractors get their cut. If this is not modern day slavery then I don’t know what it is.
Of course unions and collective bargaining are strictly forbidden. Employees receive no training whatsoever, despite the fact that the law granting Cosco rights to invest at the container terminal obliges the company to train employees.
-Theoretically, trade unions are not banned yet.
– There are no “unionising forbidden” signs but people who speak up are fired and there is an atmosphere of sheer terror. Workers at the port are afraid, they try to salvage their wages at every cost- and the cost is truly high. If a journalist could get in there as employee for a month, or even a week, you’d understand what I mean. Nightclub style bouncers check workers, chatting amongst employees is not allowed, there are no work regulations.
-The law of the jungle?
Exactly. These are 19th century conditions. In Hong Kong, Hutchinson runs a terminal along the same lines and workers there went on strike for 45 days, and gained solidarity from other port workers around the world. Their conditions were slightly improved, but they still work with this subcontractor web that makes it impossible to find out who actually runs the port and who is responsible for these labour conditions. This is kind of what we see in Piraeus.
– Were you working at the port before Cosco?
– No, not at all. For 11 years I was running my own earthmoving business, I was doing digging, demolitions and so on. When the economy plummeted, I had to park the machinery and shut down my business. I was unemployed so I started looking for work as a qualified machinery operator -I ‘ve had these qualifications for 17 years now. I found out about a vacancy at Cosco by word of mouth. Then I had an interview with the main Greek subcontractor, Diakinisi.
– And you immediately tried to form a union?
– I did not set out with this in mind at all. I just needed work, because unemployment was 25% at the time (now it is higher). So I was forced to sign any work contract put in front of me. In this contract, 3 out of 10 terms were in blatant violation of workers’ rights.
We were made to sign two contracts, one normal full time contract and one saying we will work 16 days a month. They did this so that, if they had to fire us, they’d pay lower severance payment, according to the second contract. I was working very hard, the job was very dangerous and security measures had to be strictly enforced. But every day, we were putting our own lives and our colleagues’ lives in danger. My machine had problems, which I detailed in writing at the end of each shift. The breaks were faulty, the lubrication system was faulty, hydraulics had problems, tires had problems, lights at night had problems. The next day, we’d go back to work and find out nothing had been done about it. Heating and air conditioning at the cabin were broken. When you are doing something this dangerous, you need optimal temperature conditions, so as to work with a clear mind. Before getting to work, we used to talk about these problems, but it was impossible for all 800 of us to go to the management office and discuss these issues. We had to form a committee. Some of us indeed formed a five-member workers committee. As soon as the company found out, we were fired.
– All five of you were fired?
– Yes, although I do not know exact numbers. Two of us then went to court against the sub-subcontractor, claiming we were fired because we tried to form a union. We could not directly sue Cosco or the main subcontractor, Diakinisi. Let me also point out that there was no work schedule, working hours were incredible.
– How did you know when you had to go to work?
– We didn’t. We were getting SMS messages saying we need to be at work in three hours. Nobody knew next day’s schedule. For nine months, I was never given a work schedule. There was simply none. We didn’t even dare to go visit our parents. We tried to tell our colleagues that this must change, so that we can organize our lives. There were colleagues whose kids were in hospital and could do nothing about it, out of fear that they would be blacklisted.
– What did labour inspectors say about this?
– In the nine months I was working there, I didn’t see an inspector once. They were receiving tips – anonymous tips, because if someone spoke to them openly, they’d be immediately put “on ice”. Some people who alerted work inspectors were not called to work for a week. When we were fired, we went to the local labour inspection office in Keratsini and they could not show us our work schedule, although they were supposed to receive a copy every six months.
– Did you get breaks?
– No. If someone needed to go to the toilet, they were told to do so in the machine cabin. There were bouncer types walking around without any specific job to do and we wondered what they were doing. There was constant terror. We were constantly reminded that if we complain, we’d be the next to go. Unemployment is very high, so nobody said a word.
-Why did you nevertheless decide to speak up?
– A machinery operator must be able to move in the cabin and see the container behind him. The machine, together with the container weigh 100 tons. This is a very responsible job. The operator should not be made to wear 10 layers of clothing to keep warm. I had to wear three jackets, because there was no heating. In January 31st 2012, I was working without heating at a temperature of -1 degree Celsius. It was snowing in Piraeus. Back in the summer we had already submitted reports saying heating does not work. After working three hours in these conditions, I could not go on. My hands were numb, my feet were numb, my brain did not work properly and I was constantly putting myself and my colleagues in danger. A 100tonne machine moving in the port at 15km per hour is a great danger. The crane can fall on a ship. I said stop, I need to get down, get warm and get back up again. They told me to go home and I heard nothing from them for a week. No SMS no nothing. Psychological warfare. After a week, they called me back, they had me work for 2-3 days and then I was summarily fired, together with others. That s how I was fired. People still working there live this every day. Workers must not think, this is the new model.
– When Prime Minister Samaras visited Beijing, he triumphantly announced that the Chinese will buy the rest of the port as well. Is this good for the port, for the workers and for the economy?
– The Chinese captain, captain Fu says Cosco is very beneficial for the local economy. I have not seen conditions in Perama (a very poor area near the port) improve because of Cosco. As for Samaras’ announcements, I think the blame for what s happening in the port does not lay with Cosco or with foreign investments, it lays with oversight mechanisms that are totally broken. Investors want to come in and make as much money as possible, as soon as possible. Labour inspectors (SEPE) must make daily, or at least weekly controls, they must have a constant presence in the port. Instead of this, they never come, or they come by appointment, while COSCO installs a 3 meter high fence and cameras everywhere. I tried to talk with the Secretary General of SEPE but he couldn’t see me, because he was busy running his campaign as a candidate of the socialist party.
– How about the port as a big employment opportunity?
(Giorgos Gogos, Secretary General of the port workers union answers this question)
– Beforehand, the Piraeus container terminal employed 400-500 people. Now it’s 700. No more than 250-300 new jobs- flexible, badly paid and dangerous. And we are not talking about stable employment. If the three of us split a monthly salary amongst us this is not three jobs, it is one job. This must be clear. Health care and insurance funds also lose out because of Cosco. The company does not pay premiums for unhealthy and dangerous employment, as it would be forced to do. Smaller wages means smaller contributions to health care and pension funds.
No taxpayer should be paid under the table. Everything must be taxed and contributions to social security must be paid. When there is no collective representation, employers give out crumbs. They divide and rule, they create an army of spies. That’s why there must be a collective agreement.
At OLP (the part of the port still run by the Piraeus Port Authority) there is a collective agreement and there is a workplace health service that works because we put pressure for it to work. When it is very hot in the summer, labour regulations are enforced. OLP is forcing us to work under difficult conditions too, the port is a very special place. A ship comes in and it needs to offload in three shifts, the client will always try to make it shorter. But when its 38 or 40 degrees outside, then inside the metal hull of the ship temperatures rise to 45 degrees. So our health service comes in with a thermometer and orders everyone to stop for a few hours. Our employer informs the client that there will be a two-three hour delay. But if there is no collective representation, then the difference is obvious. It’s people versus profits, once again.
This model of GLOBAL FACTORY built in China over several decades represents only ONE GLOBAL FACTORY. MOVING FORWARD will see each US state taken by several of these massive global factories to the point all real estate will be tied to that factory and headquarters as a FOOTPRINT---and anything for miles around will be controlled by that global corporate campus. There is NOTHING GOOD tied to these development for ANY population group----only the global 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS benefit from these massive INDUSTRIAL ZONES operating under a ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE.
When our US 99% allow the discussion on schools be tied to whether they are air conditioned and be silent on goals of global neo-liberal corporate schools apprenticing children to child slave labor----it gets hot in these global factories-----WE ARE NOT DISCUSSING GORILLA-IN-THE-ROOM education policies.
Factory of the World - Factory City - More than 17,000 workers at this factory in China
Published on May 14, 2016
Factory of the World - Factory City:
More than 17,000 work at this factory in China. What's it like to live where you work? For most of us, that's unthinkable. But imagine living and working at the biggest factory in the world? They live there. They eat there. Their children attend school there. But most of all, they work there. They are the 17,000 employees of EUPA, a "Factory City" in the southeast corner of China. EUPA's massive workforce pumps out 15 million irons per year, millions of sandwich grills, microwaves, coffee makers and blenders. Now they are about to take the manufacturing world by storm with their introduction of solar powered products. From the 2500 microwaves that come off the line each day to the four tons of rice served daily in the five cafeterias, we showcase the process and the personalities that keep this massive machine well-oiled. The show will focus not only on how the goods are made, but how the Factory City operates.It's a novel concept for the rest of the world. But it's become a way of life in China, where a new industrial revolution is unfolding on a scale the world has never seen.
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It is critical for our US 99% WE THE PEOPLE and our new to US immigrants no matter black, white, or brown citizens to STOP allowing these captured NGOS pretend to support our US 99% and immigrants while MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE for only the global 1% US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES.
Every NGO listed below work for global banking 1% having backed these few decades CLINTON GLOBAL BANKING 1% NEO-LIBERALS as every labor, justice, environmental policy installed over 300 years was dismantled, corrupted, or ignored. When a global banking 5% freemason/Greek player living just for today not caring they will be thrown under the bus leads these groups as FAR-RIGHT WING and not LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE the US becomes third world 1000BC extreme wealth extreme poverty....no future for families of those 5% players as well as all our 99% WE THE PEOPLE.
Our young adults and new to US immigrant citizens may know these group names from when they were actually doing REAL LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE public policy work. As always the grassroots 99% of WE THE PEOPLE really wanting to work for women rights, labor rights, reproductive rights, civil rights and liberties rights, environmental rights worked hard last century to install strong social progressive policies making the US tied to FREEDOM, LIBERTY, JUSTICE, PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS, REAL DOMESTIC FREE MARKET ECONOMY in world history.
THESE FEW DECADES OF ROBBER BARON SACKING AND LOOTING OF AMERICA TAKING US TO COLONIAL STATUS----REVERSED THE ROLE OF THESE GROUPS FROM REAL LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE TO FAR-RIGHT GLOBAL BANKING 1% KILLING ALL THE GAINS OF OUR 99% IN ALL POPULATION GROUPS.
They are NOT taking us back to early 1900s US labor and justice activism----they are supporting MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD for only the global 1% and US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES.
NARAL / PLANNED PARENTHOOD /SIERRA CLUB / LEAGUE OF CONSERVATION VOTERS / FRIENDS OF EARTH / NATIONAL WOMEN'S LAW CENTER / NATIONAL COUNCIL OF JEWISH WOMEN / LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE / MOVE ON / CREDO / JOBS WITH JUSTICE / AFL-CIO /GREENPEACE / AMERICAN AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL.
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First, the video we shared showing a GLOBAL FACTORY was propaganda. What was made to look clean, organized, with smiling supervisors and a global factory having only 17,000 workers is NOT what is MOVING FORWARD here in US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES.
Sure, FOXCONN created those JOBS, JOBS, JOBS our global banking 5% freemason/Greek players pretending to be LEFT SOCIAL BENEFIT----but those jobs were enslaving. No amount of LABOR ORGANIZING in far-right authoritarian nations will bring WORKER RIGHTS as in US last century and the AFL-CIO----having become INTERNATIONAL, not American ----KNOWS THIS.
'Foxconn is great at creating jobs. In China, it took a labor-intensive model of manufacturing, enlarged the scale beyond imagination, and prospered. Its Shenzhen factory complex, Foxconn City, once employed close to a half-million workers'.
Second, there is NO WAY to be left environmental when the goals are building massive concrete global factories the size of large US cities. The factory footprint is just the start as they control all of economic activity surrounding these massive campuses.
SAN FRAN is of course GLOBAL TECHNOLOGY pretending DEEP, DEEP, REALLY DEEP STATE is all about being GREEN----this technology is NOT GREEN----and this technology does not have any 99% populist goals.
We cannot have a CLIMATE CHANGE summit while global banking 1% are expanding global factory campuses all over the world especially in Africa, Arabia, and the AMERICAS. None of these 'GREEN' groups ever mention STOPPING MOVING FORWARD or ending designation of US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES. They are not jumping up and down shouting THOSE GLOBAL FACTORIES WILL KILL OUR US ENVIRONMENT----they pretend technology will mitigate damage.
San Francisco hosts global climate summit — will it make a difference?
San Jose Mercury News· 21 minutes ago
This week, thousands of political leaders, scientists, activists, journalists, celebrities and...
MADE IN AMERICA is not American----it brings overseas global banking 1% economics and societal structures to US killing our US Constitution, our 3 branches of governance, our BILL OF RIGHTS and 300 years of American history in fighting for civil liberties and rights for all 99% of WE THE PEOPLE.
Jul 30, 2017, 12:01am
America, The World's Next Factory Floor
Gordon G. Chang Contributor i
I write about Asia, especially the Chinese economy.
On Thursday, Terry Gou, the chairman of Hon Hai Precision Industry, signed a memorandum of understanding with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker in Milwaukee.
Hon Hai, better known by tradename Foxconn, agreed to spend $10 billion constructing a factory producing liquid-crystal display panels. The screens will be used for televisions and displays in cars and health care and other devices.
Foxconn, the world’s largest contract manufacturer of consumer electronics, turns out products for, among others, Apple, Dell, BlackBerry, Hewlett-Packard, Nokia, and Sony.
The Milwaukee signing followed Wednesday’s White House announcement by Gou and President Trump of the deal.
For the moment, America’s political leaders are talking about the jobs the Foxconn plant will create for Americans. U.S. workers, once the victims of “outsourcing,” are now the beneficiaries of “reshoring,” the return of manufacturing to the U.S.A. These days, manufacturers want to be as close as possible to impatient consumers and corporate customers.
OH, REALLY????? BENEFITING FROM RESHORING????
But there is also another reason that will soon fuel reshoring: perceptions of growing trade and geopolitical risk.
At this moment, however, all the talk is about jobs. Taiwan-based Foxconn says it will initially put 3,000 to work at the Wisconsin facility. The company plans to eventually employ 13,000 there at an average pay of almost $54,000.
And if you don’t think you will work for Foxconn, you can still benefit. Governor Walker believes the plant will create 10,000 construction jobs and about 22,000 indirect ones. As Alan Tonelson, a Washington-D.C.-based trade expert, noted in comments to me about the Foxconn investment, manufacturing has a “huge jobs-multiplier effect, by many estimates, the economy’s biggest.”
Foxconn’s plans certainly pleased President Trump. At the White House ceremony with Gou, the American leader put it this way: “American jobs—that’s what we want.”
Foxconn is great at creating jobs. In China, it took a labor-intensive model of manufacturing, enlarged the scale beyond imagination, and prospered. Its Shenzhen factory complex, Foxconn City, once employed close to a half-million workers.
His company in China started in coastal areas—Shenzhen is next to Hong Kong--and then, when wages soared and workers refused to travel to the coast for employment, he opened new facilities in the Chinese hinterland, most notably Chengdu in Sichuan province.
And to solve seemingly intractable personnel problems--at one point he had to erect nets to catch suicidal workers jumping off factory dormitory buildings in Shenzhen--he led the way in automation, installing robots, called “Foxbots,” in army-sized contingents.
Since then, he has also tried to diversify by moving to locations outside China. Initial efforts have not met with success, largely because it has been hard to replicate the factors that make Chinese manufacturing so cheap and efficient.
Gou’s company famously announced plans for India, Indonesia, and Vietnam but has been roundly criticized for not carrying through. Moreover, you can scour central Pennsylvania for the $30 million Foxconn facility announced in 2013, but you will not find it. Dow Jones’s MarketWatch site says, with justification, that the company has a “history of broken promises.”
Some observers, therefore, have wondered whether the Wisconsin factory will ever open its doors. Yet there are reasons why it will. As an initial matter, Tonelson, the trade analyst, says Gou seems motivated to build products in the U.S. to eliminate tariffs.
And there are two obstacles that Gou cannot overcome if he stays in China. First, there is the belief that, for competitive reasons, companies need to be close to customers and delivery times must be as short as possible. Two-week ocean crossings and several more days for unloading, Customs clearance, and reloading at Long Beach are increasingly considered unacceptable.
“In the new world,” Josh Boak and Paul Wiseman of the Associated Press write, “making products in faraway low-wage countries like China can be a disadvantage: It can take too long—weeks, months—to ship finished products to the United States.”
Weeks? Months? At some point, shipping finished products to the U.S. may not be possible. And that brings us to the second reason Foxconn has every reason to locate production to American soil: trade and geopolitical risk. Once thought to be minimal, such risks loom larger as companies are beginning to realize that patience with China has run thin in the American electorate and even in Washington.
The unexpected collapse of trade negotiations between China and the U.S. on the 19th—Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross did not try to hide the failure of the U.S.-China Comprehensive Economic Dialogue this month—suggests that Sino-U.S. relations are going to deteriorate fast.
And the deterioration will be seen in other areas. Ties could reach the breaking point because of, for instance, China’s support of North Korea, its attempts to grab the territory of neighbors, and Beijing’s cyberattacks against American networks.
All of these are important, but what could end decades-old relations is the killing or maiming of American service personnel. A Chinese pilot last Sunday endangered the crew of a U.S. Navy EP-3 reconnaissance plane in international airspace over the East China Sea by first flying under the slow-moving American craft and then pulling up only 300 feet in front of it, nearly causing a collision. The EP-3 normally carries a crew of 24.
China for two decades has caused dangerous intercepts in the skies and on the seas with distressing frequency, fortunately without American injuries or loss of American life. Yet should the Chinese harm Americans in the future—and it looks like just a matter of time before one of China’s pilots or sailors badly miscalculates—there could be long-term disruption in trade across the Pacific.
Therefore, Terry Gou looks prudent, avoiding business-killing risks by planning to build a rather large factory in a state called Wisconsin.
He obviously knows where his ultimate customers are.
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Now, whatever US population group calling itself RIGHT WING REPUBLICANS thinking TRUMP is really a right wing conservative and not simply the same CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE for only the global 1%-----we need ALL US 99% to WAKE UP and come together as US CITIZENS.
When global banking 1% pretend each independent US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE will be its own REPUBLIC-----they are LYING, CHEATING, AND STEALING our US 99% WE THE PEOPLE'S future. Each of these US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES will operate under a global 1% TRIBUNAL-----there is no REPUBLIC in MOVING FORWARD.
'The Milwaukee signing followed Wednesday’s White House announcement by Gou and President Trump of the deal'
Those academics having followed the move of US corporations to FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES overseas watched the 5Ws of how these global factories and economic zones have operated and nowhere do we see the 99% of WOMEN winning. Global banking 1% is selling CASTE STRUCTURES making our US 99% especially those dastardly global banking 5% players think the structure of CHINA'S POLITBURO will exist in MOVING FORWARD. This is why today in US we have all those FARM TEAM PLAYERS fighting to be the next city council or state assembly pol----when all those structures will disappear MOVING FORWARD.
TODAY, in US all those far-right global banking FAKE LABOR AND JUSTICE organizations are pretending to fight for $15 AN HOUR in these US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES----we even have a few US cities passing these temporary bills----when those global banking 1% LABOR AND JUSTICE organizations KNOW there will be no US standards of life in these zones.
Global Factories
Dreaming of becoming the best at the center of the Korean machinery industry
- Incheon PlantIncheon, Korea
- The Incheon Plant, built on Hwasu-dong, Dong-gu, Incheon, through a reclamation project of the 1930s, began the mass production of engines in 1958, the first in Korea. The company set up the largest diesel engine plant in Asia in 1975 and constructed Korea’s first large-scale excavator plant in 1977 with an annual production capacity of over 8,400 units of heavy and medium excavators. In 2012, a compact diesel engine plant was also built.
- Gunsan PlantGunsan, Korea
- The Gunsan Plant, located in North Jeolla Province, was built in the Gunsan Industrial Complex in October, 2010 and manufactures large construction equipment including heavy excavators and wheel loaders. The 125,000 square meter-sized plant on 610,000 m² of land produces and provides 6 types of large excavators as heavy as 34~70t and 4 types of 3~5m²-sized wheel loaders to every corner of the world.
Doosan Infracore China Co., Ltd.- Yantai, ChinaDIC, established in Yantai in 1994, produces 19 types of excavators & has offered locally customized products/services based on its philosophy of ‘Create Beautiful and Happy China.’ Its accumulated production has exceeded 120,000 units, the first in China.
- Bobcat Bismarck PlantBismarck, America
- The Bismarck Plant in North Dakota, United States, manufacturers Bobcat S70 skid steer loaders, MT52 and MT55 mini track loaders and attachments. In 2013, the groundbreaking ceremony for the Bismarck Acceleration Center was held and the construction of the advanced multi-purpose facility is now under way.
- Bobcat Gwinner PlantGwinner, America
- The Gwinner Plant, the birthplace of Bobcat and the world’s first skid steer loader, manufactures skid steer loaders, compact track loaders, FWD steer loaders, compact excavators, toolcats and large attachments. It employs over 1,400 staff members, almost twice the number of Gwinner residents.
- Bobcat Wahpeton PlantWahpeton, America
- The Wahpeton Plant produces cylinders and valves for loaders, mini-excavators and attachments. It was once home to a computer disk plant but was revamped as an advanced plant that manufactures a total of 125 types of cylinders and 18 kinds of valves delivered to plants in Gwinner, Richfield and Dobris and OEM customers.
- Doosan Portable Power Statesville, America
- The Statesville Plant in NC, US, produces portable air compressors, generators & light towers based on its technologies/experiences accumulated for over 140 years. The 1st floor has a space for displaying the pictures of DPP products used for global construction projects such as Hoover Dam & English Channel.
- DIA (Doosan Infracore America) EngineSuwanee, America
- In Suwanee, Georgia, home to Doosan Infracore America, sit construction equipment and forklift part warehouses and a CNG engine plant. The engine business unit was set up here in the third quarter of 2005 and has since led the engine business in North America, controlling production and R&D facilities and diverse types of test apparatus.
- DIN (Doosan Infracore Norway)Molde, Norway
- Doosan Infracore Norway (DIN), headquartered in Molde, Norway, was set up through DI’s acquisition of Moxy that developed the world’s first Articulated Dump Trucks (ADT) and has ADT-related source technologies. DIN owns Scandinavia’s largest welding robots for manufacturing frames and bodies.
- Bobcat Dobris PlantDobris, Czech
- Dobris, about 40km southwest of Prague, is home to both the Bobcat plant and an R&D center. A training center is also set up here to offer training programs for subsidiaries and dealers for Doosan’s heavy machinery, Bobcat’s equipment, and Portable Power products. The plant is also used for fabrication, welding, painting and assembly of Bobcat mid-to-small-sized loaders, excavators of up to 2 tons and diverse attachments.
- Bobcat Pontchâteau Plant Pontchâteau, France
- The city of Pontchateau is located 47km from Nantes, the capital of Loire-Atlantique, southwest of France. The small city with a population of about 10,000 is home to Bobcat tele-handlers that are exported to Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Russia, CIS, the Americas, and Oceania. Bobcat tele-handlers with a total of twelve models are widely used in various areas including construction sites, farms, and recycling factories.
Geith, headquartered in Slane, Ireland, is a leading manufacturer of attachments for construction, excavation and demolition. It designs and produces attachments as heavy as 1~85t such as buckets and quick couplers. Geith products boast high market shares in Europe (more notably U.K. and France) and are also shipped to North and South America via the Statesville Plant where Doosan Portable Power is located.
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For those US REAL LEFT academics watching US corporations moved overseas in 1990s Clinton/Bush/Obama -----we KNEW in 1990s as our US cities were left to become FAILED STATES stagnant economies now huge ghettos that the MASTER PLAN back then was to bring these global multi-national factories back to US ----no longer AMERICAN-----but owned by global 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS. So, why did AMERICAN politicians allow US manufacturing to move overseas knowing China would dominate world manufacturing? First, to kill the American domestic economy bringing US to colonial FAILED STATE status. Second, to take these several decades to use Asian 99% as slave labor, something not allowed during US 20th century.
So, is CHINA really taking over the world and the world economy because it is moving into Africa and the US? No, as with Chinese FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES filled with multi-national corporations----the land lease and economic structures are controlled by global banking with 50-60 year LEASES ---the life of the infrastructure of global factory cities. The only reason to bring Asian global corporations to US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES is to install GREAT LEAP FORWARD ---MOVING FORWARD ----far-right wing, authoritarian, militaristic, extreme wealth extreme poverty LIBERTARIAN MARXISM in US. To do that global banking 1% CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA have to totally eliminate our US Constitution, 300 years of FEDERAL court rulings, and that is indeed what a US SUPREME COURT, state court, and local court has been doing these few decades.
All of US national LABOR AND JUSTICE organizations whether labor, women, disabled, environmental----whether Jewish, Protestant, Catholic, Muslim knew the MASTER PLAN OF MOVING FORWARD US CITIES DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES since the Clinton era 1990s.
The leadership of these organizations simply FLIPPED from being REAL left social progressive to being far-right wing global banking 1% ----
Please Goggle this article to see what a raging global banking THE ECONOMIST has to say about CHINA and its DOMINANCE.
Global manufacturing
Made in China?
March 20th, 2012 THE ECONOMIST
Asia’s dominance in manufacturing will endure. That will make development harder for others
BY MAKING things and selling them to foreigners, China has transformed itself—and the world economy with it. In 1990 it produced less than 3% of global manufacturing output by value; its share now is nearly a quarter. China produces about 80% of the world’s air-conditioners, 70% of its mobile phones and 60% of its shoes. The white heat of China’s ascent has forged supply chains that reach deep into South-East Asia. This “Factory Asia” now makes almost half the world’s goods.
China has been following in the footsteps of Asian tigers such as South Korea and Taiwan. Many assumed that, in due course, the baton would pass to other parts of the world, enabling them in their turn to manufacture their way to prosperity. But far from being loosened by rising wages, China’s grip is tightening. Low-cost work that does leave China goes mainly to South-East Asia, only reinforcing Factory Asia’s dominance (see article). That raises questions for emerging markets outside China’s orbit. From India to Africa and South America, the tricky task of getting rich has become harder.
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When Clinton/Bush global neo-liberals and neo-cons signed leases in Chinese FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES taking US corporations overseas to be made into MULTI-NATIONAL global 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS corporations---NOT AMERICAN------what kept those multi-national corporations from saying WE ARE NOT LEAVING creating hostility inside those massive economic zones? The degradation of environment, natural resource access, the Chinese military overseeing security in those Chinese zones.
What is different in MADE IN CHINA MADE IN AMERICA?
Same land leases ---same degradation of environment and depletion of natural resources----the difference lies in allowing Chinese global 1% control security and major infrastructure oversight. Remember, the US is MOVING FORWARD to colonial status with global 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS not caring about SHARING a colonial AMERICAN WESTERN HEMISPHERE. We would see this happening in Eastern Europe/USSR.
“If we had guidance from someone to show us how to do it right, like the UAW, this place would be an amazing place to work,” he said'.
What we KNOW is this-------overseas FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES in Asian nations allowing some sort of LABOR UNION organizing had 99% of workers shouting those labor groups did nothing for them. There is no goal of bringing US standards of wages, work conditions, quality of life to US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES and our labor unions KNOW THIS.
Why does US need foreign investors when global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS Tribe of Judah---Knights of Malta owe the US tens of trillions of dollars in massive corporate frauds under CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA?
Will China Save the American Economy?
Though Trump is skeptical of globalization, more investors from overseas are building factories and creating jobs. Will they find the U.S. a hospitable place for business?
Alana Semuels
Jun 27, 2017 THE ATLANTIC
MORAINE, Ohio—For years, Donjian Xu and her husband operated a sleepy Chinese restaurant in this industrial suburb of Dayton, cooking up American-style Chinese food like sweet-and-sour chicken and beef with broccoli for customers who would stop in on their lunch break.
Then, three years ago, a new crowd started coming into Dragon China: Chinese natives who missed home and were craving something different than the hamburgers and pasta that everybody seemed to eat in Ohio. The Chinese, mostly businessmen, would come in and order things not on the menu—noodle soup with vegetables and fish balls, for example. Sometimes, Cao Dewang, a famous self-made billionaire from China, would come in and sit at the corner table with his deputies, and “that’s when we [would] need to make something really special,” Xu told me.
Dewang visits this Ohio town because it’s the home of the American factory he built for his Chinese company, Fuyao Glass. He spent $700 million in 2014 to rehabilitate a shuttered General Motors plant, where Fuyao now makes automotive glass that it sells to U.S. automakers. Fuyao employs 2,000, the majority of whom are Americans. “This place could be the next General Motors if it’s done right,” an employee named Larry Yates, who worked at the GM plant for 25 years, told me. “I want to see them do well and succeed.” Hundreds of Chinese executives work here, too, and, having brought their families from China, are buying homes and cars and enrolling their children in local schools.
Chinese investors are investing heavily in the United States. In 2016, Chinese businesses spent $46 billion on foreign direct investment in the United States, a threefold increase from the $15 billion they spent in 2015, according to the Rhodium Group, a research firm that analyzes global investment trends. Chinese-owned firms now support more than 140,000 jobs nationwide, nine times as many as in 2009.
President Trump has made reversing or resisting globalization a cornerstone of his economic policies and ideology, issuing executive orders directing the executive branch to hire and buy American, pulling out of trade deals such as the Trans Pacific Partnership, and promising to renegotiate NAFTA. But much of the economic activity being generated around the country comes because of globalization, not in spite of it. Globalization helped bolster economies around the world, including China’s, and is now allowing a class of wealthy people and companies from those economies to invest in the United States, creating jobs in depressed regions like Ohio.
Foreign companies are responsible for many of the jobs in states like Ohio today--they employ 18.5 percent of manufacturing workers in the U.S., according to the Brookings Institution. Other foreign companies creating jobs in Ohio include the Danish firm Xellia Pharmaceuticals and the German auto-parts supplier Borgers. “People typically think of trade or globalization as a one-way street in which they're on the losing end—if you listen to the president talk about this, you would come away thinking that we've only lost in this equation,” Joseph Parilla, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, told me. “Nobody has talked about the infusion of capital that comes from foreign companies that are supporting a ton of jobs in the U.S.”
But the increased investment comes with some growing pains. Chinese executives told me it’s hard to get American factories to become as efficient as Chinese ones, partly because Americans work fewer hours than Chinese workers do—on average, the Chinese work 2,200 hours a year, compared to 1,790 for the United States. They also say there are not enough qualified workers in manufacturing in Ohio, and that workers are unreliable.
Workers have their own complaints, as The New York Times reported recently. Workers say that Chinese companies operating in the U.S. don’t adhere to American labor standards and working hours. The workers complain about poor treatment, and one worker recently sued Fuyao on behalf of herself and others, alleging that the company didn’t pay them overtime. Another man alleges that Fuyao exposed him to chemicals that gave him blisters and made it difficult to breathe. The workers also say that Fuyao isn’t investing in training them, which is leading to low productivity at the factory. Fuyao disagreed with the criticisms, telling me that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) had investigated the claim of chemical use and found no violations, and that its policies on overtime and paid leave are straightforward.
Dayton—and Ohio—needs plants like Fuyao to succeed. New-business creation is faltering in America, with the number of new start-ups at 40-year lows. Foreign investment could be a key to creating new jobs for Americans. The question is whether foreign companies will continue to find America worth their investment.
* * *
In the cavernous white lobby of the Fuyao factory on a recent morning, a handful of people in suits sat under a Chinese flag, filling out job applications. They were seeking open positions at Fuyao, which had just announced that it was raising its hourly wage by $2 in order to attract new workers and decrease turnover. That drew in people like William Oliver, 31, who has an associate’s degree and was applying for a position on third shift (11 p.m. to 7 a.m.) so he could work at Fuyao while he attended school. Once he heard about the raise, he told me, “I knew I had to come down here.”
Not long ago, companies were decamping for overseas locations like China and Mexico, where they could save millions in labor costs. In 2004, factory workers in China made $4.35 an hour, compared to $17.54 that the average factory worker made in the U.S., according to the Boston Consulting Group.
THAT IS PURE FICTION COMING FROM GLOBAL HEDGE FUND HARVARD CORPORATION. $4 DOLLAR AN HOUR IN CHINA?
But labor expenses are rising in China. According to the Chinese Business Climate Survey, put out by the American Chamber of Commerce in China and the consulting firm Bain & Company, businesses there cite rising labor costs as their top problem. That’s in part because worker organizations are gaining strength, and strikes and labor disputes are becoming more common. Today, Chinese manufacturing wages adjusted for productivity are $12.47 an hour, compared to $22.32 in the United States, according to the Boston Consulting Group.
LABOR UNIONS GAINING STRENGTH IN CHINA? BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP MYTH-MAKING AND PROPAGANDA.
Wages aren’t the only costs in China that are rising. The price of electricity has increased 15 percent since 2010, and industrial land is becoming more expensive too. Taxes are high as well: Dewang, the head of Fuyao Glass, said in an interview late last year that he had moved his plant to the U.S. because China had the “world’s highest taxes.” (Actually, income taxes are higher in many Scandinavian countries than in China, and the corporate income-tax rate in China is 25 percent, which is lower than in the U.S.) “Apart from labor costs, everything else is cheaper in the U.S. than in China,” he has said.
These factors alone would be enough reason to give companies pause about locating factories in China. But there are other reasons Chinese businessmen are looking outside of their own country for investment opportunities. There are so many cash-flush investors in China that there are fewer good opportunities to buy companies, and so people with money have fewer places to put it, said Eswar Prasad, a professor of trade policy at Cornell. Such investors might have once put their money into U.S. securities, but the rate of return is low, so they’re turning their attention to buying foreign companies instead. (Most Chinese investment abroad comes in the form of outright purchases of other companies; the Fuyao factory stands out in that the company decided to build its own products there, rather than acquire an existing business.)
Many investors also want to diversify their portfolio by investing in companies outside of China, said Daniel Rosen, a founding partner at the Rhodium Group. And investors are worried about a weaker Chinese currency in the future, so they are making big bets while their money still goes relatively far. It’s not just in the U.S.: Chinese outbound foreign direct investment reached $200 billion in 2016, with deals in Europe, Africa, and South America as well. In total, the Rhodium Group calculates that China invested $46 billion in the U.S. in 2016, almost three times as much as the U.S. invested in China that year.
“The U.S. is seeing the same pattern of increasing Chinese investment that is taking place worldwide,” Rosen told me. Often, investors buy existing companies overseas simply as an investment—96 percent of Chinese investments in the U.S. in 2016 were in acquisitions, according to the Rhodium Group. The Chinese manufacturer Haier bought General Electric’s appliance division last year, for instance, and a consortium of Chinese investors bought the printer company Lexmark. Plants like Fuyao are different. They are what Rhodium calls “greenfield” investments, which means the company builds a new plant from the ground up and hires new people. These have represented a small share of Chinese investments in advanced economies like the United States, but are “likely to continue rising significantly in the year ahead,” Rosen said.
With greenfield investments, Chinese companies often bring their own executives to come in and run operations. I met one such person, a 35-year-old named Wei Liu, at the Dragon China restaurant on a recent weekday, where he had stopped for a quick lunch. Liu had brought his wife and daughter to Dayton, a town he’d never heard of, to improve his career prospects, he told me. “If I work here, I will have more chances,” he said, as he waited for his food. He likes living in America, though he says Dayton isn’t as diverse as other American cities he’s been to, and he doesn’t love the winters.
Fuyao made a greenfield investment in Ohio because it wanted to be closer to its customers, which are auto companies building cars in the United States, Jeff Liu, the president of Fuyao Glass America, told me. The U.S. auto market is currently booming, setting a new record for sales last year, and Fuyao wants to become a bigger part of the distribution chain. Shipping glass from China was expensive and dicey, as the product would sometimes break, which in turn made the process more costly, he said.
Fuyao spent around $700 million to get the plant up and running, bringing hundreds of Chinese workers to Dayton to set up the plant and supervise new hires. Now, it’s turning its attention to hiring more Americans, and to becoming a “truly American company,” Liu told me. “We want to be the best employer in this town,” he said.
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To be the best employer in town, though, Fuyao needs to be able to stay open, and so far, the factory isn’t making money. Fuyao has been working on its factory since 2014, but it still isn’t running at full capacity. Fuyao Glass America posted a $41 million loss in 2016, the company said in its annual report.
Some of the losses were because the company had to spend so much money on equipment to get the plant running, Liu told me. But productivity per worker in Moraine is 10 to 15 percent lower than it is in China, he said, adding “We have a big gap to catch up to China, but we’ll get there.”
Chinese companies also struggle to operate in an environment where there are a network of safety regulations that do not exist to the same extent in China. “It’s an example of the challenges of working on a more advanced economy where workers have much broader protections and safety standards and rights than is normal back in China,” says Rosen, of the Rhodium Group.
The company says it can’t find enough skilled people to fill open positions, Liu said, even when it raised the wages by $2 an hour. Most workers aren’t trained in automotive glass in the Dayton area, and many aren’t accustomed to working in the heat of the factory. Turnover has been high at the Fuyao plant so far, with workers quitting, and managers complain that American workers often show up late and take too much time off.
Upper-level management is mostly Chinese, and two American managers were fired from the plant in November, according to The New York Times. Dewang, the Fuyao chairman, told the Times that the workers “didn’t do their jobs but squandered my money.” (One of the managers has since filed a lawsuit alleging that he was fired because he wasn’t Chinese.) Dewang responded to the Times story in Chinese national media, calling it “false,” and saying that the company invests in technology to make the plant safer, that it trains its workers, and that most of the management and administration is American. Fuyao told me that no one has been terminated based on their nationality, and that only one of the two managers was terminated; the other left on his own accord.
U.S. workers have a different work ethic than Chinese workers do, said Daniel Curran, a former president of the University of Dayton who serves on Fuyao’s board. “Many of the Chinese workers are used to longer hours. It's not uncommon to see over time,” he said. “U.S. workers are used to essentially an eight-hour day. Not all American workers want to be working on the weekends. That's part of our culture.”
It’s possible that the U.S. workforce is not as skilled at manufacturing as it used to be. Many of the people who worked in manufacturing in the 1980s, before the wave of offshoring, have since retired, and younger people don’t have as much experience in factories. The economist Tyler Cowen has argued that Americans are more averse to adjusting to change than they were in the past, which potentially makes them less likely to take jobs in new fields. “You could say we got a little spoiled” as America created better and better jobs, Cowen told me. While Cowen sees this as a negative, it’s the result of a positive development: American workers are no longer interested in low-paying, backbreaking jobs like picking crops, for example. “People are not willing to become a wreck by age 60 or 65 anymore,” he said. But it makes life more difficult for employers who don’t want to (or can’t) pay workers more or improve the jobs that are available.
Cowen also pointed me to a study published last year in the Journal of Hand Therapy that indicates that today’s workers might be physically weaker than American workers of the past, which would explain some of why it’s harder to find good factory workers. Men younger than 30 have weaker hand grips than their counterparts in 1985 did, the study found. Grips might have gotten weaker because men are no longer accustomed to working in manufacturing or farming, but are instead prepared to sit at desks and work on computers.
For their part, workers say that Fuyao isn’t as productive in the U.S. as it is in China because the jobs are dangerous and unpleasant, and because Chinese supervisors have trouble communicating with U.S. workers. (Having the Google Translate app is a must for anyone who interacts with Chinese supervisors. “They understand English—they just can't communicate comfortably,” one worker, Tim Jernigan told me. “So we pull out [Google Translate] and we start typing and they look over your shoulder, and that's how we communicate.”) Additionally, U.S. labor standards prohibit some of the behavior that is commonplace in Chinese factories that may make them more efficient there. “There’s two sets of safety standards at play here,” said Yates, the Fuyao worker, who is 49 and thin. “I wouldn’t want my worst enemy working here now.”
For example, American and Chinese supervisors discipline American workers who fail to wear safety glasses, while Chinese supervisors frequently ignore the rules. Jernigan, who was among the first of the workers hired by Fuyao, told me some Chinese workers climb over equipment like furnaces without safety harnesses attached, which American workers wouldn’t do. Chinese workers often don’t use protective shields when they are supposed to. “They’re just so used to doing it that way,” he said.
I briefly visited the plant floor, where forklifts carried sheets of glass between blue and yellow machines. Numerous posters reminded workers to follow the “5 S’s: Sort, Straighten, Shine, Standardize, and Sustain,” which is a Japanese process for workplace organization. The whole plant was extremely hot—a result of the furnace that heats the glass—and there’s not much ventilation. I saw many more machines on the plant floor than I saw people.
After OSHA visited Fuyao in eight separate inspections, it proposed $226,937 in penalties. OSHA found machine-safety violations that potentially exposed workers to amputation, as well as electrical hazards, and a lack of personal protective equipment. It also said that the company failed to train workers about hazardous chemicals in use, and that it had unmarked exits. Fuyao settled with OSHA in March, agreeing to pay penalties of $100,000, the government said.
REMEMBER, OUR FEDERAL OSHA HAS NOT BEEN ENFORCING WORKPLACE SAFETY THESE FEW DECADES---IT WILL LOWER ITS STANDARDS TO CHINESE VERY QUICKLY.
Workers say safety hazards exist because Fuyao doesn’t bother to invest in training workers. Another worker, a 57-year-old named Ronald Blake, said he had expected to get in-depth training once he was hired at Fuyao, even though he’d worked at a car plant previously for 13 years. But he has learned very little about how to do his job. “You have to be real persistent about asking questions, to get you to tell you why they’re doing what they’re doing,” he said, about learning on the plant floor. “I want to do things the right way.”
There are other complaints: Fuyao recently changed its vacation policy so that people earn time off with every hour they work, rather than guaranteeing workers a certain number of days a year. It also changed the attendance policy so that people don’t get the bonuses they once did for coming to work every day. “Every time I get close to reaching the maximum, they change it,” another worker, Teodore Searcey, told me.
These types of complaints aren’t uncommon among American workers who are employed by Chinese firms. A Chinese copper company set up a factory called Golden Dragon Precise Copper Tube Group in Alabama in 2014. The company had similar complaints about workers: the company’s chairman told The Washington Post that the quality of the workers there “is not very good.” The plant was, at first, unsafe, with oil leaks that made the ground slippery, and a lack of safety guards on machines, and so in December of 2014, the workers voted, 75 to 74, to form a union, according to Dan Flippo, the director of the United Steelworkers’ District 9, which now represents Golden Dragon. “It was a sea change for a Chinese company to come in and start from scratch,” he told me. “There are just cultural differences.”
* * *
Foreign companies operating in the U.S. have long had to adjust to methods of doing business here. In the 1980s, when Japanese firms first started making cars in the United States, the Japanese firms worried about a lack of American efficiency, with one Japanese senior politician saying that American workers were “too lazy” compared with those in Japan. American workers complained about not having enough input into the way the factory worked, according to Harley Shaiken, a professor at the University of California Berkeley. “There is clearly a learning curve when you’re moving to a new place,” he said.
JAPAN HAS BEEN A FIRST WORLD DEVELOPED NATION FOR SEVERAL DECADES WHILE CHINA IS HAPPY BEING THIRD WORLD -----THEY HAVE NO INTENTIONS OF CHANGING.
Initial Japanese forays into the U.S. market had mixed results. Toyota launched its first major manufacturing investment in the U.S. in a joint venture with General Motors that was called NUMMI. Initially, the U.S. workers struggled to adapt to the Japanese “lean production” model, but over time, the collaboration began to work well, said Shaiken, who authored a white paper on Nummi in California for a state commission after the plant shut down during the recession.
The plant became one of the most productive in the country, and U.S. companies learned from Japan’s manufacturing techniques. But one of the biggest reasons NUMMI worked was that U.S. workers were able to give input to Japanese managers about how they thought the factory should be run, Shaiken said. That made the workers more invested in the manufacturing process—and it made the manufacturing process better as well. Japanese automakers learned from this experience, Shaiken said—even when companies opened non-union plants, they established ways for workers to be involved in the production process.
Chinese companies have generally not yet made the effort to incorporate U.S. workers into decision-making, Shaiken said. “They are saying the plant is not as productive, yet they are using techniques that almost assuredly will result in it not being productive,” he said. “In effect, the Chinese are ignoring a quarter-century worth of extensive experience in manufacturing.”
Workers at the Fuyao plant have an idea for how to fix some of these problems: They want to form a union. They say they want to have more input into the process of making automotive glass. That way, they can push back against unsafe orders, and can contribute to making the plant more efficient. Yates and other workers meet on Wednesdays after their shifts at a United Auto Workers (UAW) office a few blocks from the plant, which shares a building with a carpet-cleaning company. I met Yates and a few other workers there close to midnight, where they sat around a table and talked about how to get their message out to other Fuyao workers. “What it boils down to is that we don’t have a say-so in any of this,” Yates said. “If we had guidance from someone to show us how to do it right, like the UAW, this place would be an amazing place to work,” he said.
Dan Flippo, of the United Steelworkers, said that his workers’ relationship with their Chinese employers improved significantly after the union was formed. “Golden Dragon has been much more cooperative after we got the election behind us and a contract in place,” he said. “We honestly have a decent relationship with them now.”
The UAW doesn’t yet have enough support to hold a vote at the Fuyao plant. A recent union meeting attracted just about 100 workers—the plant employs about 1,500 production workers. But forming a union isn’t the only way that workers could get more of a voice at Fuyao. German car companies operating in the U.S. have supported the idea of “works councils,” in which workers and management meet and discuss operations, for example. At NUMMI, the Japanese company, workers were expected to speak up whenever they saw a problem that prevented them from doing their jobs properly, according to John Shook, who is now an industrial anthropologist, but who then worked for Toyota.
All of the American workers I talked to said they wanted to Fuyao to succeed. They understand the value of having manufacturing jobs in today’s economy, and that many communities would fight for a large plant of Fuyao’s size. But they say Fuyao needs to better adjust to being in America. “Are they going to try to run this like it’s in China, or like it’s in America?” Jernigan, the worker, said. “Americans are used to doing it a certain way, and Chinese are used to doing it a certain way. We have to meet in between.”
It could be difficult for Fuyao to make such wholesale changes to the way it does business, especially with continued pressures from China to turn a profit. But investors like Dewang need plants like Fuyao to be profitable, if they are going to make money in the United States. They still haven’t figured out how to make the factory work. In the end, it may come down to understanding how to operate these American plants with Chinese characteristics. Listening to the American workers may be a start.
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OF COURSE THEY ARE GOING TO RUN THIS AS THEY DO IN CHINA FOR GOODNESS SAKE
“Are they going to try to run this like it’s in China, or like it’s in America?” Jernigan, the worker, said. “Americans are used to doing it a certain way, and Chinese are used to doing it a certain way. We have to meet in between.”
It could be difficult for Fuyao to make such wholesale changes to the way it does business, especially with continued pressures from China to turn a profit'.
At the same time we are reading global banking 1% players saying China is taking over AFRICA. We have discussed the destruction of Africa's natural infrastructure these few decades by OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS global corporations----building WALLS all over Africa designating FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES. So, again, there is no invasion of CHINA into these AFRICAN FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES. Africa as a continent will be fleeced of any and all natural resourced after the coming several decades of being a FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE. It will be left as a DARK CONTINENT under ONE WORLD GOVERNANCE.
Yes, global banking 1% are MOVING FORWARD AFRICA as a far-right wing, authoritarian, militaristic, extreme wealth extreme poverty LIBERTARIAN MARXIST economic structure filled with GLOBAL FACTORY DEVELOPMENT----LIVE WHERE YOU WORK 18 HOURS A DAY.
No one KNOWS better than the global 1% of ARABIC that Africa, near-and middle east will be uninhabitable MOVING FORWARD CLIMATE CHANGE.
No, China is not dominating the world's economy----they are simply being used by global banking 1% European KINGS to kill Western Europe and North American governance structures built over several centuries ----AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT, AGE OF REASON, I AM MAN MAGNA CARTA.
'China Sees Africa as Opportunity to Show Global Leadership Status' – Scholar
© AP Photo /
Opinion
17:53 21.07.2018(updated 18:00 21.07.2018)
Chinese President Xi Jinping has arrived in the United Arab Emirates as part of a five-nation trip to the Middle East and Africa, during which he’ll also visit Senegal, Rwanda, South Africa and Mauritius. Sputnik discussed his trip with Lina Benabdallah, assistant professor of politics and international affairs at Wake Forest University in the US.
Sputnik: Why do you think China is so interested in Africa? It is still viewed as an underdeveloped continent in terms of economy. Of course, it's very rich in natural resources. Is that the primary drive or how do you see China's interest on the African continent?
Lina Benabdallah: I think it is a combination of a lot of things. I mean, first of all, you mentioned the natural resources, but I think it is a combination of a lot of things. The African continent is huge. There is a growing, sizable middle class in a lot of countries; you can imagine that that represents a big market for Chinese goods. So it's not just a place for natural resources, it's also a place to think of Chinese goods targeting the different African countries' middle class.
READ MORE: Drawing Closer: China to Host First Africa-China Security, Defense Forum
Relations between China and African counterparts have also been increasingly turning towards military and security relations, so that's very interesting as well. So I would say natural resources, economic interests, but also security. China is interested in Africa because it's also an opportunity for China to show global leadership, to play a role in international peacekeeping, in conflict resolution and providing peace and security. It's a place for Chinese diplomacy and Chinese foreign policy to not just experiment, but also to gain experience and to gain global leadership status.
Sputnik: What do you think about competition between China, the EU and the US for influence in Africa?
Lina Benabdallah: I think that China has been for the past 10 to 15 years gradually increasing its presence in Africa; I think it is very serious player by now. I think there are several places in which China, the US and the EU can cooperate, but there are other areas where there is clear competition. There have been interests in trying to triangulate the relations and trying to work towards certain goals, providing development aid, for example.
READ MORE: China Bolstering Africa Expansion by Selling Arms to the Continent
There are lots of places where "more is better," but it's definitely the case that more recently we see China as playing a more assertive role and as playing a very serious competitive role in Africa; not only in the economic sector, but also, more recently, in sectors as diversified as assistance, military and security relations.
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Where we do not see Chinese global factories filling the economy is in Eastern Europe----USSR and those Eastern block nations. Russia is not making its sovereign economy COLONIAL------we are watching as the FLIPPING OF EARTH'S GLOBAL ECONOMY FROM WESTERN HEMISPHERE TO EASTERN HEMISPHERE is MOVING FORWARD.
Chinese global 1% have been partners these several decades of ROBBER BARON sacking and looting of America by global 1% EUROPEAN OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS hit our US sovereignty. There is no competition between these regions other than rebuilding 1000BC eastern trade routes.
The AMERICAS and AFRICA are simply being colonized ---tribute states for natural resources and slave labor takes all US 99% WE THE PEOPLE black, white, and brown citizens to being those Chinese FACTORY WORKERS/SWEAT SHOP WHITE COLLAR PROFESSIONALS ---no labor unions need apply.
Again, REAL left social progressives have known this was the MASTER PLAN of US cities since 1990s----and so too have those US national NGOs tied to LABOR, JUSTICE, ENVIRONMENT.
Both North America and Africa can maintain its sovereignty if they STOP MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE. Existing natural resources CAN BE CONSERVED for our future generations.
Sidestepping the U.S. Dollar, a Russian Exchange Will Swap Rubles and Renminbi
By ANDREW E. KRAMERDEC. 14, 2010
On Wednesday, a Moscow securities exchange is scheduled to open direct trading between the Chinese currency, the renminbi, and the Russian ruble. If the market develops, it could eventually cut the dollar out of a portion of Russian and Chinese trade.
Although China’s business with Russia is only a sliver of what it does with the United States, there is room to grow: Russia is the world’s largest energy exporting nation, and China a big consumer as the world’s second-largest economy, behind the United States. And yet when a railroad tanker of Russian oil crosses the border into China, the transaction is settled in dollars.
The new currency exchange is meant to start changing that. The trading system will operate through the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange, or Micex, which is Russia’s largest stock exchange and also handles foreign currency transactions. It will be the first trading in the Chinese currency outside mainland China and Hong Kong.
“We are pioneers,” a Micex spokesman, Nikita N. Bekasov, said in a telephone interview. In the long term, if other nations moved in the same direction, trading in renminbi outside China could diminish demand for the dollar. Chinese companies exporting to Russia or other countries could instead buy local currency directly, without the need for dollars as a common currency to conduct their business.
MOSCOW — Russia and China are poised to take a small but symbolic step in their expanding economic relationship, a move that in the long term could make the dollar less relevant to business between the two nations.
The initial volumes on the Russian exchange, though, are expected to be tiny. And they will be tailored to serve Russian banks with clients doing business in China, rather than speculators wishing to build up a portfolio in renminbi, anticipating that its value will appreciate. The United States is among Western nations that have pressured China to let the renminbi appreciate.
Initially, the Micex renminbi-ruble session will last one hour each morning, timed for trading with banks in Russia’s Far East near the Chinese border, many time zones ahead of Moscow.
Exchange officials say they expect only several million renminbi, or about half a million dollars, to change hands daily. The trade is reciprocal, as China in November opened an exchange for rubles and renminbi in Shanghai.
“It has symbolic value,” said Peter Westin, the chief economist at Aton, a brokerage firm in Moscow.
The development coincides with the opening of a trans-Siberian oil pipeline that is expected to expand Russia’s trade with China by freeing up railroad capacity for exports of coal, metals or other commodities, and could make it easier to do business along the remote border.
Cutting the dollar out of this emerging bilateral trade has been a policy goal of the Russian president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, who wants to establish the ruble as a reserve currency held by central banks, to diminish its volatility.
To mark Wednesday’s occasion, the Chinese ambassador to Russia, Li Hui, plans to strike the opening bell at Micex and then attend a celebratory brunch.
“We thought about trying to make Chinese food,” Mr. Bekasov said of the planned festivities, “but instead decided to make Russian food because it would be more interesting for the Chinese.”
“If China places some part, even a small part, of its reserves in rubles, this is a major boost to the global fortunes of the ruble,” Yaroslav Lissovolik, chief economist at Deutsche Bank in Moscow, said in an interview.
“Clearly the dollar will remain the key pillar of the global financial architecture,” Mr. Lissovolik said. “But this is one of the ways some of the emerging markets want to raise the profile of their currencies.”
The initial daily trading session is mostly intended to test the market and the settlement systems for the Chinese currency, whose export is restricted by Chinese capital controls, the Micex spokesman, Mr. Bekasov, said.
Renminbi are hard to obtain outside China, because of Beijing’s anticipation that their value will rise if China succumbs to American pressure to liberalize its currency. Several banks from China, which will be identified at the opening session on Wednesday, have agreed to support liquidity on the Russian market by providing renminbi, Mr. Bekasov said.
The Micex has a history of establishing market rates between currencies: It opened in January 1992, just a few weeks after the collapse of the Soviet Union, as a trading platform for banks wanting to create a market-based exchange rate between the dollar and ruble.
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Here we see East India with a raging global banking 1% neo-liberal ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE----MODI. He is not allowing Chinese GLOBLA FACTORIES into EAST INDIA because INDIA is not being made a COLONIAL ENTITY as is North/South America and Africa.
MODI is shifting global economics from WESTERN HEMISPHERE to EASTERN HEMISPHERE because that is what MOVING FORWARD has as a goal. Global banking 1% of East India has its share of GLOBAL FACTORIES being built inside US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES as well as China. Again, there is NO INTENTION of labor, civil rights, environmental groups protecting US sovereignty---these national groups NEVER MENTION STOPPING MOVING FORWARD ending designation of US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES.
East India well on its way to installing same far-right wing, authoritarian, militaristic, extreme wealth extreme poverty LIBERTARIAN MARXISM killing 99% of East Indian citizens.
'What is a vibrant democracy like India doing in the company of countries like Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan'?
TRUMP is simply MOVING FORWARD same global banking 1% Clinton/Bush/Obama goals of ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE killing the US taking it to colonial status.
Nov 29, 2017, 10:09pm
Why Is Democratic India Joining Russia And China's 'Anti-Western' Club, The SCO?
Salvatore Babones Contributor i
I write about Asia's role in the global political economy.
India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in Russia this week for his first conference as a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The SCO is often dismissed in the West as a "dictators' club": out of its eight members, five are rated "unfree" on the widely-used Freedom House democracy scale, two are rated "partially free," and the last one is ... India.
What is a vibrant democracy like India doing in the company of countries like Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan? The short answer is that India has been hedging its bets, pursuing closer strategic ties with the United States and Japan while maintaining its long-term security links with Russia.
The start of SCO
The SCO was founded in 2001 by Russia and China to keep the former Soviet republics of Central Asia from falling under American influence. The seemingly quick and easy U.S. victory in Afghanistan put the pressure on Russia and China to consummate the marriage quickly. Russia's Vladimir Putin was a young and energetic leader determined to restore his country's place in the world, and a weak and isolated China was looking for all the friends it could get.
Fast forward 15 years and Putin is now the beleaguered junior partner of China's Xi Jinping. Chronically low oil prices, tightening economic sanctions, and the rapid rise of China have dramatically worsened Russia's strategic position. Russia is desperate to find a way to balance China lest its central Asian client states be tempted to switch over to the Chinese camp.
Enter India. India may be a rapidly modernizing, English-speaking, democratic country, but its army still drives Russian T90 tanks, its air force still flies Russian Sukhoi jets, and its navy's lone aircraft carrier is the Soviet surplus INS Vikramaditya, née Admiral Gorshkov, née Baku (the Russians had to change the name when Baku became the capital of independent Azerbaijan).
India's business elite has close ties with the U.S., but India's security analysts worry about only two things: Pakistan and China. India has fought six wars since independence in 1947: four with Pakistan and two with China. And that doesn't include minor skirmishes like this summer's Doklam Plateau standoff.
To make matters worse, Pakistan and China have a longstanding All Weather Friendship that far outstrips Pakistan's reluctant and half-hearted collaboration with the U.S. in the war on terror.
India as a counterweight
India is understandably nervous about encirclement, and looking for all the powerful friends it can get. So Russia took the opportunity to pull India into the SCO as a counterweight to China. China responded by insisting that its ally Pakistan be included too. As a result, both countries were admitted to the organization this June at the SCO heads of state meeting in Astana. Balance achieved.
Or perhaps not. Pakistan doesn't change much in the balance at the SCO, which already has four other Muslim-majority police states as members.
India is different. As a vibrant democracy with an independent civil society and an unruly free press, India may not play by the SCO's authoritarian rules. It is unlikely to cause trouble, but it is also unlikely to fall into line on the security issues that are the mainstay of the SCO's program.
With the SCO already riven by ethnic conflict between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, water disputes between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, and a running political battle between the presidents of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, it is hard to see how the organization will be able to accommodate a new member that has traded punches with China and live fire with Pakistan in the short period between being admitted and attending its first summit.
Russia wanted India in the SCO to prevent the organization sliding under China's control. Instead it is likely to complete the organization's slide into irrelevance. As of last week, the agenda for the meetings to take place November 30 and December 1 had reportedly not yet been finalized. The eight heads of government meeting in Sochi will certainly talk about something, but it's difficult to imagine them agreeing on much.
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We like the mention of MEDIEVAL in this article discussing Chinese labor conditions in a Western European nation----but MOVING FORWARD is not medieval----it is 1000BC DARK AGES.
We have discussed often the MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE in Western Europe with GREECE being hit hardest FIRST. Greece has lost all national sovereignty from WORLD BANK/IMF bail out terms after global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS sacked and looted that nation during ROBBER BARON few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA.
The difference between DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM and REAL left social democracy is seen right here. Global corporate campus MARXISM is far-right wing and enslaving ---the 99% of citizens having no freedom, liberty, justice or labor/workplace protections while FAKE elections pretend to be open to all 99% of Greek citizens. Whereas Greek labor unions last century were able to organize workers to gain rights and wages as in US----that will not happen in MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE. Below we see here in Greece just what is MOVING FORWARD in US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES today.
-'Theoretically, trade unions are not banned yet'.
Hmmmm, COSCO is tied to managing US PORTS------as PORT OF BALTIMORE------look what's coming US LONGSHOREMEN!
OH, REALLY?????? and this is MOVING FORWARD in all US PORTS in US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES not jobs, jobs, jobs? – 'How about the port as a big employment opportunity?
'(Giorgos Gogos, Secretary General of the port workers union answers this question)
– Beforehand, the Piraeus container terminal employed 400-500 people. Now it’s 700. No more than 250-300 new jobs- flexible, badly paid and dangerous'.
03/06/2013
In Piraeus, Chinese investment brings Chinese labour standards.
Ex-employee reveals harrowing conditions at Cosco container terminal in Greece (Prin newspaper)
Mpatsoulis Cosco
Chinese labour standards in Europe.
A daily reality for hundreds of employees, hired by subcontractors/slave traders, forced to work at abysmal security conditions and fired at a moment’s notice, in case they complain about medieval work relations.
Dimitris Batsoulis, kicked out for requesting implementation of workplace safety regulations, has now gone to court against his former employer. This is his story
Interview by Leonidas Vatikiotis
-What are labour conditions like at Cosco?
When Cosco came to Greece it did things differently than normal employers. It did not hire full-time workers, it signed no collective agreement, it did not train its personnel, it just started doing business. It works as haphazardly as possible. Now, out of 600-700 employees, around 200-250 are working full time, with contracts privately imposed, not collectively negotiated. Their employer is a Cosco subsidiary called SEP in Greeks or PCT (Piraeus Container Terminal). The rest are hired by a complex web of subcontractors, again with privately “negotiated” contracts, very low paid. The money those people receive each month is fixed in advance (it corresponds to 10, 12, sometimes 16 workdays) irrespective of when they are called to work – nightshift, Sundays, anything goes. The main subcontractor, Diakinisi, has hired 4-5 other smaller subcontractors providing personnel, so that between each employee and the company there are 2 or 3 intermediaries. Out of one man’s wages, 2-3 layers of contractors get their cut. If this is not modern day slavery then I don’t know what it is.
Of course unions and collective bargaining are strictly forbidden. Employees receive no training whatsoever, despite the fact that the law granting Cosco rights to invest at the container terminal obliges the company to train employees.
-Theoretically, trade unions are not banned yet.
– There are no “unionising forbidden” signs but people who speak up are fired and there is an atmosphere of sheer terror. Workers at the port are afraid, they try to salvage their wages at every cost- and the cost is truly high. If a journalist could get in there as employee for a month, or even a week, you’d understand what I mean. Nightclub style bouncers check workers, chatting amongst employees is not allowed, there are no work regulations.
-The law of the jungle?
Exactly. These are 19th century conditions. In Hong Kong, Hutchinson runs a terminal along the same lines and workers there went on strike for 45 days, and gained solidarity from other port workers around the world. Their conditions were slightly improved, but they still work with this subcontractor web that makes it impossible to find out who actually runs the port and who is responsible for these labour conditions. This is kind of what we see in Piraeus.
– Were you working at the port before Cosco?
– No, not at all. For 11 years I was running my own earthmoving business, I was doing digging, demolitions and so on. When the economy plummeted, I had to park the machinery and shut down my business. I was unemployed so I started looking for work as a qualified machinery operator -I ‘ve had these qualifications for 17 years now. I found out about a vacancy at Cosco by word of mouth. Then I had an interview with the main Greek subcontractor, Diakinisi.
– And you immediately tried to form a union?
– I did not set out with this in mind at all. I just needed work, because unemployment was 25% at the time (now it is higher). So I was forced to sign any work contract put in front of me. In this contract, 3 out of 10 terms were in blatant violation of workers’ rights.
We were made to sign two contracts, one normal full time contract and one saying we will work 16 days a month. They did this so that, if they had to fire us, they’d pay lower severance payment, according to the second contract. I was working very hard, the job was very dangerous and security measures had to be strictly enforced. But every day, we were putting our own lives and our colleagues’ lives in danger. My machine had problems, which I detailed in writing at the end of each shift. The breaks were faulty, the lubrication system was faulty, hydraulics had problems, tires had problems, lights at night had problems. The next day, we’d go back to work and find out nothing had been done about it. Heating and air conditioning at the cabin were broken. When you are doing something this dangerous, you need optimal temperature conditions, so as to work with a clear mind. Before getting to work, we used to talk about these problems, but it was impossible for all 800 of us to go to the management office and discuss these issues. We had to form a committee. Some of us indeed formed a five-member workers committee. As soon as the company found out, we were fired.
– All five of you were fired?
– Yes, although I do not know exact numbers. Two of us then went to court against the sub-subcontractor, claiming we were fired because we tried to form a union. We could not directly sue Cosco or the main subcontractor, Diakinisi. Let me also point out that there was no work schedule, working hours were incredible.
– How did you know when you had to go to work?
– We didn’t. We were getting SMS messages saying we need to be at work in three hours. Nobody knew next day’s schedule. For nine months, I was never given a work schedule. There was simply none. We didn’t even dare to go visit our parents. We tried to tell our colleagues that this must change, so that we can organize our lives. There were colleagues whose kids were in hospital and could do nothing about it, out of fear that they would be blacklisted.
– What did labour inspectors say about this?
– In the nine months I was working there, I didn’t see an inspector once. They were receiving tips – anonymous tips, because if someone spoke to them openly, they’d be immediately put “on ice”. Some people who alerted work inspectors were not called to work for a week. When we were fired, we went to the local labour inspection office in Keratsini and they could not show us our work schedule, although they were supposed to receive a copy every six months.
– Did you get breaks?
– No. If someone needed to go to the toilet, they were told to do so in the machine cabin. There were bouncer types walking around without any specific job to do and we wondered what they were doing. There was constant terror. We were constantly reminded that if we complain, we’d be the next to go. Unemployment is very high, so nobody said a word.
-Why did you nevertheless decide to speak up?
– A machinery operator must be able to move in the cabin and see the container behind him. The machine, together with the container weigh 100 tons. This is a very responsible job. The operator should not be made to wear 10 layers of clothing to keep warm. I had to wear three jackets, because there was no heating. In January 31st 2012, I was working without heating at a temperature of -1 degree Celsius. It was snowing in Piraeus. Back in the summer we had already submitted reports saying heating does not work. After working three hours in these conditions, I could not go on. My hands were numb, my feet were numb, my brain did not work properly and I was constantly putting myself and my colleagues in danger. A 100tonne machine moving in the port at 15km per hour is a great danger. The crane can fall on a ship. I said stop, I need to get down, get warm and get back up again. They told me to go home and I heard nothing from them for a week. No SMS no nothing. Psychological warfare. After a week, they called me back, they had me work for 2-3 days and then I was summarily fired, together with others. That s how I was fired. People still working there live this every day. Workers must not think, this is the new model.
– When Prime Minister Samaras visited Beijing, he triumphantly announced that the Chinese will buy the rest of the port as well. Is this good for the port, for the workers and for the economy?
– The Chinese captain, captain Fu says Cosco is very beneficial for the local economy. I have not seen conditions in Perama (a very poor area near the port) improve because of Cosco. As for Samaras’ announcements, I think the blame for what s happening in the port does not lay with Cosco or with foreign investments, it lays with oversight mechanisms that are totally broken. Investors want to come in and make as much money as possible, as soon as possible. Labour inspectors (SEPE) must make daily, or at least weekly controls, they must have a constant presence in the port. Instead of this, they never come, or they come by appointment, while COSCO installs a 3 meter high fence and cameras everywhere. I tried to talk with the Secretary General of SEPE but he couldn’t see me, because he was busy running his campaign as a candidate of the socialist party.
– How about the port as a big employment opportunity?
(Giorgos Gogos, Secretary General of the port workers union answers this question)
– Beforehand, the Piraeus container terminal employed 400-500 people. Now it’s 700. No more than 250-300 new jobs- flexible, badly paid and dangerous. And we are not talking about stable employment. If the three of us split a monthly salary amongst us this is not three jobs, it is one job. This must be clear. Health care and insurance funds also lose out because of Cosco. The company does not pay premiums for unhealthy and dangerous employment, as it would be forced to do. Smaller wages means smaller contributions to health care and pension funds.
No taxpayer should be paid under the table. Everything must be taxed and contributions to social security must be paid. When there is no collective representation, employers give out crumbs. They divide and rule, they create an army of spies. That’s why there must be a collective agreement.
At OLP (the part of the port still run by the Piraeus Port Authority) there is a collective agreement and there is a workplace health service that works because we put pressure for it to work. When it is very hot in the summer, labour regulations are enforced. OLP is forcing us to work under difficult conditions too, the port is a very special place. A ship comes in and it needs to offload in three shifts, the client will always try to make it shorter. But when its 38 or 40 degrees outside, then inside the metal hull of the ship temperatures rise to 45 degrees. So our health service comes in with a thermometer and orders everyone to stop for a few hours. Our employer informs the client that there will be a two-three hour delay. But if there is no collective representation, then the difference is obvious. It’s people versus profits, once again.
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