Title:
Young Workers Lead Growing Labor Unrest in China
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Economics Report.
See text below
Text:
Factory labor built China into the world's third
largest economy, after the United States and Japan.
Now something else is building: labor tensions.
China bars labor unions independent of the Communist
Party. But George Haley at the University of New
Haven in Connecticut says labor unrest is common and
is not new. There has been a large amount of action
among workers for higher pay.Disputes are especially
common in the Pearl River manufacturing area in
southeastern China. Companies there have resisted
raising wages. For years, millions of Chinese from
inland provinces have flooded into eastern
industrial centers. But young workers are
increasingly dissatisfied with the pay and working
conditions. Inflation hurts, too. China's
export-driven economy has been recovering from the
worldwide downturn. The growth rate in the first
three months of this year was nearly twelve percent.
But China could raise interest rates to control
growth and inflation. Prices rose in May at the
highest rate in a year and a half.Migrant workers
also face added costs for services that were free in
the past, like medical care and education. Also, the
easy availability of credit has pushed up housing
prices.The government does not report on migrant
unemployment. But media reports say an estimated
twenty million migrant workers returned home last
year after losing their jobs. Labor unrest in China
takes different forms. Recent strikes against
foreign companies have included suppliers for
Japanese car makers Honda and Toyota. In Shenzhen,
at least ten employees at factories owned by
Taiwan's Foxconn have killed themselves since
January. They complained of long hours and low pay.
Foxconn makes Apple iPhones and iPads and
electronics for other companies. Foxconn has agreed
to double basic pay to nearly three hundred dollars
a month.Foreign-owned companies generally offer the
best conditions. Professor Haley says profit for the
average Chinese company is less than five percent.
The government has tried to get foreign companies to
move factories inland, where pay remains low. Some
young workers in the south have organized protests
using the Internet and mobile phones. What remains
unclear is how far this can go before the government
reacts to it as a threat. And that's the VOA Special
English Economics Report.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
