Manufacturers
apathy unsettling
FORT
COLLINS, Colo. (U-Wire) -- "I
told him somebody was going to get his arm
caught unclogging the filter. He (the boss)
said I had no right to speak," said Chinese
factory worker Li Jihao, quoted in a recent
New York Times article by Joseph Kahn. Mr.
Li's boss ignored his concerns, leading
to Li having his arm torn off at the elbow
in the very same heavy metal press he had
seen as a safety risk. The danger came from
the cost-cutting method utilized by the
boss of using waste water instead of fresh
water for the machine.
Kahn's
article and Li's words bring up an important
(and largely overlooked) issue of human
right's violations in many of China's factories.
According to Kahn, 140,000 in China die
every year due to work-related accidents
and many more are seriously injured, receiving
no compensation for their injuries. In his
article, Kahn relates the horrors of the
metal factories of the Yongkang province,
home to factories for companies such as
Bosch, Hitachi, and Black and Decker. The
stories of the Yongkang workplaces that
Kahn's subjects relate are horrific tales
of hands shredded, arms lost and fingers
crushed in industrials hammers that produce
thousands of pounds of pressure.
Tales
of horrific danger such as these are not
isolated to China's metal factories either.
The Chinese Labour Bulletin brings up the
death of young female factory worker in
another province who died after inhaling
the glue chemicals used in packaging and
processing. Likewise, according to Robert
Senser, thousands of Chinese workers are
exposed to toxic chemicals and dangerous
conditions in the toy factories that produce
many exported children's playthings. Even
Central People's Radio of China chimed in,
reporting that thousands of workers lose
fingers in the workplace, mostly crushed
in heavy machinery.
In
Yongkang keeping costs low seems to be the
main objective of the factory owners: cheap
labor (often at less than 50 cents an hour).
No expenditure for safety and little or
no compensation for injured workers means
that toys, thermoses and cheap electronic
items can be placed on the shelves of American
stores with a high profit margin.
The
question of what can be done can in some
ways be a difficult one. With China now
surpassing Japan as the leading Asian exporter
to America, it is becoming more and more
difficult to find any sort of items not
manufactured in these brutal factories.
However, sometimes examining the brand name
and perhaps paying a little more for a company
that does not employ labor in China will
send an economic message to the Chinese
factories and government enforcers. Likewise,
discussing this problem and raising an outcry
may indeed lead to some efforts of reform,
as seen in situations with Nike and the
Gap. As China's industrial production increases,
our ignorance of the horrible safety conditions
in the factories should not continue.
This
column first appeared in The Rocky Mountain
Collegian at Colorado State University.
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