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	Apple and China’s state-managed authoritarian capitalism by Alternet, China Labor Watch USA   Feb 2012   Apple and China’s state-managed authoritarian capitalism, by Arun Gupta. (Alternet)   Electronics manufacturing company Foxconn, says it will raise salaries as much as 25 percent, to about $400 a month, after a global outcry over working conditions at its factories in China. In recent weeks, labor rights groups have staged coordinated protests in various countries after reports that some of Apple’s Chinese suppliers operate harsh, abusive and dangerous facilities. To stem criticism, Apple hired a nonprofit labor group to inspect the plants it uses.   Workers welcomed the announced raises and overtime limits, though some were skeptical they would cause much real change. “When I was in Foxconn, there were rumors about pay raises every now and then, but I’ve never seen that day happen until I left,” said Gan Lunqun, 23, a former Foxconn worker. “This time it sounds more credible.”   Jan 2012   New research shows how disturbing labor conditions at Foxconn, called the "Chinese hell factory," really are.   Behind the sleek face of the iPad is an ugly backstory that has revealed once more the horrors of globalization. The buzz about Apple’s sordid business practices is courtesy of the New York Times series on the “iEconomy. In some ways it’s well reported but adds little new to what critics of the Taiwan-based Foxconn, the world’s largest electronics manufacturer, have been saying for years. The series biggest impact may be discomfiting Apple fans who as they read the articles realize that the iPad they are holding is assembled from child labor, toxic shop floors, involuntary overtime, suicidal working conditions, and preventable accidents that kill and maim workers.   It turns out the story is much worse. Researchers with the Hong Kong-based Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) say that legions of vocational and university students, some as young as 16, are forced to take months-long “internships” in Foxconn’s mainland China factories assembling Apple products. The details of the internship program paint a far more disturbing picture than the Times does of how Foxconn, “the Chinese hell factory,” treats its workers, relying on public humiliation, military discipline, forced labor and physical abuse as management tools to hold down costs and extract maximum profits for Apple.   To supply enough employees for Foxconn, the 60th largest corporation globally, government officials are serving as lead recruiters at the cost of pushing teenage students into harsh work environments. The scale is astonishing with the Henan provincial government having announced in both 2010 and 2011 that it would send 100,000 vocational and university students to work at Foxconn, according to SACOM.   Ross Perlin, author of Intern Nation, told AlterNet that “Foxconn is conspiring with government officials and universities in China to run what may be the world"s single largest internship program – and one of the most exploitative. Students at vocational schools – including those whose studies have nothing to do with consumer electronics – are literally forced to move far from home to work for Foxconn, threatened that otherwise they won"t be allowed to graduate. Assembling our iPhones and Kindles for meager wages, they work under the same conditions, or worse, as other workers in the Foxconn sweatshops.”   The state involvement shows Foxconn and Apple depend on tax breaks, repression of labor, subsidies and Chinese government aid, including housing, infrastructure, transportation and recruitment, to oncrease their corporate treasuries. As the students function as seasonal employees to meet increased demand for new product rollouts, Apple is directly dependent on forced labor.   The real story of the Apple-Foxconn behemoth, is forged in the crucible of China’s state-managed authoritarian capitalism. Since the 1980s China has starved rural areas to accelerate the industrialization of coastal cities like Shenzhen, where Foxconn first set up shop in 1988. Scholars who study China’s economy and labor market link rural underdevelopment to the creation of a massive migrant work force that serves as the foundation of the country’s industrialization.   Deprived of many rights, migrants are recruited to work in Foxconn"s city-sized complexes by government employees with false promises of good-paying jobs that will help them escape rural poverty. A large percentage of migrant workers are student interns as they are recruited from poor rural regions like Henan and sent to work in coastal metropolises like Shenzhen..   http://www.alternet.org/story/154043/iempire%3A_apple%27s_sordid_business_practices_are_even_worse_than_you_think/ http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2015/03/02/4187424.htm http://www.chinalaborwatch.org/report/103 http://www.chinalaborwatch.org/report/68 http://www.chinalaborwatch.org/reports/brand/2 Visit the related web page
	Prices that bounce by Naomi Hossain Institute for Development Studies   I’m just back from South Kalimantan, part of Indonesian Borneo, where the idea that future food prices are likely to be jump even higher because of extreme weather events feels very real. Climate, energy, food and global economic crisis all feature in an alarming combination of volatilities. In the Banjarese community where IDS partners SMERU have been researching the social impacts of crisis since 2009, most people are rubber tappers. The past year has been particularly up-and-down, mainly down, even by the elastic standards of rubber producers.   We went to see one family, where the newly-single mother and household head – call her Siti – panicked when she saw us. ‘I’ve already paid’, she said. ‘I’ve paid for this month’. She thought we were debt collectors and was already behind on her first (I suspect also last) installment for her new motorbike, easily the most popular means of getting about Indonesia. Siti needed it because she had recently shed her violent unfaithful husband, and was looking after four children on the wages of a rubber tapper(her working hours are 2am till 10am, when the rubber is fresh and the weather is cool).   The wages of rubber tappers are well down on last year, mostly because rubber prices have been affected by the double dip in the global economy, but partly due to the unusually dry season. Sofian told us he and his wife Fatiyah were earning 2.25 million (about US$ 240) rupiah per month this time last year; now they were getting 600,000 to 700,000 (US$ 63-73), depending on quality and quantity of their rubber. That is for two adults putting in a shared 7 hour shift between 4 and 9am, 6 days a week.   But as the price of rubber has sunk, the price of most food has steadily risen. People still eat rice in the same quantities or mix it with noodles – work is physical and they need the energy – but have cut down on fish. And, presumably because of the soybean crisis in the US, the high protein staple of the poor, tempe (soybean cake), has doubled in price. As the motorcycle grocer explained as he sped off, the price is the same, so he halves quantities.   Focus groups told another story. Their main problem, they tell us, is water. Some people think it is deforestation that has caused the water problems in Kalimantan, but in this part of Banjar, people point to the growing presence of the coal-mines. A popular community development programme (PNPM) devised a water pump project in an area with a water source, only to find that by the time it was installed, the water had disappeared, sunk without a trace, as the coal-mines dug deeper into the earth. The mining company has bought up lots of local land, at cheap but still attractive prices, so many local people no longer farm their own land. But they are also too poor to get the education they need to work for the mining companies as drivers or mechanics. It’s all lose-lose here, at least until the rubber price picks up or food prices go down again.   * Naomi Hossain is a Research Fellow in the Participation, Power and Social Change research team at IDS. Visit the related web page
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