Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1051-1053

In June 2011, Zhang and his teenage classmates were taken out of their family homes and dispatched to a factory making electronic gadgets. The pupils were away for a six-month internship at a giant Foxconn plant in the southern city of Shenzhen, a 20-hour train ride from their home in central China. He had no say in the matter, he told researchers. "Unless we could present a medical report certified by the city hospital that we were very ill, we had to go immediately."
...
Incredible as it sounds, Zhang's story is actually typical. As the number one supplier to Apple and manufacturer for a host of other consumer-electronics firms, Foxconn is one of the largest employers in China – and among the biggest users of student labour. In October 2010, the company estimated that, at times, up to 15% – or 150,000 – of its million-strong workforce were students. More than 28,000 were estimated to be interning for Apple alone. Last year, academics reported that 70% of the staff at a Honda gearbox factory were from secondary schools

Nor is such exploitation merely the stuff of recent history: just last week, Foxconn admitted that it had broken the law by making schoolchildren work overtime and night shifts. More than a thousand of them had reportedly been building the soon-to-be released PlayStation 4 games consoles.
Forced student labour is central to the Chinese economic miracle
Aditya Chakrabortty
The Guardian, Monday 14 October 2013

According to economic logic, wage growth should reflect productivity growth. This was the case until the late 1970s. Since then, however, wage growth has fallen far short of productivity growth, and that’s true for workers regardless of education, occupation, gender or race.

...

...technological change and the globalization it has enabled have played major roles...

The Quality of Jobs: The New Normal and the Old Normal

By LAURA D'ANDREA TYSON

New York Times

September 20, 2013
[emphasis JS]

Workers just aren't as important as you think, and they are worth less and less to a company. As a Union strives to increase their pay beyond efficiency merit, the company will work to eliminate employees through computerization and automation. You can generally assume that management will work as hard as possible to eliminate every job they can. It is always preferable to have machines working for you instead of people. And more profitable. What we'll do with all the unemployed, I don't know, but this is a huge structural change that can't be ignored and can't be stopped. The harder you work to unionize and the louder you scream, the faster the jobs will disappear.

Sept. 22, 2013 

ToldLikeItIs

Ibid, comment section
[emphasis JS]