Chinese factories target of labor strikes

By Keith B. Richburg, The Washington Post

BEIJING -- In another sign of the impact on China's economy of Europe's debt crisis and the U.S. economic slowdown, factories in southern Guangdong province, the country's manufacturing heartland, have been the target of a recent wave of labor strikes.

Thousands of workers clashed with police Thursday at a footwear factory in the city of Dongguan after 18 workers were reportedly laid off and overtime was cut. A thousand workers went on strike Tuesday at the Shenzhen factory of a Taiwanese electronics company. A day earlier, hundreds reportedly struck at a Shenzhen company that makes underwear and lingerie.

On Oct. 28, hundreds of employees of a Dongguan furniture company protested in the streets after the factory boss disappeared without paying them three months' salary.

Many of the incidents were first reported on the website of the U.S.-based advocacy group China Labor Watch.

The wave of strikes recalls an outbreak of labor unrest in the spring and summer of 2010. But last year's unrest was widely attributed to China's growing wealth gap and to the frustrations of young, urbanized and more digitally wired workers, many of them migrants from the countryside, who have become more conscious of their rights and less willing to tolerate the old "sweatshop" conditions their parents endured.

While every strike addresses specific grievances, the broad unrest this time is thought to be directly linked to the sluggish state of the global economy, particularly the ongoing crisis in Europe, which accounts for just over one-fifth of all Chinese exports. Analysts have reported that the euro zone's debt crisis has already taken a toll on China's exports, with year-on-year export growth to the European Union down to single digits for the past two months, a sharp falloff from August.

As orders have dropped, factories have started to lay off workers, cut overtime hours and in some cases withhold pay. In Dongguan, scene of the most violent of last week's strikes, some 450 small and medium-sized factories have closed in the past 10 months as the overseas market has shrunk.

"The euro debt crisis and the slow recovery of the U.S. economy caused the strikes this time," said Lin Yanling, a specialist in labor relations at the China Institute of Industrial Relations. "For the factories, the easiest way to deal with the problem of reduced orders is to lay off workers or cut their wages."

"Right now, this is just the beginning," she said. "More labor unrest and bankruptcies of small factories in coastal areas of China are inevitable if the world economic crisis doesn't end soon."

The central government in Beijing responded to last year's labor unrest by ordering minimum wage increases. Guangdong boosted wages by about 20 percent. But with inflation now running around 6 percent, many workers complain that their still-modest wages are being wiped out by higher costs. And factory bosses say the higher wages have virtually wiped out their profit margins when coupled with the appreciation of the Chinese currency, about 10 percent since mid-2010, and the collapse of orders from Europe.

First published on November 27, 2011 at 12:00 am

Source: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11331/1192899-82.stm?cmpid=nationworld.xml

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Putin warns West as he launches presidential bid (AP)

MOSCOW ? Prime Minister Vladimir Putin sternly warned the West not to interfere in Russia's elections, as he launched his campaign to reclaim the presidency in a speech Sunday before thousands of flag-waving supporters.

Putin stepped down in 2008 after two presidential terms, but kept his hold on power. He announced in September that he intended to return to the top job next year and was formally nominated Sunday by his United Russia party.

"All our foreign partners need to understand this: Russia is a democratic country, it's a reliable and predictable partner with which they can and must reach agreement, but on which they cannot impose anything from the outside," Putin told his audience.

The party congress, which was televised live, was aimed at boosting support for Putin and his party before parliamentary elections one week away.

Increasingly seen as representing the interests of a corrupt bureaucracy, United Russia has watched its public approval ratings plummet in recent months. The party is still certain to win the Dec. 4 election, but is expected to lose the current two-thirds majority that has allowed it to change the constitution at will.

Putin's decision to swap jobs with President Dmitry Medvedev after the presidential vote in March, presented as a done deal at the party congress in September, also has soured the public mood. Many Russians are wary of Putin's authoritarian tendencies and fear he will remain in power for 12 more years to become the longest-serving leader since Communist times.

Sunday's congress began with a steel worker, a businessman, a farmer, a decorated special services officer and a noted film director standing up one after another to praise Putin as the only man capable of leading the country. The 11,000 delegates filling the Moscow sports arena chanted "Putin, Putin" and "The people trust Putin!"

Putin promised Russians stability, a word he repeated often throughout his speech. In countering criticism that he has tightened his control at the expense of democracy, Putin insisted that Russia needs a "stable political system" to guarantee "stable development" for decades to come.

"This is an extremely important task for Russia with its history of upheavals and revolutions," he said.

He used the occasion to lash out at opposition leaders, saying they had brought the country to ruin when they served in the government in the 1990s.

"They killed industry, agriculture and the social sphere," Putin said. "They stabbed the knife of civil war in the very heart of Russia by allowing bloodshed in the North Caucasus. In fact, they led the country to the brink of catastrophe, the edge of a precipice."

He said Russia wants to develop cooperation with the West, but strongly warned the U.S. and Europe against paying too much attention to the Kremlin's critics and providing them with financial support.

"We know that ... representatives of some countries meet with those whom they pay money, the so-called grant recipients, give them instructions and guidance for what 'work' they need to do to influence the election campaign in our country," Putin said.

"That's a wasted effort, like throwing money to the winds," he said.

Putin said those who provide grants to Russian non-governmental organizations "would do better using this money to pay back their domestic debt and stop conducting such a costly and inefficient foreign policy."

Putin promised his countrymen that by maintaining a steady course they would build "a strong, rich and prosperous Russia." Offering something for everyone, he pledged to make it easier to do business, to improve the educational system and health care, to raise taxes on the rich and to bolster the military.

"In the next five to 10 years we must take our armed forces to a qualitatively new level. Of course, this will require big spending .... but we must do this if we want to defend the dignity of our country," he said.

Putin also said he would pursue his project of forming a Eurasian Union to boost integration between Russia and its neighbors, restoring some of the links that were destroyed when the Soviet Union collapsed 20 years ago.

He offered little new to address the calls from businessmen, economists and political liberals for reforms seen as necessary for Russia to modernize its economy and further its development.

"The signals so far have certainly been: no change, more of the same, muddling along, stability even if it comes at a high cost," said Masha Lipman, a scholar at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

She said any reforms that would increase public participation and encourage initiative are rightly seen as a serious risk for the political monopoly that Putin has established.

"Power is concentrated at the top, there is ultimately one arbiter," Lipman said. "I see no reason why this will change."

___

Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111127/ap_on_re_eu/eu_russia_elections

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