The historic Christian ambition that people should share the
world’s goods as a reflection of the just purposes of God is mocked by the rapid
growing global inequality. Global labor
markets exploded in sharp relief this week beginning with a very large scale
riot that broke out September 23rd in Taiyuan. It sent forty people to hospitals
from a giant factory where parts of Apple’s new iPhone 5 are being assembled. Only lightly reported by U. S. media,
international papers like the Financial Times of London, the Singapore Times,
and the Chinese blog, MIC Gadget, reveal a picture of profound upheaval and pathos.
A battle inside a huge Foxconn factory
started when floor managers bullied some workers roughly and their regional
countrymen responded by overwhelming the managers. “…One of China’s worst incidents of labour
unrest in years” reported the Financial Times this week.
…the plant which employs 80,000 people proved far too big to bring under
control….’every inch of ground was covered with people, a black mass of bodies….when
the police arrived…they could just stand there and watch.’
You can read about and see photos
and video footage of the rioting by going to the blog MIC Gadget at http://micgadget.com/29723/the-undercover-report-on-how-the-new-iphone-5-is-made-inside-foxconn-factory/
If you follow
the “Commentary” section near the end of the blog you can read Chinese worker’s
mixed views of their own ironic and completely authoritarian factory system.
“…critics,
you must consider the fact that "sweatshop" factory wages are
enticingly high for a significant population of people in many countries. We
are talking: "Mom, I'll work the farm while you wait in line at Foxconn so
we don't have to sell daughter #2 for food money." How about we direct our
outrage at the global human condition that allows such work conditions to be an
improvement?
Growing inequality is implicit in
the comparative magnitude of these events and was given further documentation
when violent resistance to new austerity measures broke out again this week in Greece
and Spain.
The Taiyuan riot reveals a picture
of vivid disproportion. In the Silicon Valley, where Apple and many other computer
giants are located, the San Jose Mercury
News had celebrated 1,900 new jobs added in August; while in China hundreds of thousands of workers
were building the new cell phones invented in Cupertino. In the area around that Apple epicenter unemployment today stands
at 77,500. Meanwhile, In Zhengzhou 100,000 new workers were being added to an already
existing factory of 150,000 workers—all busy assembling the new Apple phone and
products like those coming from Samsung and Verizon. The starting monthly income at the Taiyuan Foxconn
plant assembling Apple products is $283.
This is a theater of the morally absurd.
It is also a drama in which American
workers earn less. The diverse publics gobbling up the new iPhone that make
Apple richer by the minute seem immune to the implications of this global
upheaval revolving around a continued decline in worker economics. With Apple’s
net worth reportedly approaching $1 Trillion, new U. S. Census data just
released shows the widening inequality gap in Silicon Valley. Family median income has fallen 22 percent
since 2000 and 3.2 percent in 2011. Home ownership rates are down to 46.7
percent in the richest valley in America.
As authoritative market regimes generated
by the likes of Apple lead to rising global inequality, the photos below show
a striking resemblance between the conditions of worker’s lives in Taiyuan and
the growing prison populations in the United State. As U. S. unemployment becomes permanent for millions of people (compare nearly 2 million unemployed in California with a total of only 12,000 jobs created last month) one can sense that a growing danger: that a global worker underclass will live sometimes in prisons born of their desperation, and sometimes dormitories built in hell.
 |
| A Taiyuan Worker' dormitory room |
 |
| A U. S. Women's prison cell |
 |
| Taiyuan Dormitory Window View |
