The Agonist - Labor

U.S. lists countries exploiting child labour

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 10:04:18 -0700

Washington | September 11

CBC - Children around the world are producing numerous goods being sold globally, says a report released by the U.S. Department of Labour.

The report released Thursday found that 218 million children work worldwide, and that 126 million of them perform dangerous jobs.

The U.S. Labour Department has identified 122 goods from 58 countries it believes to be produced by forced labour, child labour or a combination of the two. Children commonly work to produce products or crops such as: Cotton, Sugar cane, Tobacco, Coffee, Rice, Cocoa, Bricks, Garments, Carpets, Footwear, Gold, and Coal.

"Three of the ones I would single out are cocoa, cotton and rubber," Tim Newman, the campaign director for the workers' advocacy group, the International Labour Rights Forum in Washington, D.C., told CBC Radio's As It Happens.

He said Cameroon, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Guinea and Ghana were the worst offenders when it came to using children to produce cocoa, while 15 countries were listed as using child labour to pick and process cotton. Newman said Liberia was singled out for child labour abuses in the rubber industry.

International Scene: Child Labor & Forced Labor Reports Released Today

The Department's International Labor Affairs Bureau (ILAB) released three reports today on child labor and/or forced labor in foreign countries, including the initial List of Goods Produced by Child or Forced Labor [PDF] (required by the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2005). The report lists more than 120 goods from 58 countries that ILAB believes are produced by forced labor, child labor or both. ILAB also released a proposed update to its List of Products Produced by Forced or Indentured Child Labor, which will be available for public comment beginning tomorrow. The eighth annual Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor [PDF], a report mandated by the Trade and Development Act of 2000, was also released today.

Read the News Release
Read the Secretary's Statement

American Jobs in a Global Economy

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 09:57:50 -0700

“We very much want to work with others to make sure that we have … as pro-American a tax system for corporations as we possibly can …” Lawrence Summers

The Administration is struggling to fund its spending spree in ways that would nominally be consistent with the President’s campaign promises. The Obama budget proposed to inflict two substantial tax increases on U.S. corporations with global operations. One would make it more expensive to bring cash from those operations into the U.S. The other would make it expensive (on average 30% more expensive) to pay Americans, rather than citizens of any other country, to perform headquarters administrative jobs such as accounting, IT, or HR. These proposals were supposedly aimed at fulfilling the promise to “end tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas”. While they hurt companies with global operations, it is hard to see how they would do anything other than reduce U.S. jobs.
The President’s problem here, as in other areas, is that in his effort to produce campaign one-liners he misstated the underlying problem. America does not provide tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas. It provides a tax penalty for locating jobs here. That’s a different problem, and it has a different cure.

America is not the powerhouse it used to be, and we need to get used to that fact. Only 28% of the world’s largest 300 corporations are American. Our once formidable advantage in science and engineering has slipped. Now our companies must compete against potent rivals. The foreign operations of those rivals are not taxed at all by their home countries. When the U.S. tries to raise revenue by boosting the current tax on the foreign operations of our companies, we saddle them with a potentially fatal competitive burden. A foreign owned corporation can bring home up to 54% more earnings than its U.S. owned rival from a dollar earned by a factory in a tax favored location. That kind of disadvantage can break a company, destroying headquarters jobs and, in time, even U.S. manufacturing jobs. A company that can’t compete overseas cannot sustain the level of research and development needed to produce the new products it needs to compete here at home. We need to minimize the tax that our companies pay on their foreign factories.

But if tax rates on foreign operations are kept low, that puts U.S. operations at a disadvantage. America saddles its domestic corporate activities with the second highest tax rate in the developed world. Is there a way to reduce this without making corporations even more powerful than they are today, and without aggravating our government deficit or putting an even higher percentage of U.S. income into the hands of the wealthy? Yes there, is, and in fact it’s quite simple.

Corporations could be given a deduction for the dividends they pay to their shareholders. If the corporations didn’t pay out their cash, they would get no tax benefit, so the corporations would not end up with more cash. The revenue loss would be made up at the individual level by taxing the dividends and stock gains the individuals receive. Overall, the individuals would be no worse off than they are today. Why? Because the corporations would have higher earnings due to the deduction, and they would have to pay those earnings out to their shareholders. This increase would exactly match, overall, the tax imposed on the shareholders, so they would come out even. But now there would be no required corporate level tax on U.S. operations. The U.S. would be the best place in the world to put jobs, taxwise. Our companies would be in a position to trounce their foreign-owned rivals. That would eliminate the “tax benefit for shipping jobs overseas” in a way that would make us stronger rather than weaker, with higher employment and higher wages. And guess what – those workers pay taxes on those higher wages, reducing the deficit.

So let’s give the President a re-do on his campaign slogans. Mr. President, you may re-word your promise to “provide deficit reducing incentives to create jobs in America”. We’ll also politely avert our gaze while you retract your budget proposals and replace them with a tax policy that makes more sense. A new Administration is allowed to make mistakes. It just needs to recognize and correct them before permanent damage is done to our economy.

No Day in Court For Halliburton Employee Raped by Co-Workers

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 20:42:09 -0700

This is the epitome of 21st Century military industrial legalistic doublespeak nightmare:

Jamie Leigh Jones was a 20-year-old Halliburton employee in 2005 when she was sent to work in Iraq. She'd been there just four days when she joined a small group of Halliburton firefighters outside her barracks at the end of the day. One of them gave her a drink. She took two sips, and Jones says that was the last thing she remembered.

"I woke up inside the barracks," she says. "It was actually inside my barrack room, and that's when I noticed I had been severely beaten and was actually naked."

Jones had been raped, repeatedly. By how many men, she's not sure. But she says one man was still naked and asleep in the room when she came to.
...
Jones was escorted by security to the company clinic for a rape examination. When the rape kit examination was done, the evidence was turned over to Halliburton security.

The young woman's breasts were so badly mauled that she is permanently disfigured. It has been four years since the attack, and despite the physical and circumstantial evidence, the Department of Justice has declined to investigate.
...
Heather Browne, director of communications at KBR, says that while the company can't speak to the facts since the case is ongoing, it denies any liability in the attack. And she argues that any dispute with Jones, even one involving charges of rape, must go to arbitration.

So Jones is now going to court seeking the right to sue. She has become one of the nation's leading arbitration reform advocates.

The powerful acid of corporatization has utterly eroded our basic legal rights. It took centuries of struggle and bloodshed to establish the legal tradition beginning with English common law, the Magna Carta and culminating in the U.S. Bill of Rights.

We are watching that legal framework vanish before our eyes.

Unemployment in Construction Industry 21%

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 06:24:21 -0700

globeSt.com - NEW YORK CITY-The nation’s construction industry is seeing unemployment figures approach 21% as the economic drought continues to stall new real estate development across the country. Putting the potential magnitude into more local perspective, in New York City, the construction industry employs 123,000 with average payrolls at $14 billion--second only behind health care according to the NY Building Congress.
Nationwide, the job losses are a reflection of steep declines in an industry that saw $548.1 billion in construction starts or 14% fewer than 2008 according to information from McGraw Hill Construction’s "Outlook ’09, Spring Update" report.

Written by Robert Murray, McGraw Hill’s vice president of economic affairs, the report says new construction starts for 2009 are estimated at $463.1 billion, down 15%. Murray and other experts say the decline and job losses would have likely grown worse had the industry not been cushioned by a $130 billion-boost from the American Recovery and Reinvestment now headed towards various construction related projects including infrastructure.

The unmaking of a Democratic governor: Part Three

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 16:55:24 -0800

Yesterday the Chicago window workers' sit-in looked like it was gaining momentum - national press, a huge deal, an icon of a nation whose economy is parked in free fall as companies get denied the credit lines needed to keep rolling debts over. Now, that demonstration is off the news.

Today, former Democratic Alabama governor Don Siegelman's appeals case started: he got yanked out of office, convicted in a faulty process by the corrupt local U.S. Attorney's office, and tossed in prison. Siegelman also off the news.

Today, SEIU no longer appears on the side of the burgeoning righteous labor revolution; its president, Andy Stern, is apparently the 'SEIU official' contemplating inserting Rod Blagojevich into a cush job.

Today, Treasury Department officials will continue to hand out mysterious swaths of money, in all likelihood failing to log who the hell they are giving the cash to. However, we'd bet a mountain of Collateralized Debt Obligations that the Department of Justice isn't bugging the Free Cash for Cronies office. Treasury off the news.

Today, the appointment of one U.S. Senator, from New York, will not be handled by the anti-Wall Street Eliot Spitzer because he got taken down - again, by a weirdly obvious vulnerability. A second U.S. Senator, from Illinois, is entirely up for grabs; the very ability of a sole official to make this selection has been put into a radical focus, much to the delight of the chattering class (who have been noticing the peasants are getting restless and hungry).

Has anyone noticed that powerful politicians - Dem governors in particular - that are more on Wall Street's side never seem to get knocked out by surveillance, espionage, the information warfare hits, the 'Justice' political plays?

Can we seriously believe these days that the closed rooms of the powerful financial guys really sound any better than poor ol' Blagojevich's expletive-laden, desperate grabs?

I mean, I haven't even been paying close attention to Illinois, but I'd heard that this guy was marked to take a fall, he was super tainted. How could he not have expected wiretaps? It seems like he didn't give a damn, even with the Obama camp's tense distancing from him and the Feds' multi-year corruption investigation into the whole state government!

As a media play, it yanks attention off the nearly critical-mass labor conflict at the Republic factory, and in an almost COINTELPRO pitch-perfect wedge cuts SEIU into the 'bad guys' pile. That's impressive!

Side point: the triangle between the Tribune Co.'s bankruptcy, the cajoling about Wrigley Field, mixed with the paper's editorial board, just illustrates how these massive corporations fuck up conflict of interest for everyone.

Spitzer, Siegelman, and Blagojevich (the D3) are all part of a pattern: what they're all accused of seems par for the course, even timid by modern standards. Foundation seats? Appointees? How the hell does this normally work? Isn't this circle of chumminess the true texture of America's power, politics and cash allocation? Delete the expletives and imagine the variety of politicians who would likely say this stuff, servicing their patronage networks with all available appointments at their discretion.

Another fun bonus: Illinois, in an effort to dent the circle of state contractors giving political contributions, had set a deadline for the end of this year limiting contributions from parties scoring $50K or more from the state. So Blagojevich was sprinting to the finish line!

(Blagojevich gets a bonus for raising the profile of politicized foundation appointments: that overlooked feature of the tax system, foundations, so beloved by conspiracy theorists as 'skeleton keys' to webs of intrigue. The notion of President Obama controlling foundations, it's almost as if Blagojevich knew where Obama had worked around town!)

Perhaps it's good that Fitzgerald fires another warning shot at politicians, generally. But will he get into the true context of the thing? Will his gig here lead to more transparent government, or a diversion from the massive systemic breakdown that the D3 were pretty much not party to?

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 16:00:00 -0800

n/a

Laissez Faire to Netroots Nation

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 09:01:18 -0700

I didn’t go to “Netroots Nation”, mainly because I can’t afford to travel to Austin right now. If I could have gone, I would have, if only to raise questions that the other so-called “Progressives” won’t ask. You see, I have quite a different “take” on things that most “Progressives” accept as business as usual in politics.

The difference between the people attending “Netroots” and myself is that I don’t trust the Democrats as much as I don’t trust the Republicans. Of course, being a realist, we have to accept that the Republican and Democratic Party duopoly will continue to keep the power in Washington. There is no real threat or challenge to them. The thing that bothers me the most however, is how quickly and totally the members of “Netroots” fall on their swords for Obama, even after he voted FOR telecom immunity on the FISA Bill. This type of behavior enables the politicians to take the Left for granted.

We know that there are Progressive/Democrat “Gatekeepers” on many of the Democratic leaning websites. To openly criticize the Democratic Party will usually get you bounced out as fast a neo-con at an ACLU meeting. Some “Progressive” websites equate not towing the Democratic Party line with being a far-right Republican. What many so-called Liberal/Progressives don’t realize, is that there are people that lean more to the Left than they do. The sad thing about the Left caving so completely at “Netroots” is that it enables the Democrats not only to pander to the right, but it allows so many “Conservative Democrats” that voted with the Bush administration to capture support in their election campaigns.

Some of the people that I’ve seen interviewed at “Netroots” seem to be completely convinced that the Democratic Party is only leaning right to capture the presidency.
http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=1914 . Other people like Matt Stoller of MyDD (A site where I still haven’t been kicked off of yet) say that there aren’t enough people on the Left Blogosphere to influence the Democratic Party. http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=1913 . I completely disagree. I believe that there are enough people that subscribe to Progressive/Left websites to change the results of an election. This admission of impotency by Matt Stoller hurts rather than helps the left. I’m not blaming him for speaking what he believes is the truth that is what I expect of him. What I don’t agree with is his opinion, and why he even mentioned that the Left didn’t have the numbers to matter. If one were truly politically savvy, a person wouldn’t admit their particular demographic was too small to matter.

I believe that there are many more people that are dissatisfied with the rampant capitalism and the corporate welfare that this administration has practiced. Americans are tired of the “hands off” attitude towards regulation of certain key industries that are actually stealing from them. The pharmaceutical industry, the oil industry, and the entire military industrial complex are unregulated and overcharge Americans to and beyond what the market will bear. Corporations that pay their CEO’s hundreds of millions of dollars while the companies that they run are in the red, and end up cutting salaries of the workers and cutting their benefits and blame it on “cost cutting”. The same corporations are outsourcing their factories overseas and adding to the unemployment rolls here in America, while still receiving tax breaks. You would think that the so-called “Progressive” movement would speak with a louder voice at “Netroots”.

What this election will do, if as it seems Obama stays right of center (at least in my estimation), is that many who call themselves Democrats will eventually tire of corporatism run rampant and embrace the Socialist Party. I say that because I myself see aspects of socialism that are preferable to “laissez faire” capitalism. When the many sacrifice for the few, changes start to take place. Progressive/liberals may take a back seat in this election, but I believe that soon they will be a force to be reckoned with.

The day the slacker died

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 07:58:16 -0700

Spengler

Two events on June 6 might denote the death of the "slacker" as an American cultural archetype. The first was the largest monthly jump in the US unemployment rate in two decades, due to an unexpectedly large number of young entrants into the labor market. The second was the release of the film Kung Fu Panda, which transposes the ubiquitous slacker-makes-good story line into the incongruous setting of Chinese martial arts.

America might be the first country in recorded history whose culture celebrates not only indolence but also the sheer absence of ability. Byronic loafing is the birthright of genius, but slacking has become the entitlement of every young American.

American popular culture puts a special premium on doing nothing, which is what the protagonists of such popular television series as Friends, Sex in the City, The Office and Seinfeld did. Aristocrats throughout history loafed because they could afford to. Until very recently, so could Americans. That has come to a sudden and ignoble end, on which more later. more

Who got H-1B visas petitions approved last year?

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 13:25:28 -0700

Marianne Kolbasuk McGee | April 2

Information Week - Thousands of employers are scrambling this week to file H-1B visa petitions in hopes that the U.S. government will approve their applications to hire foreign tech workers in fiscal 2009. InformationWeek analyzed the list of companies that had their H-1B visa applications approved last year and the number of approvals they got.

Among the top 10 companies having H-1B visa petitions approved by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for fiscal 2007 (which started Oct. 1, 2006) are eight Indian firms -- with Infosys ranked at No. 1 with 4,559 visas -- and two U.S.-based companies, Microsoft and Intel, having a combined 1,328 visa petitions approved. In total, the top 10 companies had 12,876 H-1B visa petitions approved.

Despite the annual cap of 65,000 H-1B visas that are generally available and the additional 20,000 exempt visas for foreign-born students with advanced degrees from U.S. schools, there were a total of 126,219 H-1B visa petitions approved in fiscal 2007 by USCIS.

Those additional 41,219 H-1B visas petitions approved included three-year extensions for companies seeking H-1B visa renewals, as well as two categories of employers exempt from caps -- nonprofit organizations and institutes of higher learning, said a USCIS spokesman in an interview.

"So, while there's lots of discussion about the 85,000 cap, in reality the total number of H-1B visa petitions approved is higher," the spokesman said.

Also, once the visa petitions are approved by USCIS, the actual visas have to be issued by the U.S. State Department.

More...

List of top 100 H-1B employers

Excel spreadsheet of all 29,074 employers

Organized Labor Fights Patent Reform Bill

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 11:12:00 -0700

Christopher S. Rugabear | Washington | April 3

AP - The battle over patent reform, a sleepy sounding subject that affects new, cheaper medicines, Chinese counterfeits and BlackBerry addicts, has always sent high-tech companies and drugmakers to their respective corners.

But now organized labor is getting in the fight, using its lobbying muscle to stop -- or at least shape -- proposed changes to patent law.

Spurred by concern about overseas piracy of U.S. goods, unions have stepped up their opposition to patent reform legislation pending in the Senate. The AFL-CIO and the Change to Win coalition, a group of seven unions that includes the Teamsters, argued in separate letters recently that proposed reforms to the patent system would make it easier for competitors in China and India to counterfeit U.S. products and send more U.S jobs overseas.

Labor's opposition puts Senate Democrats who support the measure in a tight spot. Patent reform is a top priority for another Democratic constituency: high-tech companies such as Hewlett-Packard Co. and Cisco Systems Inc.

The patent bill, sponsored by Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, would make the first significant changes to the U.S. patent system in more than 55 years. It has deeply split the business community and ignited intense lobbying.

Computer and Internet companies gave $1.3 million, 57 percent of their total federal contributions, to Democratic candidates in 2007-2008, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Their contributions are dwarfed by organized labor, which has given more than $24 million in the same period, 90 percent to Democratic candidates.

Labor's opposition has ''captured lawmakers' attention,'' said Robert Lindefjeld, a patent attorney at Jones Day, because they have demonstrated a link between the otherwise complex and obscure issue of patent reform and jobs. In an effort to placate unions and other opponents, Leahy and other senators are scrambling for a compromise.

A Senate aide, who requested anonymity, said, ''There's a lot of interest groups involved ... It's difficult to address everyone's concerns so that they're 100 percent happy with the outcome.''

The compromise proposal could be released as soon as this week, several lobbyists said. The House approved its version of the bill last September.

One of the most contentious issue is the calculation of damages in patent infringement suits. High-tech companies, whose products may include hundreds of patented parts, want awards more closely tied to the specific patent that was infringed, rather than to the entire value of the product.

Opponents say that would reduce damage awards and make it easier to infringe patents. One possible compromise in the works would give judges more discretion to provide guidance to juries on calculating damages.

The unions oppose the current damages provision and a measure that would require the publication of patent applications within 18 months of submission, which they fear would make it easier for overseas competitors to copy U.S. inventions.

They received an unlikely boost last fall when a Chinese official, Yongshun Chen, a former judge, was quoted in the Chinese press as saying reform legislation "favors the infringers and burdens patentees more."

Bob Baugh, executive director of the AFL-CIO's industrial unions council, said Chen's comments "confirmed suspicions" that the legislation would lead to more counterfeiting of U.S. goods.

U.S. manufacturers have long complained about counterfeit auto parts and other manufactured goods from China. The Bush administration filed a complaint last year at the World Trade Organization charging China with lax enforcement of intellectual property rights.

In a statement last month, the AFL-CIO's executive council said it is "ironic that, at a time when our nation is pressing China to upgrade its protection of intellectual property ... the United States would actively consider steps that could undermine the effectiveness of our patent protections."

Supporters of the bill, however, say they are confident that unions' concerns will be addressed and that the Senate will vote on a compromise bill this month or next.

Mark Holston, Hewlett-Packard's general counsel, said Tuesday the company is one of the largest U.S. patent holders and wouldn't support legislation that weakens patent protection.

Baugh and other union representatives say they will reserve final judgment until they see the compromise.

"We look forward to taking a close look at the new bill and working with Sen. Leahy to ensure that our concerns ... are addressed," Jim Hoffa, general president of the Teamsters, said in an e-mailed statement.

For those of us who actually make things rather than shuffle bits of paper around, this is a very important matter--and one that has met with near-silence in the press. Why is that?

Indian men in US 'slave' protest

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 13:53:53 -0700

Washington | March 27

BBC - More than 100 Indians who moved to the US for jobs have marched hundreds of miles to Washington DC in protest at being forced to work "like slaves".

The men plan to take their protest to the Indian ambassador.

The men say recruiters tricked them into paying up to $20,000 each for a new life in the US, where they then had to work in exploitative conditions.

The Mississippi firm that employed them, Signal International, has denied they were mistreated.

It says the men were paid wages above the local average and given good accommodation.

It accuses the recruitment firm of deceiving the Indians and has now ended its contract.

It is also demanding the recruiters return the fees the men paid them.

In 2006, some 500 men from across India each paid recruiters up to $20,000 for what they were told would be a new life.

They were given temporary visas and jobs at a marine construction company in Mississippi.

But the men say they were then forced to live in primitive conditions.

They are describing their protest as a Satyagraha, a word used by Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi to describe a non-violent battle against injustice.

Strange Tales Of Desperate Job Seekers

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:36:13 -0700

Erin Conroy | March 18

AP - Puzzling resumes: Career advisors have always said that your resume should stand out against the rest of the stack. But how much creativity should your cover letter ooze -- even when looking in creative fields?

A telephone questionnaire of about 250 people by online job search company Creative Group found that more than half of marketing executives and a quarter of advertising executives view unusual job-hunting tactics -- such as sending a potential employer a shoe "to get a foot in the door" -- as unprofessional.

Some examples the respondents gave of peculiar job seeking:

One applicant sent six postcards, each a puzzle piece, which formed his resume.
A candidate sent an egg carton with faux eggs and a message saying she delivered fresh ideas daily.
A job hunter used an office building across the street to post his qualifications on a large sign.
Another sent a baseball mitt and said he wanted to be part of the team.
A woman printed her name on golf balls and sent them to executives that were hiring.

Watch your mouth: Women found sexually explicit comments were nearly twice as frequent in the workplace last year as the year before, according to a recent survey.

The telephone survey of 546 employees was conducted by International Communications Research for Novations Group, a consulting company based in Boston. It found that 42 percent said they endured sexually inappropriate comments in 2007, up from 34 percent in 2006. The largest increase was among women, 39 percent of whom reported the most common type of harassment -- up from 22 percent the year before.

"People on the receiving end of hostile comments are more vocal about their displeasure than they have been in the past," said Mike Hyster, president of Novations Group. "I believe that's a direct reflection of the fact that the number of paid legal settlements has doubled in the last five years."

Reports of racial slurs inched up to 35 percent of those surveyed, from 33 percent in 2006.

The survey also found that employees ages 18 to 34 were more than twice as likely to overhear ridicule regarding their age than their colleagues over 55.

More...

Outsourcing giant expands into U.S., Europe

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:27:28 -0700

Rick Merritt | Bengaluru, India | March 17

EE Times - Wipro Ltd., one of India's largest outsourcing companies, is eyeing expansion in Europe and the U.S. as part of the next phase of globalization. The $5 billion IT services firm plans to open two new software development centers in the U.S. and is studying a sizable acquisition in technology R&D in Germany.

"We want to give our customers a choice of geography with a distributed network of low cost development centers close to their centers of operation," said Azim Premji, chairman of Wipro Ltd. in a presentation to members of the international press here.

Wipro already has two software development centers in the U.S. One in Troy, Mich., focuses on automotive systems. Its other software development center is in Atlanta.

"We are going to open up at least two more centers in the U.S. in the next two years, but we haven't announced them yet," said Premji.

Part of the rationale for the U.S. centers is to be more actively engaged in the U.S. market in hopes of winning future public outsourcing contracts in areas such as IT development. Wipro has also opened small development centers in Shanghai, Chengdu, Cebu, Brazil, Mexico, Bucharest and will open one soon in Poland.

The company already has as many as 8,000 engineers stationed in the U.S., according to Wipro chief financial officer Suresh Senapaty. Today those engineers rotate in and out of the U.S. for stays of three to six months to work closely with customers, including large financial firms and big high tech companies such as Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and Sun.

Wipro claims it is the world's largest company in outsourcing R&D. In recent years it acquired three small European chip and design firms to bolster this business and is exploring one larger acquisition in Germany now.

"We'd love to get a good sized acquisition in Germany to establish a beachhead there," said Premji. "We are willing to pay a good price for it, and we have shortlisted some companies," he said, adding Wipro would spend up to $500 million on such a deal.

More...

Note that salaries are the issue...

Immigration Is The Free Market At Work

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 07:19:57 -0800

(originally posted at The Seminal)

As Bill Richardson says, the U.S. has an immigration problem, but Mexico has one too.

"Free" trade deals like NAFTA devastated Mexico's domestic economy because these were unfair. Mexico gave up its protective tariffs on things like agricultural products while the U.S. didn't, meaning that food grown more cheaply in Mexico could not compete with American grown produce. NAFTA put over 2 million Mexican farmers out of business. This "free" trade agreement also allowed multi-national corporations like Walmart, fueled by even cheaper Chinese labor, to drive out thousands of small Mexican businesses and depress Mexican wages.

Mexico simply can't compete with places like China, so the American businesses that were supposed to set up shop in Mexico under NAFTA have largely moved on to cheaper locales. All this wonderful trade leaves Mexico with a glut of unemployed workers, mostly young men. These people then go looking for new jobs and a better life in the United States.

And they have little choice. While wages in Mexico fell 20% since 2001, immigrants can make as much as 13 times more in the U.S. It's not hard to see why some people would risk their lives to come to this country. You're talking about a 1300% pay raise!

Indeed, free trade and immigration go hand in hand. Free trade allows industry to take advantage of uneven prices in the global marketplace while at the same time forcing immigrants to take advantage of uneven wages. We are literally incentivizing illegal immigration. In the case of NAFTA, America gets the opportunity to sell our goods to Mexican consumers coupled with an influx of Mexican workers. Free trade means free movement of everything - goods, services, and labor.

This economic reality makes clear the contradictory nature of Republican positions on free trade and immigration. Plans to deport undocumented aliens, close the border, build a wall, and not give immigrants a clear path to citizenship stand in direct conflict with Republican faith in the free market. Immigration is the free market at work, working exactly how free trade advocates decided to set it up. Preaching free trade and then trying to stop immigration with "enforcement only" opens the economic floodgates and then attempts to stop the resulting flow with a legislative interventionist policy.

By framing the immigration debate as a values question and labeling these workers as criminals, Republicans attempt to mask the inherent conflict that exposes "free" trade for the swindle it really is: Free trade, as practiced by the United States, benefits the rich while screwing the poor. NAFTA allowed American companies to ship manual labor jobs to Mexico, flood Mexico with cheap Chinese made products, and keep huge subsidies for giant agribusinesses. This created mass immigration, which then allowed American companies to hire undocumented workers for low wages. The proposed fix? Build a wall. With people already willing to die to come to America, what makes anyone think this approach will work?

The reality is, American business loves illegal immigration. Undocumented immigrants are cheap, have no pesky minimum wage, and aren't subject to the same labor protections as American citizens. Just like invading Iraq didn't "fix" the terrorism problem, and locking up drug dealers didn't "fix" the drug problem, building a wall will never "fix" the immigration problem, and that's the point. America doesn't want a fix for immigration, we want a scapegoat.

It's an insidious strategy, as David Sirota points out:

The formula allows opportunists in Congress to both deflect heat away from the corporations underwriting their campaigns and preserve an exploitable pool of cheap labor for those same corporations. Additionally, these opportunists get to divide working-class constituencies along racial lines and vilify destitute illegal immigrant populations that don't make campaign donations and therefore have no political voice whatsoever.

Even worse, the public has largely taken the bait. As of October, the majority of Americans held favorable views of trade and free markets while an even larger majority feel immigration should be further restricted.

The real solution seems fairly simple, though American business probably won't like it. Immigrants need some kind of legal status so they can enjoy the protections of the American workforce. When undocumented immigrants are allowed to work without those protections, and when businesses aren't punished for breaking the law, every American worker suffers. Strengthening immigrant workplace rights will even out the imbalance between citizens and non-citizens and strengthen the American workforce overall. Couple this domestic policy with a free trade policy that emphasizes worker protections abroad and eliminates exceptions and other tariff imbalances that destroyed the Mexican economy, and you have a pro-free trade, pro-immigration set of policies that work for the people, not the oligarchs.

Free trade is one thing. Allowing multi-national companies to exploit differences in national economies and prices for personal gain is quite another. The free market is indeed a wonderful thing, but any economist knows that there really is no such thing as a completely free market, and that free markets only promote efficiency, not fairness. Free trade practices can indeed increase economic flows between two countries, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. But if you want to decouple free trade from illegal immigration, you need to turn free trade into fair trade.

Anything less is a swindle and a scapegoat.

Shrinking Middle-Class, Shrinking Labor

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 09:24:33 -0800

There has been much talk lately about the state of the middle-class, the insecurity of workers, and the flat-lining of wages in America. Much of the debate has revolved around the changes in the make-up of our labor force today. It has been erroneously reported that the shrinking of wages and of the middle-class is due to our no longer being a manufacturing society and due to out-sourcing. While this provides a convenient foe, it does not accurately depict the situation. There is a direct correlation between the flat-lining wages and the shrinking middle-class with the reduction of the labor movement in America. The only groups who have seen real growth in wages the past few decades are groups who are represented by unions. If this is true, then why are unions and the labor movement not more powerful and vibrant?

The reason is simple, corporate America and their Washington whores have gutted the labor movement in America. The only defense that middle-income folks had against the big money lobbyists and government thieves were the unions. The unions allowed the workers to pool their resources to be able to fight against the influence of corporate America. They provided cover for and contributions to politicians with the courage to stand up to corporate America. Unions for many years were the driving force behind the increase in the standard of living for all working Americans, not just their union members. Unions allowed the development of a strong middle-class which is essential to a thriving economy and a vibrant democracy. It was the unions that guaranteed their workers an honest wage and a secure job environment. How many of today’s workers cite job insecurity as a major concern with the economy?

While the unions provided many positives for their members, they also provided excesses for their leaders. I would be remiss and disingenuous if I only extolled the positive without the negative, there were many instances of abuse of power in many unions by leaders. However, that abuse of power is not because of unionism, isn’t it more because of a human frailty; greed? The problem is that corporate America began a campaign decades ago to destroy the labor movement in America, the labor movement through unions offered the only protection of the American workers against the type of abuse that they are suffering today. With the help of their “political allies” in Washington, corporate America has used the broad brush of union corruption and legal defeats to cripple the unions and the labor movement in America as a whole.

The great sit-down strikes and labor uprisings in the 30s and 40s brought our nation close to real democracy when the voices of the majority, American workers, was heard loud and clear. Corporate thugs, police agencies, and federal troops openly murdered workers and their families. The corporate media supported those actions, even calling for hanging of labor organizers. Unfortunately, labor leaders mistakenly accepted the passing of the National Labor Relations Act [NLRA] as remedy. Nothing more than deception, the Act reaffirmed the Corporation's superiority over the Constitution and made the criminal behavior by employers, labor violations, effectively undermining rights our founders sought to give. Each time labor stood up and mobilized, the Corporation, with the aid of congressional pimps and the corporate media, passed new labor acts to beat down the rights of workers. A prime example was the passage of Taft-Hartley. Labor Net

Using PR firms and restrictive organizing regulations supported and sponsored by the politicians, corporations have created an atmosphere of appeasement and apathy for today’s workers. Many of today’s “high tech” workers have been brainwashed to believe that the cause of labor no longer applies to their concerns. I have been at many tech jobs where the younger workers have blamed labor for the loss of industry and jobs. Many of today’s workers do not believe that labor is relevant anymore.

There is only one small problem with this thinking, as the unions have shrunk the disparity between the salaries of the average worker and the top executives have reached all-time highs. Are we to believe that this is a coincidence? Correspondingly, the wealth of our nation is also being concentrated in to fewer and fewer hands. The American worker has been sold a bill of goods concerning the labor movement and its relevancy to their lives.

Without a strong labor movement including unions the American worker is at the mercy of greedy corporate executives and money grubbing politicians. The call of the union is just as relevant today as it ever was, there is strength in numbers and solidarity. It is foolish for today’s worker to rely on the benevolence of corporations, just as it was foolish for their grandparents to do so. Today’s worker must not buy into the hype that the dynamics of our economy and industries have outgrown the need for labor and unions. If nothing else the proof is in the fact that corporate executive compensation has increased at the same time workers compensation has decreased or flat-lined. Never in our history has there been disparity on the scales we are now witnessing.

These are outcomes of the long, unfolding crisis, not root causes. Despite the novelty, but obvious seriousness, of the current debate, U.S. Labor did not arrive at this point of historic impotence in just the past several years. This downward spiral has been in process for decades. Workers at the base became painfully aware that corporate capital was breaking the so-called "social contract" many years ago. Their initial anticipation that leaders of the nation's unions might devise appropriate strategies to resist or blunt the assault or that, in many instances, their own local determination to fight back would be welcomed and fully supported was one of the first casualties of this new chapter of class warfare being written in America.

Unabated disinvestment, corporate whipsawing of one plant's workers against another's, job blackmail, often with union leadership complicity, and a magician's trunk full of solidarity-busting workplace reorganization schemes had, by the mid-1980s, become the backdrop for the renewed concerted employer aggression. Most labor bureaucrats were either untrained and/or more often unwilling to venture out of their comfort zones to lead struggles against this eviscerating reality. Monthly Review

Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence. - Henri Frederic Amiel

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