The Asian Class War

SOYMB posted earlier upon the working class struggles in Bangladesh and now has come across a relevant article from the Financial Times about the resurgent class struggle throughout Asia.

As we said Bangldeshi in the sweat-shops are the world’s lowest- paid garment workers and the increase in the minimum wage, effective from November, takes their pay from $23 to $43 (£27.50) a month. It was their first pay rise for four years, a period of soaring food and fuel prices. However, the workers were enraged that Dhaka had not agreed to the $75 a month they had demanded.
“This is not enough for the survival of workers and their families,” said Amirul Haque Amin, president of Bangladesh’s National Garment Workers’ Federation.

Demands for better pay across Asia reflect improving job opportunities in economies that are growing faster than their western markets.
“I don’t see very many low-cost countries in the region where there is not pressure for higher wages,” says Ifty Islam, managing partner of Bangladesh-based Asian Tiger Capital Partners. “The ability of employers to pay very low wages is diminishing...A lot of growth and dynamism is happening in Asia and that is putting upward pressure on wages.”

In Cambodia, Phnom Penh recently raised the minimum wage by 21 per cent – from $50 a month to $61. That was below what the more activist of Cambodia’s 273 unions demanded. Vietnam recorded 200 strikes last year by workers hit by inflation of 9 per cent. In April, for example, nearly 10,000 workers walked out of a Taiwan-owned shoe factory, demanding better pay.In Indonesia minimum wages, set by regional authorities, have been increasing. In 2008, Jakarta raised the local minimum wage by 10 per cent to nearly $100 a month, although wages in the country’s remoter regions are half that. Indonesia has also recorded a spate of strikes at textile factories, including a one-day stoppage last month in Bandung, where 40,000 workers from various companies walked out in protest against rising electricity prices. In India, too, Nokia, the Finnish mobile phone maker, Bosch, the German car parts manufacturer, South Korea’s Hyundai, Volvo and countless local companies have all faced rising industrial unrest. In China with the numbers of new young workers entering the labour market now in decline, companies will have to pay more for a less pliant workforce.

SOYMB can sympathise with Korshed Alam, a Dhaka-based labour rights activist, when he says “There are no industrial relations. The whole attitude is arrogant and feudal. Owners and government think they are helping the workers. The workers are not treated like workers – they are treated like beggars.”