德瓦里厄 ：
好的。米歇尔，我想问你最后一个问题。你是否认为我们会看到从西方跨国公司将把投资和生产转移到世界上其他地方去？这是否意味着中国提供廉价劳动力的终结？
陈：
我不确定说任何信号意味着中国廉价劳动力的终结，因为它长久以来一直是美国消费者的忠实服务者。但是，正如众所周知的，我们看到越来越多在中国的公司正发生资本外逃。正如我们看到大量美国的制造业岗位被外包；今天你也可以看到，很多曾经在中国进行大规模生产的公司正在慢慢地转移了生产设备，转向那些劳动力成本更低的国家，诸如印尼、柬埔寨和孟加拉等国。我们已经看到近来在那些国家地区发生的悲剧。因此竞次效应（Race to bottom）仍然继续存在。但我认为，在这个方面中国工人还有很多可以讨价还价的杠杆。你知道，面对12亿人，不是一个跨国公司可以掉头不顾，随便一走了之的。因此，如果合理可以使用这一杠杆并用它来推进政治和经济正义，这将可能改变中国，也会使制造业变得更好。我希望阿迪达斯和其他公司能真正开始倾听，以免为时已晚。
德瓦里厄：
好的。米歇尔•陈和柴晓明，感谢两位接受我们的访谈。
陈：
谢谢。
柴：
谢谢你。 原英文文本和链接： http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11777
Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Jessica Desvarieux in Baltimore. Thirty thousand Chinese workers have been on strike for two weeks against the world's largest maker of athletic shoes. They make sneakers for companies that you know of, of course, like Nike and Adidas. And workers have shut down production. And the company Yue Yuen's stock price has sharply declined. The workers allege the company has failed to adequately fund social security pensions and contribute to housing funds.Joining us to discuss this strike are our two guests. Michelle Chen is a contributor to The Nation and In These Times and an editor at CultureStrike. And we have--joining us from China is Xiaoming Chai. He works at Peking University, and he's an instructor for the Further Education Project.Thank you both for joining us. MICHELLE CHEN, CONTRIBUTOR, THE NATION: Thanks. XIAOMING CHAI, INSTRUCTOR FOR FURTHER EDUCATION PROJECT, PEKING UNIV.: Thank you. DESVARIEUX: So, Michelle, let's start off with you. The Yue Yuen strike is
estimated to be one of the largest in decades. Can you tell us why so
many workers are striking? And what are their demands? CHEN:
The workers basically just want the company to make good on their
obligations under Chinese law to pay social insurance costs. Many of
these workers say they are owed a lot of overdue payments on the part of
the company for basic things like pension funds, unemployment
insurance, basic social welfare protections that are laid out in Chinese
law under the newly reformed labor laws.You know, this is
certainly not the only incidence in which a company has shirked on its
obligations to pay. These violations of the social insurance [incompr.]
payment laws are routine throughout the workforce. But these workers
feel like it has reached such a crisis point that they are willing to go
into the streets.Another big issue is that there are, in
addition, contributions to the housing fund that they're owed. And with
the rising cost of living, many of these workers are suffering from
these really burdensome housing costs that they cannot keep up with, and
their wages, unfortunately, are not rising as much as they should be to
keep up with the cost of living.So now we have tens of
thousands of workers--I believe at a peak it was over 30,000
workers--marching in the streets, you know, undertaking a work stoppage,
protesting. And, also, many of them are just not going to work. They
were [incompr.] swiping their cards and just, you know, not working. So
they're resisting in a variety of ways. And the Western
companies have simply been caught off guard. And it's been--it's made
some waves, because it's very unusual for, you know, a country with
supposedly no independent, you know, labor unions, where labor activity
is really suppressed, for workers to be taking action like this. DESVARIEUX: Yeah. You mentioned it's unusual. But the Chinese civil think tank Institute of Contemporary Observations says that there have been 30 strikes involving at least 50 workers since March. So it seems like there's an uptick. And I want to turn to Xiaoming and get your point of view. Are we actually seeing an uptick here? CHAI: (Sorry.) And, actually, I think that this is the first time for years we got this kind of--so a huge a scale of strike, even in Canton. So there was--so there have been often strikes from different factories. It's even from some big brand names, like the IBM and Nokia.And also, until now, the strike last over two weeks, from 5 April to now. I think it's quite dramatic. And, also, workers are quite confident with their activities. DESVARIEUX: Can you tell us--I
want to get a sense of do workers usually actually win in the end.
What's the likelihood that we'll actually see the company agree to these terms? CHAI: Okay. I would say now it's still what they call in English: it's a seesaw war. And we heard quite many things, like that dozens of workers have been interrogated, questioned by the local authority, even arrested. Some activists, like Zhang Zhiru, they have been detained under house arrest by the local policemen or the local government.But workers still keep the high confidence, and because two hours ago I was into some--it's kind of the instant social message group with workers, one of the largest with the workers, and 400 or 300 workers, they are discussing their planning, their feedback about today and several days' feeling. So workers, still they're planning to last the strike until the May Day. They say if they can't get their demands, they will not give up. So it's quite militant, it's quite confident, yes. DESVARIEUX: Okay. CHEN: I'd just like to add, also, in a lot of these incidences when you do
see workers going on strike, in the end it does end with some kind of
negotiation. Often the management will give concessions. You know, it's
rare that you'd see, like, a massive victory, but, you know, frankly,
the management often just wants people to go back to work, and often
workers know what they want, and when they get what they want, you know,
things just continue. I mean, you know, we may not see, you know, huge,
radical upheaval in the streets any time soon, but workers do know how
to organize and can take very targeted strategic actions when they
know--when they have a specific goal in mind. DESVARIEUX: Alright. Let's turn and talk about this Guardian
report that came out talking about a labor organizer, Zhang Zhiru. He
basically has been missing for more than 24 hours, and his wife suspects
that he has been detained by state security services. Can you tell us
about Zhang Zhiru's role in organizing the strike, Xiaoming? CHAI: And, actually, I would not say he is the organizer, because this strike was spontaneous and not well organized. And it's still [the mainly] [incompr.] automatic phenomenon. It's planned, or that we even can say not planned by the workers but launched by the workers. And Zhang Zhiru, he's a quite senior, experienced labor activist in Shenzhen and in Dongguan. Yes, he is quite famous, and he has been involved in the strike, probably from 12 April, but the strike did start before that. And Zhang want to advised and support the workers, and legally and also technically, how to [learning] and how to organize the individual groups. And Zhang was detained by the local authority or local policemen, I think, not only 24 hours. Probably--to today it's already the third day. And his wife still cannot contact him, and also not only himself, and also other individual activists also had been interrogated by the local authority and the policemen, yes. DESVARIEUX: Michelle, is it common for labor organizers to be intimidated or detained? CHEN: Yes, common for anyone, you know, doing anything bold politically in
China to suffer some kind of intimidation or harassment. You know, it
doesn't always wind up with someone actually being detained, but, you
know, these things are nothing new. The issue with labor
activists is, you know, as Xiaoming was saying, this is kind of a
spontaneous uprising that's coming from the grassroots. So it's going to
be very hard for authorities to contain simply by detaining one guy
that they perceive as the leader. Frankly, it doesn't--I mean, I'm
viewing it from afar, but it seems like you don't--it can never be just
one guy who's leading, you know, tens of thousands of workers; there's
got to be something else going on there. So I imagine that this campaign
will survive despite the detention, and if anything, hopefully this
will open up some more room for dissent in organizing and for leaders to
have a little bit more breathing room, because what they can do as
organizers is help to negotiate when it comes down to bringing workers
to the table. Ultimately, the government can't keep down 30,000 people.
And if there is a representative who's willing to represent their
interests on behalf of the entire workforce, then they need those
people. They can't just throw them in jail. DESVARIEUX: Alright. Michelle, I'll ask the final question to you. Do you foresee that we'll see a shift from Western multinational companies to start investing and looking to produce elsewhere? Does this signal sort of an end to cheap Chinese labor? CHEN: I'm hesitant to
say that anything signals the end to cheap Chinese labor, because it has
been such a faithful servant to U.S. consumers and for so long. But
yes, I mean, you do see companies increasingly undertaking capital
flight, as it's known. You know, just as we saw manufacturing jobs being
offshored from the U.S., you're seeing companies that used to produce a
lot in China sort of slowly shifting a lot of their production
facilities to countries with even lower cost in labor, such as Indonesia
or Cambodia or Bangladesh, you know, as we've seen with the recent
tragedies that have gone on there. So it is, you know, a race to the
bottom that is continuing. But, I mean, the thing is,
Chinese workers have a lot of leverage. I mean, you know, 1.2 billion
people is not something even a huge multinational can just walk away
from. So if they can use that leverage and use it to advance, you know,
political as well as economic justice, that might change China, it might
change the manufacturing industry for the better. I just hope Adidas
and those other companies will actually start to listen before it's too
late. DESVARIEUX: Alright. Michelle Chen, as well as Xiaoming Chai, thank you both for joining us. CHEN: Thanks. CHAI: Yes, thank you. DESVARIEUX: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network. |
E_mail: [email protected]
2010-2011http://redchinacn.net
