Presidential wanna-be Willard Romney was honored by the Chinese Government recently with the issue of the 00 Yuan; yup, not worth the paper it’s printed on.
Picking up from where we left off yesterday…
Frankly, Mitt, I would have thought you would have labeled China the bigger geopolitical foe than Russia, since you have promised that on Day One of your administration you would designate it “a currency manipulator.” That, of course, would be the first step to an all out trade war, and all the financial chaos that implies.
But that’s probably just tough pander talk to impress your wingnut base, since you have reportedly invested $23 million of your own money in a Chinese sweat shop, Global-Tech in Dongguan, China. Here’s how you gushingly described the factory to your presidential campaign donors in the infamous Boca Raton 47% video:
“And they work in these huge factories; they made various uh, small appliances. And uh, as we were walking through this facility, seeing them work, the number of hours they worked per day, the pittance they earned, living in dormitories with uh, with little bathrooms maybe 10, 10 room, rooms. And the rooms they have 12 girls per room. Three bunk beds on top of each other…And around this factory was a fence, a huge fence with barbed wire and guard towers. And, and we said gosh! I can’t believe that you, you know, keep these girls in! They said, no, no, no. This is to keep other people from coming in Because people want so badly to come work in this factory that we have to keep them out.”
In a report titled: Global-Tech – Betting Against American Workers, compiled by the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights, its author asks the obvious question:
“Does Mr. Romney seriously believe that young men and women in China are racing to climb over fortress-like walls topped with barbed wire, just to get a poorly paid job at Global-Tech? Or is it possible that the barbed wire and armed guards are meant to lock the Chinese workers in and strip them of their legal rights?”
The United Steel Workers web site provides further details:
[The author] Kernaghan provides in the report, photos of the workers and documentation with pay stubs and journals by workers in a chapter titled, ‘Misery Updated,’ that makes clear in 2012 illegal sweatshop conditions persist at Global-Tech in China.
He publishes photos by workers of primitive and filthy dorms with squat toilets. Other photos show a workplace cafeteria, where he describes barely edible and frequently rotten food. “Global-Tech workers are easily hired, but then they are trapped and cheated of their wages if they try to leave, as well as being cheated of healthcare and other benefits.”
“Sadly, in 2012, Global-Tech remains a brutal sweatshop, where workers are paid starvation wages of $1.00 an hour and have no rights. Today at Global-Tech, every single labor law in China is violated: primitive, filthy dorm conditions are the norm; routine 15-16-hour shifts prevail, along with grueling 105-to-112 hour, seven-day work weeks.”
Kernaghan wrote that 800 high school student interns – many exhausted children just 16-years-old, are forced to work the grueling 15-16-hour shifts with no overtime pay at Global-Tech. “As of 2012, U.S. wages for the manufacturing of electrical equipment and appliances are $17.93 an hour, while wages at Global-Tech for similar work are just $1.00 an hour, or just six percent of U.S. wages.
The article concludes with a question directly pertaining to the 2012 election:
“In the context of Mr. Romney’s present ‘get tough on China’ stance, it would be critical for Mr. Romney to clarify exactly what he and Bain Capital did at the Global-Tech factory in Dongguan, China to push back against the evident abuses in the factory and to assure respect for human, women’s and workers’ rights.“
And that’s just one example of many of your China ties. According to your 2010 and 2011 tax returns, you have personal investments in at least 10 Chinese companies, one of which is Li & Fung Limited:
…a supply chain management company that oversees the transfer of Chinese-manufactured goods to giant American retailers like Target and Walmart — precisely the types of products that many argue have cost American jobs at home as they’ve been outsourced to cheaper labor markets.
Then there was your role in leveraging US taxpayer bailout money to move a critical auto parts supplier, Delphi, lock, stock, and barrel to China.
Presently, Bain is moving 170 jobs from Illinois based Sensata Technologies that pay $18 per hr to China where they pay a buck, despite Sensata turning a healthy third-quarter profit of $41.5 million. Just not enough money for ya’all, eh?
You’ve made a quarter billion dollars leveraging other people’s money buying companies from which you extract every possible dollar, whatever the consequences to its employees, the communities in which they live, and even the US taxpayers who, among other things, have picked up the tab for your plundering of employee pension funds. All with minimal risk to you and your investors.
Yeah, you are a master at playing the financial risk game, Willard, outsourcing it to whomever and wherever you can. I didn’t think it was possible, but you have exceeded all my expectations as to your personal and political dickishness. I wouldn’t be surprised that once you succeed in outsourcing all possible jobs to China; that once we reach relative wage parity with the Chinese, you’ll have little problem importing their feudal like working conditions into the U.S.
Thereupon, we will have realized our collective race to the bottom. “And the world was made flat” as your compatriot Tom Friedman would have it. To which I must humbly offer you and your ilk my extended middle finger.
