The best of the week’s news by Lindsay Beyerstein
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Sidney-winner Irin Carmon went head-to-head on NPR with noted anti-feminist crank and author of the new book “Girl Land,” Caitlin Flanagan.
Read Carmon’s review of “Girl Land” in Salon.
[Photo credit: mag3737, Creative Commons.]
Democratic members of the Indiana State House caucused in the rotunda on Wednesday morning to demand a referendum on proposed “right to work” legislation that would cripple organized labor:
The Indiana House remained at a standstill this morning, with most Democrats refusing to come to the floor as they protest the controversial “right to work” bill and demand to offer an amendment seeking a public referendum on it.
Democrats met in the Statehouse Rotunda, with labor protesters surrounding them and more watching from the balconies above, cheering as Democrats promised to fight this issue.
As their chants of “Power to the People” rang in the Statehouse, Republicans attempted to come into session on the 3rd floor, but again did not have the necessary quorum of 67 legislators to do business. There are 60 Republicans, and this morning four Democrats joined them on the floor while the remainder of the Democrats were in the Rotunda.
The Democrats are staying off the State House floor to postpone a vote on the bill, which would otherwise pass the GOP-controlled body. The Dems say they can’t vote because they’re busy working on an amendment to hold a right-to-work referendum.
Proponents of the bill say that “right to work” legislation would create jobs by attracting manufacturers from non right-to-work states. However, as Prof. Gordon Lafer argues in The Nation, right-to-work legislation is an outdated tactic for attracting manufacturing jobs. These days, companies looking for cheap labor aren’t shopping between states, they’re taking their work overseas.
[Photo credit: The Indiana State House Rotunda, by Jim Bowen, Creative Commons.]
Media critic Jim Romenesko’s list of Pulitzer Prize contenders is out, just ahead of next week’s application deadline.
Romenesko checked in with Spencer Soper to make sure he’d submitted his exposé of brutal working conditions of Amazon.com’s warehouse in Lehigh Valley, PA. That outstanding story won Soper the October Sidney Award.
Romenesko also asked his friends and colleagues to submit their picks for this year’s Pulitzers. The first name on the list was none other than Sidney Award Winner Sara Ganim for her agenda-setting coverage of the Jerry Sandusky rape scandal at Penn State.
[Photo credit: Chris Drumm, Creative Commons.]
New York Times labor reporter Steven Greenhouse tweeted, “Jon Stewart is doing devastating takedown of FoxConn factory giant w/horrid conditons that produces for Apple & Microsoft.” Indeed, the Daily Show host pulls no punches.
Stewart satirizes the notion that the U.S. factories should emulate the Chinese electronics giant FoxConn, which employs 800,000 workers assembling everything from iPhones to Xboxes. FoxConn has found ingenious ways to save money. Workers live in the FoxConn compound, housed eight to a room in dormitories where roommates may not know each other’s names. They are paid 31 cents an hour, and work up to 35 hours per shift.
Workers who try to unionize will be imprioned. Stewart wonders if incarceration might be more pleasant than life on the FoxConn line.
After a spate of suicides, FoxConn installed nets to catch would-be jumpers.
“In Western medicine, we call that ‘treating the symptom,’” Stewart quips.
In honor or the holiday, video artist Jay Smooth presents ten less-quoted passages from Martin Luther King, Jr.
Over the weekend, thousands of Sanyo employees protested over wages and job security at a speaker plant in the manufacturing hub of Shenzhen:
(Reuters) - Thousands of Chinese workers protesting over compensation and job security at a Sanyo Electric Co Ltd plant clashed with police in southern Shenzhen, media said on Monday, the latest outbreak of labor unrest in China’s manufacturing hub.
About 4,000 workers protested over the weekend at the Sino-Japanese joint venture, the Chinese-language Oriental Daily reported. Sing Tao Daily and the People.com.cn website put the number at over 3,000.
The People.com.cn website said police arrested four people after clashes with police in Shenzhen, next to Hong Kong.
Sing Tao Daily quoted an employee as saying that workers feared they would not receive any compensation after Sanyo and Panasonic Corp (6752.T) integrated their businesses this month.
Thousands of workers at foreign-owned companies in China have launched labor actions over the past year.
[Photo credit: A Sanyo blimp, stateside. Inky, Creative Commons.]
[Photo credit: Wander Mule, Creative Commons.]
The Sidney Hillman Foundation invites you to an exclusive preview screening and discussion of PBS’s new documentary, Slavery By Another Name, on Thursday, Feb 2 at 6:00pm at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism (219 W. 40th St, New York, NY).
Based on the award-winning book by Wall Street Journal reporter Douglas A. Blackmon, the film challenges the cherished assumption that slavery in the United States ended with the Emancipation Proclamation. Join Blackmon and the film’s Hillman-award winning producer/director Sam Pollard for a panel discussion moderated by Gerry Hudson, executive vice president of SEIU.
Click here to view the full-sized event flier.
Space is limited, please RSVP by January 30. Phone: 646-448-6413; email: alex@hillmanfoundation.org.
For those of you who can’t join us in person, I’ll be blogging about the screening here at Clear it With Sidney.
Electronics giant Foxconn has confirmed reports from Chinese anti-government websites that workers in the southern city of Wuhan threatened mass suicide earlier this month over a labor dispute:
Jan. 12 (Bloomberg) – Foxconn Technology Group, maker of parts for Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox, said some members of its 1 million-person workforce threatened to jump from a factory building earlier this month to protest an internal transfer of employees.
About 150 workers at Foxconn’s plant in Wuhan, southern China, demonstrated on Jan. 2 in opposition to the company’s plan to move them to a new production line, the Taiwanese company said in an e-mailed statement today. Foxconn didn’t say how many threatened to leap from the three-story building.
The incident was resolved the same day, after talks between the workers, executives and government officials, Foxconn said. Microsoft said in a separate statement that it investigated the issue.
Foxconn, the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer, makes products coveted worldwide, including Apple iPhones and components for Microsoft Xboxes.
In 2010, at least 14 Foxconn workers committed suicide to protest brutal working conditions. The company reportedly increased wages and installed safety nets in response. According to some reports workers were asked to sign contracts not to commit suicide.
[Photo credit: Shenzhen High Tech Fair, by Bert van Dijk, Creative Commons.]
As Indianapolis prepares to host the Superbowl, the state’s Republican legislators and governor are pushing to make Indiana the twenty-third “right to work” state in the nation. On Tuesday, right-to-work legislation advanced to the full state house, despite efforts of Democratic legislators to slow passage of the bill.
Six NFL players from Indiana have spoken out against the bill:
INDIANAPOLIS — Quarterbacks Jay Cutler of the Chicago Bears and Rex Grossman of the Washington Redskins are among six NFL players urging Indiana lawmakers to oppose right-to-work legislation.
Cutler, from Santa Claus, Ind., and Grossman, from Bloomington, joined New Orleans’ Courtney Roby, Pittsburgh’s Trai Essex, St. Louis’ Mark Clayton and San Diego’s Kris Dielman in sending letters to Indiana House members Monday. Days earlier, the NFL Players Association came out against the measure that would ban private contracts that require workers to pay union fees for representation.
Cutler called it a “political ploy” against workers. [AP]
Last year, Democratic lawmakers thwarted the GOP’s attempt to pass right-to-work legislation by fleeing the state. This time around, Republicans have clipped the opposition’s wings by passing anti-bolting legislation that could impose fines of $1000 per day after 3 days of unexcused absence.
[Photo credit: Indywriter, Creative Commons.]
