Sunday, October 16, 2011

The Sheriff Says: Hands Up:

In his monologue, Daisey indicates his assumption that robots put together iPads and iPhones.”I was woefully ignorant most of my life. Even though I love the devices deeply, I never had any idea how they were made and never thought about it in the least,” says Daisey.

Daisey’s eyes were opened when, posing as a businessman, he traveled to the Chinese industrial zone of Shenzhen and interviewed hundreds of workers outside the gates of the secretive Foxconn Technology Group, the world’s largest electronics contract manufacturer. A string of suicides at the heavily regimented factories also have drawn attention to conditions faced by workers inside.

Many states now under Republican control, like Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan, have made moves toward de-unionization, shorter vacations, curtailment of worker rights and even child labor in states like Maine. So this issue of diminished worker rights is being revisited in the US, but nowhere near the horrific conditions in China and Taiwan, for example.

We should thank – and support — the people who are occupying American streets throughout the country, doing all of us a favor, calling out the tyranny that is spreading within corporate America and in the dark hearts of would-be government representatives.