The problem is that n-hexane is a potent neurotoxin, and all these people have been exposed. Their hands shake uncontrollably. Most of them can't even pick up a glass. I talk to people whose joints in their hands have disintegrated from working on the line, doing the same motion hundreds and hundreds of thousands of times. It's like carpal tunnel on a scale we can scarcely imagine.
This again proves my point that they see workers as commodities and not living people.
the dormitories are cement cubes, 12 foot by 12 foot. And in that space, there are 13 beds, 14 beds-- I count-- 15 beds. They're stacked up like Jenga puzzle pieces, all the way up to the ceiling. The space between them is so narrow. None of us would actually fit in them. They have to slide into them like coffins.
This particular phrasing reminded me of a textbook excerpt I read in high school that described the living conditions for slaves on the Middle Passage. They were stacked liked sardines, essentially unable to move.
The official workday in China is eight hours long, and that's a joke. I never met anyone who'd even heard of an eight-hour shift. Everyone I talked to worked 12-hour shifts standard, and often much longer than that. 14 hours a day, 15 hours a day.
Corporations like this are all about exploiting their workers for as much work as possible. I highly doubt that they are accurately compensated for their work.
And it is constant. They work a Chinese hour, and a Chinese hour has 60 Chinese minutes, and a Chinese minute has 60 Chinese seconds. It's not like like our hour. What's our hour now? 46 minutes? You have a bathroom break, and you have a smoke break, and if you don't smoke, there's a yoga break.
This makes me wonder if China has any sort of labor laws that address this like we do in America. However, then I think that even if there were, there is no guarantee that they would be enforced.
And I say to her, "You seem kind of young. How old are you?" And she says, "I'm 13." And I say, "13? That's young. Is it hard to get work at Foxconn when you're--" She says, "Oh, no." And her friends all agree. They don't really check ages. The outside companies do have inspections. But the workers told me Foxconn always knows when there is going to be an inspection. So what they do then-- they don't even check ages then. They just pull everyone from the affected line, and then they put the oldest workers they have on that line.
This is something that seems to be true about many corporations. There are very easy ways for people to squeak around the rules.
And along the edges of each enormous building are the nets. Because right at the time that I am making this visit, there has been an epidemic of suicides at the Foxconn plant. Week after week, worker after worker has been climbing all the way up to the tops of these enormous buildings, and then throwing themselves off, killing themselves in a brutal and public manner, not thinking very much about just how bad this makes Foxconn look. Foxconn's response to month after month of suicides has been to put up these nets.
I feel as though these nets were not put up to protect the workers, but rather to protect Foxconn's public image. Workers seems to be more of a commodity to them.
And I'm involuntarily reminded of a Google News alert that popped into my inbox a few weeks earlier about a Reuters photographer who was taking pictures not at the Foxconn plant, but near the Foxconn plant. And Foxconn security went out, scooped him up, and beat him before releasing him.
It seems as though corporate companies with do anything to protect their "secrets".
The Foxconn plant in Shenzhen has 430,000 workers. That can be a difficult number to conceptualize. I find it's useful to instead think about how there are more than 20 cafeterias at the plant. And then you just have to understand that workers told me that these cafeterias can hold up to 10,000 people. So now you just need to visualize a cafeteria that seats 10,000 people. I'll wait.
By the way Daisey talks about these cafeterias, I highly doubt that they were designed to hold that many people.
So far, no country has decided to use this international law to help Congo end slavery, but the tools are there.
The UN Human Rights Council exists for this exact purpose, yet they do nothing to help. What is the point of signing to protect human rights if you aren't going to? All of the countries that are a part of the Human Rights Council are obligated to fight out against injustice and assist those in need. They need to care more about people than they do money.
For the poor South, it was cotton and iron ore that carried the “resource curse,” and kleptocratic and racist local governments moved quickly to stabilize and legitimize their control. Whether it was sharecropping or peonage slavery, the result was great riches for a white elite, and an ongoing degradation of the land and destruction of the vast Southern forests.
History always finds a way to repeat itself. You would think that people would learn from their mistakes, and yet here we are.
The Second Congo War is the modern world’s greatest forgotten war. Raging from 1998 to 2003, and overshadowed on the global stage by the events of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent “War on Terror,” it involved eight countries and about twenty-five armed groups. By its end 5.4 million people were dead, a body count second only to the two world wars.
The world has always had a strong Western focus on history that important and devastating events like this are often swept under the rug because they do not benefit the Western narrative. In order for us to have a more united and better world, we have to learn about more than just positive Western history. We must learn more.
It is the great forgotten genocide of the twentieth century. One witness was an African-American journalist named George Washington Williams. He coined the phrase “crimes against humanity” to describe what he saw.
History often tries to exclude that which makes the country or its allies look bad. This is a dangerous thing to do, as history repeats itself. We must learn from our past mistakes so that we do not repeat them. We must be better. We must improve; however, in order to do that, we must learn the dark, bloody past.
We also have to understand that slavers—who don’t adhere to those laws and treaties—are a leading cause of the natural world’s destruction. And to stop them, we don’t need more laws. We need to end slavery.
Governments need to take action. They need to investigate and enforce their laws. They need to remember than human life is invaluable. Money is an object. A human is a living thing. We need to do more.
Well, we know environmental change is part of the engine of slavery. The sharp end of environmental change, whether slow as rising sea levels and desertification, or disastrously sudden like a hurricane or a tsunami, comes first to the poor. I’ve seen men, women, children, families, and whole communities impoverished and broken by environmental change and natural disasters. Homes and livelihoods lost, these people and communities are easily abused. Especially in countries where corruption is rife, slavers act with impunity after environmental devastation, luring and capturing the refugees, the destitute, and the dispossessed.
People often don't care about things unless they are directly effected. We don't care enough about others now. We don't care enough about others in the future. We are often such a selfish world. We take and we take without considering the consequences. Convenience often wins out over what is right.
The profits generated when we go shopping flow back down the chain and fuel more assaults on the natural world, drive more people toward enslavement, and feed more goods into the global supply chain. Round and round it goes— our spending drives a criminal perpetual motion machine that eats people and nature like a cancer.
The first step to fixing any issue is acknowledging that we are part of it. We have to remove the notion in our minds that we are not having any effect on these people. We are not innocent bystanders in this process. Just like when you drop a small stone in a pond, there is a larger ripple effect to consider. We have to do our part to not support businesses and corporations that exploit labor from the poor and enslaved. Every little bit helps.
The peace and order of the graves surrounding ancient churches was suddenly marred by images of slave children shaping and polishing the stone that marked those graves.
The sad and horrific truth is that a large portion of things that we see as good, holy, etc. often contains parts done by slave labor. Very little in this world is clean from the blood of slavery.
This debt bondage is illegal, but illiterate workers don’t know this, and the bosses are keen to play on their sense of obligation, not alert them to the scam that’s sucking them under.
Things are made illegal for a reason. Slavery is a complete and utter violation of basic human rights. Governments need to stop turning a blind eye to this unacceptable violation of human rights merely because it benefits them financially. Enforce the laws.