The strikes originated in Honda-affiliated factories in the Guandong city of Foshan, where workers, many only in their teens or early twenties, began a fight back against their barbaric conditions of employment. They demanded vastly improved working hours, pay rises and a restructuring of the state-controlled trade unions. One of the most important demands was the right to replace state-implemented heads of local unionbranches with elected worker representatives. The strike lasted 10 days, which was quite remarkable as management, local government and puppet union officials made many attempts to intimidate the workers into backing down. Workers won pay rises ranging from 24 – 32%, but the threat of further action hangs in the air as the workforce have a further 147 outstanding demands!
The Communist Party bureaucracy were desperate for the strikes to end before the Tiananmen Square anniversary took place as they fear nothing more than a genuine, independent workers’ movement. Despite the efforts of the bureaucracy, the commemorations still recorded their biggest turnout since the atrocity occurred. These strikes occurred against a backdrop of much anger and disillusionment within the working class, especially amongst an increasingly radicalised younger generation. The popular backlash against the multinational Foxconn (supplier of components to Apple, Dell and Sony), only served to ignite the struggles further. Foxconn was recently exposed, as 12 workers have committed suicide in the factory due to the military-style administration and harsh working conditions experienced. Foxconn workers were forced to work 70 hours a week for 50c per hour.
Workers are also finding it more and more challenging to survive as capitalist “reforms” attack their living standards. The share of GDP, for example, that goes to workers has shrunk dramatically from 57% in 1983 to 37% in 2005. This is despite GDP growing as fast as ever, expanding to 11.9% in 2009 alone. The action taken by the Foshan workers has inspired other young factory workers across China to struggle against the exploitation suffered under the hands of other major multinational corporations as we witness a summer of discontent in China.
Killing of police officer attempt to stir up sectarian division
The following is a quote from an article in The Sunday Business Post (February 14, 2010): "Dublin based Glas Securities said that any decision by an Irish bank to default on subordinated debt would, depending on the documentation and specific characteristics of individual bonds, result in breaches of so called ‘cross default’ provisions attached to the bank’s senior unsecured paper. ‘This would be quite clearly a ‘no-go area’ for Irish banks’", according to Jim Ryan, Managing Director of Glas.
Ed Miliband has beaten his brother David by a margin of only 1.3% to become the new leader of the British Labour Party. After four rounds of voting under Labour’s electoral college - which is divided into three equally weighted sections comprising the MP and MEPs, constituency Labour Party (CLP) members and those belonging to affiliated organisations such as the trade unions - Ed Miliband won with 175,519 votes to David Miliband’s 147,220.
The UN conference on climate change (Cop15), held in Copenhagen 7-18 December, was a fiasco. The Independent called it “a historic failure that will live in infamy”. After years of preparation, the representatives of 193 countries discussed and wrangled for two weeks. In the closing hours, leaders such as Barak Obama and Wen Jinbao (and Gordon Brown) flew in, supposedly to break the deadlock. All of them accepted the urgency of reaching agreement. Unless global warming is limited to 2°C above pre-industrial levels, the planet faces catastrophe. But no agreement was reached, let alone the framework for a binding international treaty, Cop15’s original aim. Backroom discussions between the US, China and a handful of neo-colonial states (Brazil, India, South Africa, etc) produced an ‘accord’ – a brief memo of vague aims and even vaguer pledges. Completely sidelined, the Cop15 assembly merely ‘noted’ the accord. Almost immediately, China’s representative, Su Wei, announced that, as it was not a formal UN agreement, China reserved the right to repudiate even the accord.