Worker's conditions in China

Please read the following article:https://ift.tt/3d7COtu details the life of a Chinese worker drawing on the experience of a suicide-survivor. Below are some excerpts:At about 8 a.m. on March 17, 2010, after only 37 days of employment, Yu threw herself from the fourth floor of Foxconn’s Longhua dormitory in Shenzhen (South China Morning Post, 19 July 2012; 25 April 2013). Miraculously she survived, but suffered three spinal fractures, four hip fractures, and was left paralysed from the waist down.Her personal narrative, examined within the broader context of the spate of suicides at Foxconn, provides an insight into the human consequences of the labour regimes of the globalised manufacturing supply chains of China’s export industries.The counterpoint to the contemporary fascination with i-products is a regime of managerial autocracy and assembly line drudgery at the point of production, a contradiction that reminds us of the enduring relevance of Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism.Frontline workers’ sitting or standing posture is monitored as much as the work itself: ‘I had to sit in a standardized way. Stools have to be in order, and cannot move past a yellow and black ‘zebra line’ on the floor’. Foxconn’s industrial engineering aims to make all workers’ operations, up to the minutest movements, ever more rationalised, planned and measured. Each assembly-line worker specialises in one specific task and performs repetitive motions at high speed, hourly, daily and for months on end. This ‘advanced’ production system removes feelings of freshness, accomplishment or initiative toward work: ‘I found it hard to see the end of the screen-inspection work’, Yu reflected.Line leaders, themselves under pressure to fulfill their own production norms, treat workers harshly to reach targets. A young line leader reported, ‘If we listen too much to our superiors, we have to mistreat workers below us. If we take care of the workers’ feelings too much, maybe we won’t complete our tasks. When work is busy, it’s easy to get angry’In a group interview, several young women employees discussed the ritualistic punishment that they had to endure (Interview, 30 March 2011). Their collective experience was articulated most clearly by one of this group.After work, all of us—more than 100 people—are \sometimes] made to stay behind. This happens whenever a worker is punished. A girl is forced to stand at attention to read aloud a statement of self-criticism. She must be loud enough to be heard. Our line leader would ask if the worker at the far end of the workshop could hear clearly the mistake she has made. Oftentimes girls feel they are losing face. It’s very embarrassing. Her tears drop. Her voice becomes very small . . . Then the line leader shouts: ‘If one worker loses only one minute [failing to keep up with the work pace], then, how much more time will be wasted by 100 people?)The company response :In a media interview on employee suicides, Foxconn CEO Terry Gou highlighted the ‘emotional problems’ of Chinese workers. It started to require all job applicants to complete a psychological test with 36 questions. It was a victim-blaming approach.Now here comes one of the most relevant parts - the role of the unions. As we can see, the union was just a puppet of the company with no real representation of the workers, let alone caring for their safety.To understand why no official trade union staff members visited Yu in hospital or offered to assist with her problems, it is necessary to analyse the nature of the ACFTU.In spite of impressive Chinese union membership, operational and financial dependence on management severely undermines the capacity of enterprise unions to represent the workers. The Foxconn factory union is no exception to this pattern.When the Chinese governments across different levels directly intervened in the mobilisation, the Foxconn Shenzhen Longhua factory was ‘unionised’ only on the last day of 2006. Taking immediate control over the newly formed union, Foxconn CEO Terry Gou appointed his special personal assistant, Chen Peng, to become the union chairwoman.Unsurprisingly therefore, the Foxconn Trade Union failed to investigate the workplace factors responsible for the high levels of worker stress and depression. Instead, Ms Chen made insensitive public comments that ‘suicide is foolish, irresponsible and meaningless and should be avoided’Now comes the most critical part - the role of the government.Amid growing international concern over the suicides, Chinese government at all levels eventually communicated their concerns. On May 26, 2010, after the ‘12th jump’, a Shenzhen municipal government spokesperson announced that the government would improve ‘labourers’ living conditions and enterprise management’, and, soon after another attempted suicide on May 27, Guangdong provincial communist party secretary Wang Yang stated that ‘the Party, government organizations and Foxconn must work together and take effective measures to prevent similar tragedies from happening again’ (quoted in Beijing Review, 12 June 2010). However, the specifics of the joint measures were never disclosed.At central government, Premier Wen Jiabao urged officials and employers to treat rural migrant workers as ‘our workers, our children’ (Xinhua, 15 June 2010). Yet, rather than researching and overcoming the root causes of suicides, local-level Chinese officials moved to ban ‘negative’ reporting about Foxconn:May 28, 2010: About the Foxconn incident, on the Internet, other than Xinhua’s domestic general draft, there should be no other reporting . . . All related content before the 12th jump should be locked up . . . All websites must complete the clean-up task tonight. Do not have any dead corners (China Digital Times, 30 May 2010.)May 29, 2010: For the front pages of news websites and news center pages, blogs, micro-blogs, there should be no news related to ‘Foxconn’ except from official sources (China Digital Times, 30 May 2010.)Beginning on May 30, 2010, the University Research Group’s student blog dedicated to the Foxconn worker victims and their families, with the theme song ‘Grief’ was blocked. State concern about worker well-being would again be sacrificed on the altar of expediency, and the priorities were revealed to be controlling workers and the media in order to protect Foxconn.Local states, with the trade unions as an integral part, are facilitating business activities in ways that intensify labour grievances. An institutional conflict between legal legitimacy and local accumulation continues under China’s fiscal and administrative decentralisation policies, as provincial and lower-level governments compete to woo corporate employers to invest in their territories so as to boost economic growth. Despite legal reforms, state laws and regulations designed to protect workers are often weakly implemented or flexibly bent to company interests.The rest of the paper describes the measures taken by Foxconn (setting up suicide nets around their buildings, setting up a helpline number which does not guarantee anonymity, and instead of helping the workers out with their problems asks them to quit, etc), and the general life of labor of a new generation.But the critical question remains:the extent and development of labor’s power under Chinese and global conditions, i.e. under Socialism with Chinese Characteristics​My precise point of discussion is this - if the condition of labor remains so precarious even under Socialism in China, can we in any way say that they are practicing (or developing towards) Socialism?Do they even deserve our critical support?​P.S. Although I understand that China poses the greatest threat in recent times to global capitalism/imperialism, as I am from a third-world country routinely witnessing such over-exploitation of migrant labor here, I am quite skeptical to view China as a Marxist-Leninist state. Hence any fruitful discussion illuminating how the rights of workers are strengthened in China are welcome.​P.P.S. I have already gone through the China megathread and also most of the quality posts here. I don't wish to get into any ideological debate regarding how China is Socialist. I am looking for concrete information about the labor working conditions and labor rights in China, and how the government protects them.​Edit: Grammatical errors. via /r/communism https://ift.tt/3bW61rg