cesare said:
fucking solidarity
hoh fucking hoh
I'm all for solidarity. And much as I sympathise with Burberry's British workers, my first responsibility must lie with the Chinese workers with whom I live and work. In mainland China there is much work to be done on improving the lot of workers - in particular agricutural workers, but also those involved in manufacturing - and the task is not easy. It's not a democracy, it's illegal to organise and there are few of the checks and balances in place on govt. or business that are taken for granted in the UK.
First and foremost, however, is the need to create
more jobs. As long as there are ever more bodies prepared to line up and throw themselves through the factory doors and onto the production line, there's little incentive for either govt. or business to improve things. In the south of the country, things
are improving - there is an increasing demand for (and increasing shortages of,) skilled. trained workers (they take their saved-up wages and piss-off home for a few months at a time) and wages are rising as a result. Many factories are, therefore, closing and relocating further inland where jobs are in shorter supply.
But
still we need more jobs. Millions of people become unemployed every year as the economy restructures and millions more leave the countryside and swarm to the cities in search of work. Millions of jobs need to be created each year in order to provide them the means to feed their families.
There is no way to improve the conditions of workers unless there are workers and there are no workers if there are no jobs.
So whereas I have sympathy for British Burberry workers, I very much doubt that the closure of this factory and the loss of their jobs will see
any of them, or any families, thrown into abject, grinding poverty - hungry and worrying for their very survival.
In China, without more jobs, people
will, without doubt, be condemned to (continue) living in grinding, abject, poverty and hunger.
I was watching a documentary the other day and they were interviewing this girl of about 13 or 14 years old. She was weeping as she explained how she hadn't been to school for the last three years, since her family had fallen on hard times. Three years ago, this child's education - the only person in the family to get one - became a luxury the family could no longer afford. She was weeping because she was smart enough to know that
her education was the
one and only chance that her family would
ever have to really better their lot - and she saw it all slipping away.
The cost of her schooling was RMB 20 per month (GBP 1:30p).
The whole family of seven had no shoes.
On balance, under the circumstances, it seems logical for my
sympathy to lie with these British workers, but my
solidarity to lie with my comrades in China.
And anyway, it's not like we see much worker-solidarity coming
this way, from the UK, now is it?
As long as there are such massive imbalances in the distribution of wealth in the world, it seems inevitable that capital will succeed in driving a wedge between various groups of workers. The faster, therefore, that
all workers can help those in the most desperate of need to improve
their conditions, the faster all workers will derive lasting benefit.
It will be a long, hard struggle. But I see no other way.
Woof
and there are no subsidies to industry coming from government.
