5punk

Your Keyboard Is A Human Rights Violation
The keyboards you and I are using right now, even the very keyboard I used to type this, could have been made in a factory guilty of human rights violations. I guess now is a bad time to complain about the letter X on my keyboard sometimes sticking.

The workers are paid a base wage of 64 cents an hour, which does not even come close to meeting subsistence level needs. After deductions for primitive room and board, the workers' take-home wage drops to just 41 cents an hour. A worker toiling 75 hours a week will earn a take-home wage of $57.19, or 76 cents an hour including overtime and bonuses. The workers are routinely cheated of 14 to 19 percent of the wages legally due them.

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Publish Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2009 17:02:00 CST
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Mine's just a health hazard.

Their wages are about £170 a month - which is just about the average Chinese wage, so I imagine there are plenty of worse places, with lower pay. It's up to the Chinese how they want to run their country.

UK average wage is about £2200 a month, though I imagine we have a much wider spread, given the way we run our country.

FatherJack wrote:UK average wage is about £2200 a month, though I imagine we have a much wider spread, given the way we run our country.

It is? Net or gross? I take home a damn sight less than that.

This.

Dog Pants wrote:
It is? Net or gross? I take home a damn sight less than that.

Gross, figures from last April: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=285

£479 a week? I fucking wish.

My point (which you're proving) was that the workers earning a supposed "average" wage are probably pretty well off compared to a lot of people given the prices of stuff they need to buy to live is likely similarly ranged.

I don't think their strict rules are particularly nice, but not that much more draconian than some places here, particularly those that employ large groups of school-leavers at a time. I know people who've worked in call centres etc, where stuff like no talking, raise your hand to be allowed to go the bog, be a drone-type stuff is the accepted way of doing things.

That list makes my job seem quite nice.

I think the fact that they are apparently forced to work 12 hour shifts every day and can be fined or fired for things like not standing in a straight enough line or raising their head makes it quite a bit worse than here.

Plus if anyone tried to dock my wages for talking or whatever, then I'd give them some verbal and get a new job. They really don't have much choice about their job do they?

I did have one job where my pissing was restricted, but I ignored the boss and told him I'd either piss in the toilet or in my pants, it was up to him to sort out how much food got condemned as a result. He shut up after that.

Hmm, he might have told you to piss...off.

Some of it's about discipline and respect. You have to stand in a straight line if you're doing drill in the army, for example. Sometimes people should just do as they're fucking told and listen to the experts.

I saw on programme on the way they run their huge Chinese restaurant - it was a strict regime, but geared towards giving customers excellent service - many of whom were paying more than they could afford for it. Seen similar things in behind-the-scenes programs at the top super-posh hotels like the ones in Dubai and Harrod's etc. Someone caught slouching in the corridor or something just gets fired straight off.

There are parallels even if those were example of well-paid jobs, I'm just glad I'm in a job where I'm paid to think creatively and speak my opinions - there are some unpleasant places to work here in the UK, albeit not quite as bad as those keyboard factories. That fairly recent expose of sandwich-making companies showed a few places that shouldn't exist in a so-called developed nation.