Strike at Honda Plant Highlights Pay Gap in China

Joe Tan/Reuters

A security guard on Friday at a Honda manufacturing plant in Foshan, Guangdong Province, that was shut due to a labor dispute at a parts facility.

By KEITH BRADSHER and DAVID BARBOZA

FOSHAN, China — After years of being pushed to work 12-hour days, six days a week on monotonous low-wage assembly line tasks, China’s workers are starting to push back.

A strike at an enormous Honda transmission factory here in southeastern China has suddenly and unexpectedly turned into a symbol of this nation’s struggle with income inequality, rising inflation and soaring property prices that have put home ownership beyond the reach of all but the most affluent.

And perhaps most remarkably, Chinese authorities let the strike happen — up to a point.

In the kind of scene that more often plays out at strikes in America than at labor actions in China, print and television reporters from state-controlled media across the country have started covering the walkout here, even waiting outside the nearly deserted front gate on Thursday and Friday in hope of any news. All the Chinese reporters disappeared on Saturday morning, however, as the government, apparently nervous, suddenly imposed without explanation a blanket ban on domestic media coverage of the strike.

A worker at a factory dormitory said on Saturday afternoon that the strike continued, and police were nowhere in sight at the factory or the dormitory. The authorities have been leery of letting the media report on labor disputes, fearing that it could encourage workers elsewhere to rebel. The new permissiveness, however temporary, coincides with growing sentiment among some officials and economists that Chinese workers deserve higher wages for their role in the country’s global export machine.

And without higher incomes, hundreds of millions of Chinese will be unable to play their part in the domestic consumer spending boom on which this nation hopes to base its next round of economic growth.

“This is all because there is a major political debate going on about how to deal with the nation’s growing income gap, and the need to do something about wages,” said Andreas Lauffs, a lawyer at Baker & McKenzie who specializes in Chinese labor issues.

If wages do rise, that could bring higher prices for Western consumers for goods as diverse as toys at Wal-Mart and iPads from Apple.

The Chinese media may also have found it a little easier, politically, to cover this strike because Honda is a Japanese company, and anti-Japanese sentiment still simmers in China as a legacy of World War II. Certainly, the strike is hitting Honda hard, as the resulting shortage of transmissions and other engine parts has forced the company to halt production at all four of its assembly plants in China.

Honda has an annual capacity of 650,000 cars and minivans in China, like Jazz subcompacts for export to Europe and Accord sedans for the Chinese market. Because Honda’s prices in China are similar to what it charges in the United States, the cars tend to be far out of reach financially for most of the workers who make them.

A Honda spokeswoman declined to discuss specific issues in the strike negotiations.

The intense media coverage may evoke historical memories of the 1980 shipyard strike in Gdansk, Poland, that gave rise to the Solidarity movement and paved the way for the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. But the reality here is much different.

Instead of tens of thousands of grizzled and angry shipyard workers, the Honda strike involves about 1,900 mostly cheerful young people. And the employees interviewed say their goal is more money, not a larger political agenda.

“If they give us 800 renminbi a month, we’ll go back to work right away,” said one young man, describing a pay increase that would add about $117 a month to an average pay that is now around $150 monthly. He said he had read on the Internet of considerably higher wages at other factories in China and expected Honda to match them with an immediate pay increase.

Many workers at other factories in southeastern China already earn $300 a month, but they do so only through considerable overtime. And even that higher income is not enough to embark on the middle-class dream in China of owning a small apartment and subcompact car. Officially, though, the government is discouraging heavy reliance on overtime, and workers here said that Honda was not assigning much.

The strikers said that Honda mainly hired recent graduates of high schools or vocational schools. And so, most are in their late teens or early 20s, representing a new generation of employees, many of whom had not been born when the Chinese authorities suppressed protests by students and workers in Tiananmen Square in 1989 — a watershed event whose 21st anniversary falls next Friday.

The profile of striking workers seems to run more along the lines of slightly bookish would-be engineers — perhaps without the grades or money to attend college — rather than political activists. Besides their low wages, the workers seem focused on issues like the factory’s air-conditioning not being cool enough, and the unfairness of having to rise from their dormitories as early as 5:30 for a 7 a.m. shift.

Workers said that in addition to their pay, they also received free lodging in rooms that slept four to six in bunk beds. They also get free lunches, subsidized breakfasts for the equivalent of 30 cents and dinners for about $1.50.

The striking employees said that some senior workers, known as team leaders, had allied themselves with management. But they insisted that the rank-and-file workers were solidly in favor of walkout — a claim impossible to verify.

Although China is run by the Communist Party and has state-controlled unions, the unions are largely charged with overseeing workers, not bargaining for higher wages or pressing for improved labor conditions. And they are not allowed to strike, although China’s laws do not have explicit prohibitions against doing so.

Workers at the Honda factory dormitory said that the official union at the factory was not representing them but was serving as an intermediary between them and management. Li Jianming, the national spokesman for the All China Federation of Trade Unions, declined to comment.

The workers here have been on strike since May 21, with no resolution in sight. But the strike did not come to broader notice until Thursday and Friday as Japanese media began reporting the shutdown of Honda assembly plants, and as Chinese media and Internet sites were allowed to report extensively on those activities.

The unusually permissive approach of the authorities toward media coverage of the strike follows a decision to tolerate extensive coverage this month of suicides by workers at the Taiwanese-owned Foxconn factory complex in nearby Shenzhen that supplies Apple and Hewlett-Packard.

The official China Daily newspaper ran a lead editorial on Friday that cited the Honda strike as evidence that government inaction on wages might be fueling tensions between workers and employers. The editorial criticized the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security for not moving faster to draft a promised amendment to current wage regulations because of what the newspaper described as opposition from employers.

Zheng Qiao, the associate director of the department of employment relations at the China Institute of Industrial Relations in Beijing, said the strike was a significant development in China’s labor relations history and that “such a large-scale, organized strike will force China’s labor union system to change, to adapt to the market economy.”

Keith Bradsher reported from Foshan, China, and David Barboza from Shanghai. Bao Beibei contributed research.

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In U.S. visit, Mexican president to discuss drug war, immigration

Image via Wikipedia

By William Booth
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, May 17, 2010; A08

MEXICO CITY -- President Felipe Calderón arrives in Washington this week for a two-day state visit that was supposed to be a celebration of U.S.-Mexican cooperation in his drug war. Instead, it is likely to showcase Mexico's frustration over Arizona's tough new immigration law, which Calderón has described as anti-Mexican.

The measure requires police enforcing another law to question a person's immigration status if there is "reasonable suspicion" that the person is in the United States illegally. Its passage has put the hot-button issue of illegal immigration on the bilateral agenda.

At home, Calderón -- who is usually cautious, lawyerly and scripted in his public remarks -- speaks daily about the fight against the drug cartels, but rarely about immigration, although roughly 10 percent of Mexico's population lives in the United States.

He has been frank in his condemnation of the Arizona law, however, saying it "opens the door to intolerance, hate, discrimination and abuse in law enforcement" and noting that the U.S. economy was built with a lot of Mexican sweat, legal and not.

In remarks to Spain's El País newspaper Friday, he asserted that the law is creating tensions between the two countries.

In Mexico, the political class from right to left has closed ranks to deplore the Arizona measure, which has dominated front pages and TV news here. Elected officials from the three major parties are exhorting Calderón to challenge it in Washington, where on Wednesday he will be greeted with pomp and ceremony at the White House and feted with high-end Mexican fusion food at a state dinner, and will address a joint session of Congress.

But the atmosphere might be a little strained.

Soon after Arizona's Republican governor, Jan Brewer, signed the measure last month, Mexico issued a rare "travel advisory" to its citizens warning them of possible harassment in the state.

The governors of the six northern Mexican states that share a border with the United States have denounced the law and said they would boycott an upcoming governors' conference in Phoenix.

The Mexican Embassy in Washington is preparing amicus briefs to support lawsuits by civil rights groups seeking repeal of the measure. The head of Mexico's National Human Rights Commission declared the law "xenophobic." Mexican universities said they would suspend student-exchange programs involving Arizona. And cartoonists here have had a field day depicting an Arizona without Mexicans, where U.S. citizens are forced to cook their own food, cut their lawns, pick their crops and care for their children.

"So, yes, we don't like this law," Mexico's interior secretary, Fernando Gómez-Mont, said at a forum in Washington this month.

The drug issue

There are an estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants in Arizona, most of them from Mexico. Mexican migrants, legal and not, sent home more than $20 billion last year, the second leading source of legitimate foreign income in the country after oil sales. Illegal drug sales may account for as much as $25 billion.

The U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Carlos Pascual, who worked for six months to arrange the state visit for Calderón, has sought to calm emotions, repeating at every opportunity that President Obama and his administration consider the Arizona measure "misdirected" and are exploring legal challenges.

A former Mexican foreign minister, Jorge Castañeda, now a professor at New York University, has described the law as "stupid but useful," meaning that it may help create momentum for federal immigration reform.

The law also appears also to be feeding Mexican frustration -- usually expressed off the record -- that the United States is not doing enough in the drug war. Mexican officials are complaining more openly that authorities here are under grenade attack by drug-smuggling syndicates while pot pharmacies in Los Angeles sell bags of marijuana to so-called patients.

Authority figures in Mexico are coming under increasing assault. This weekend, a former presidential candidate mysteriously disappeared, and police think that kidnappers or drug gangs may be responsible. Diego Fernández de Cevallos, a powerbroker in Calderón's political party, went missing in the central state of Queretaro near his ranch, leaving his empty car and few clues.

Under the Merida Initiative aid package, U.S. taxpayers have contributed $1.3 billion to the fight, money that pays for Black Hawk helicopters, night-vision goggles and armored cars and trains for Mexican police and judges. Obama wants to continue the aid initiative and has asked for another $310 million for Mexico in 2011.

Calderón, who has described his northern neighbors as "the biggest consumers of drugs in the world," said last week that the binational struggle against drug trafficking will still be at the center of discussions in Washington.

"The president has to say something about the Arizona law in his speech, but he is really speaking more to Mexicans," said Raúl Benítez Manaut, an expert in national security issues and immigration at the Autonomous University of Mexico. "He also will be careful not to upset the Republicans in Congress, whom he needs to continue the fight against the cartels."

Systemic corruption

At home, Calderón has complained that billions of dollars in drug profits empower the cartels while the United States, with its freewheeling gun market, is the source of most of the weapons smuggled into Mexico.

More than 22,700 people have died in drug-related violence since Calderón declared war against the cartels in December 2006 and sent the first of 50,000 Mexican troops into the streets.

U.S. officials might push back, however. Although they have publicly applauded Calderón's courage in attacking the cartels, the fight has revealed systemic corruption in Mexico.

The latest shock was the discovery of a pile of documents that the government seized from the an associate of Mexico's most-wanted drug trafficker, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán. The stash included lists of Mexican federal agents, their names and numbers and references to intelligence shared by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

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Luck of the Draw for Indonesian Migrant Worker

A matter of luck - Inside Indonesia - a quarterly magazine on Indonesia and it's people, culture, politics, economy and environment

Migrant domestic workers aspire to more than their home communities can offer and are willing to take risks to change their lives

Rosslyn von der Borch

Singapore's Lucky Plaza, a popular meeting place for domestic workers Wayne Palmer

The changing nature of Indonesia's rural economies and an increased awareness of the world - brought about by higher levels of education, greater exposure to the mass media and the ever growing numbers of returned labour migrants - have contributed to a marked change in the aspirations of young rural women. At the same time, the absence of almost any work opportunities beyond poorly paid farming or factory work drives many to seek work abroad, powerfully sustained by their dreams of a better future for themselves and their families.

Women have little or no choice about the external factors that determine the way their migratory experience unfolds. A migrant domestic worker newly arrived in her host country is assigned to an employer about whom she knows nothing. In the absence of any sense of control, she relies on 'luck' to deliver kind and understanding employers.

Migration roulette

Employers and agents often claim that migrant domestic workers arrive in host countries unprepared for the challenges ahead and attribute the difficulties they experience to this lack of preparation. This is true in part, as many migrants find the move from an Indonesian village community and lifestyle to the urban, middle- to upper-class household of their employer disorienting. But it is important to acknowledge that agents, employers and the host community can also make this transition more difficult than necessary.

When I have raised the issue of labour migration with young domestic workers in Indonesia, they have indicated that they are well aware of the high levels of risk attached working overseas. Television and print media coverage of the ordeals endured by some migrant workers make this common knowledge. Prospective labour migrants, then, are generally aware that they will be confronted with a range of difficulties and may experience intense homesickness.

Domestic worker Rini Widyawati secretly kept a diary in which she recorded her observations and experiences during the years she spent working in Hong Kong, which was published after her return to Indonesia. In the opening pages of her diary she describes her stark awareness that she may fail to earn the money she dreams about, but also that the gamble she is taking and may even cause her death. She writes:

A nervousness rises in my heart. Will the future that I seek here be mine? … Will I leave this airport in two years having been successful? … Or will I die here, so that only my corpse will again pass through this airport. This has been the fate of some other Indonesian migrant workers, the reasons for whose deaths are sometimes not clear. Or will I kill myself here when I feel lonely and isolated, with work and family problems piling up on each other? My friends, who have also been migrant domestic workers in Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Singapore, have told me this happens.

Perhaps only willing risk-takers seek work abroad, while the 'risk-averse' stay at home. In any case, hundreds of thousands of women take these substantial risks each year, hoping for high gains that are not possible if they stay in Indonesia.

Cycles of luck

When Indonesian migrant domestic workers go overseas they find themselves pitted against familiar enemies, in particular the structural disempowerment so intimately known to their home communities. It is unsurprising, then, that they speak so often of luck. Wilma, who works in Singapore, comments:

Being a maid is not bad at all, but a lot depends on luck. Luck is important. Because if you go to a family and they bully you, don't give you any days off, lock you in the house, then you're really in a bad place. So you need luck.

The uncertainties that arise when transferring from one employer to another can be immensely stressful. But Susi feels she has always been fortunate in the placement lottery:

I've always been lucky, I think, where employers are concerned. They have all treated me well. Maybe I'm good [laughs] or maybe they're good - or it's just my life, or something like that. It's okay. I can do my work.

Dian commented that she was lucky in having the 'understanding' of her employers:

My first boss and this one, they've both let me do my own thing. She isn't finicky about time. The important thing is that the work is done. Yes, they've both been understanding. I've been lucky in that.

Nina talked about cycles of bad luck and good luck. She experienced the 'bad luck' of being repatriated at short notice by her first employer in Singapore, which infuriated her. However she went immediately to another employment agent in Jakarta and applied to return:

So one month later I came back to Singapore. That employer was Straits Chinese. Her mother was sick and had complications, so she needed another maid. She employed me. But I wasn't lucky. Four months later the lady passed away. But good luck was coming. Because I went to the agency and said I wanted a transfer… In the afternoon the agent called me. She asked me, 'Do you want to transfer to a whitey?' [Very animated tone of voice]: 'Hey, that would be great!' I said. At two o'clock I had an interview. Then I got my employer.

Talk among domestic workers of the importance of luck - and of the personal resources necessary for dealing with adversity - points back to the structural injustice and disempowerment that affects labour migrants, to government and legislative failings in both home and host countries, and often to the personal ethical failings of employers, agents and government officials. Consequently, luck continues to play a part in determining the working conditions of migrant domestic workers, even after years overseas.

Not just passive accommodation

In some cases, migrant workers' reliance on luck may decrease as they gain confidence and are empowered through their experiences as migrants. Given access to each other - especially through days off that can be spent discussing problems and experiences, sharing food and news from home or attending classes - a domestic worker's reliance on luck can begin to be combined with a more complex awareness of her rights.

A reliance on luck in navigating the risks inherent in labour migration can suggest a passive accommodation to fate. But it is also closely linked to the personal capital that can make the difference between a 'successful' and an 'unsuccessful' migration experience. Especially in situations where a migrant domestic worker finds herself 'unlucky', her ability to accommodate her situation and to garner the personal resources necessary to see out her contract or to negotiate change, are tested.

But while accommodation can appear to be in tension with the notion that these women are active risk-takers, it can also be an active state, closely aligned to these women's views of themselves as economic pioneers and as risk-takers. As Nurjannah observed, speaking to me about having acquired the discipline of accommodation:

Lately everybody's talking about foreign workers, about maids. That never happened in the past. Even so, there are still many local employers who use mean and bad words when they talk to their maids. Especially - well I can't say especially who they were - but I was a victim of this myself, long ago, sometimes. But I grew up and now I don't care what they say. I just - I mean - but some girls might feel irritated when the - often employers call them 'sotong (squid) head', something like that [laughs, a bit embarrassed] and sometimes the children say bad things as well. I can handle it. I don't mind. I understand. But some newcomers, they've never heard that word, and they might feel so bad and so irritated and they feel so angry.

When asked to explain what she meant when she said she understood, Nurjannah added:

For myself, for my own personal wellbeing, what else can I do? Apart from wear it? It's easier on myself if I just wear it. It makes everything easier. No arguments. I just let them go. Later I will talk to them nicely so they will think about what they've said. But some girls can't do that. Especially in the beginning. I was also like that with my first employer.

In the importance placed on luck by migrant domestic workers, then, we can see a pragmatic appraisal of what is possible in their relationships with their employers and as migrants.

A form of resourcefulness

No migrant worker in receiving countries where comprehensive labour laws exist - and are enforced - should have to rely on luck to deliver reasonable working hours, time off from work and fair pay. However, like Nurjannah, many migrant domestic workers are prepared to accommodate a great deal, regarding this as part of the job. The focus of these women is pragmatically fixed on the route to the achievement of their ultimate goal of financial gain, and not on what is 'right'. Even if she becomes the victim of severe abuse, this goal may not be risked through attempts to assert her rights unless the odds are clearly in her favour.

But far from signifying acceptance of their 'lot', the ways that migrant domestic workers accommodate the challenges and difficulties they encounter demonstrate a resourceful negotiation of complex circumstances in which they are largely powerless. It is in this resourcefulness that the possibility lies for them to achieve the life they dream about - a life in which they have a measure of autonomy, more power to consume and knowledge of the world beyond their village.

Rosslyn von der Borch (rosslyn.vonderborch@flinders.edu.au) teaches Indonesian Studies at Flinders University in South Australia.

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Inside Indonesia - Women and work

Review: Written in an accessible style and admirably free of jargon, Women and Work in Indonesia is a valuable resource for understanding how work shapes the identities and lived experiences of specific sets of women in Indonesia

Teri Caraway

According to World Bank data, only about half of women in Indonesia are in the labour force. One might infer from this statistic that about half of women in Indonesia do not work. Such a conclusion would be incorrect. As Michele Ford and Lyn Parker argue in their excellent introductory chapter to Women and Work in Indonesia, statistics that count only income-generating activities as work both underestimate and undervalue women’s contributions to the economy, their families and the communities in which they live. Ford and Parker also insist that representations of Indonesian women as housewives overlook the increasing engagement of women in waged work and the important contributions that their earning activities make to family welfare. This volume understands ‘work’ very broadly and pays careful attention to the interrelationships between the different kinds of work that women juggle on a daily basis.

No other book on women and work in Indonesia has the breadth of this volume. The contributors analyse many different types of work that women do in Indonesia – farming; midwifery; hotel, factory, media, mining and sex work – as well as work that Indonesian women do as migrant workers in Malaysia and Singapore. The volume also examines women and work in a variety of regions of Indonesia, including West Sumatra, Riau, Southeast Sulawesi, Lombok, Banten, East Kalimantan and the Riau Islands.

Edited volumes with such a broad scope inevitably sacrifice some depth for breadth. Yet the individual chapters, though concise, provide rich accounts of the challenges and trade-offs that women face in their daily lives. The authors also illuminate the multiple ways that women negotiate their identities in relation to the various kinds of work that they do. Evelyn Blackwood’s study of Minangkabau rice farmers, for example, carefully maps out the complexity of women’s farm labour, noting how ownership of land, the quantity of land owned and kin relationships shape the kinds of work that women do and how they interpret their identities. Women who own some land might oversee workers in their fields one day but on the next they may work in someone else’s rice field, perhaps even alongside the women who worked for them the day before. Yet some women frame their farm work not as wage labour, or as a job, but as domestic labour – an interpretation that allows them to define themselves as housewives and essentially hides from view the economic value of their work.

No other book on women and work in Indonesia has the breadth of this volume

Each chapter also makes the experiences of women a central focus of the analysis, in order both to understand better the meaning of work for women and to avoid narratives of victimisation. The authors do not sugar-coat the discrimination, exploitative relationships and low pay that many women experience at work, but the editors are certainly justified in arguing that portraying women as victims denies them agency and that any understanding of women and work in Indonesia requires researchers to value how women understand the meaning of their work.

Image of Teri Caraway

Discussions of sex work are particularly prey to overly simplistic generalisations about victimisation and exploitation. The Ford and Lyons chapter counters the stereotypical tale of sex workers as victims. Some of the sex workers they studied in Karimun in the Riau Islands exercised a great deal of autonomy over their work lives and moved out of sex work and into the middle class by marrying foreign clients. Remittances to parents, who cared for their children, allowed the women to combine sex work with being ‘good mothers and dutiful daughters’. Yet the moral stain of sex work remained; they did not tell their parents that they were sex workers, and they vigilantly maintained the divide between their work life and family life. Ford and Lyons are careful to state that these workers do not represent all sex workers, and call for more careful and contextualised studies that document the widely varying experiences of sex workers both in Indonesia and elsewhere.

Each chapter makes the experiences of women a central focus of the analysis, in order both to better understand the meaning of work for women and to avoid narratives of victimisation

Mere descriptions of women’s experiences can, of course, lapse into vignettes that use specific voices to represent a certain viewpoint, or that present these voices independently of the historical, social and political context in which they are produced. Fortunately, the chapters in this volume endeavour to use the experiences of particular women, doing certain kinds of work in specific places, to illuminate broader issues of women’s status in the family, labour market, local community and nation. The contributors also set these selected voices within a wider political–economic context that illuminates not only the scope that women have to negotiate work relationships but also the real constraints that they face. As such the chapters are essentially thick descriptions nested in broader understandings of the historical, political, economic and social forces that shape women’s lives.

Gaynor Dawson’s chapter on transmigrants in Riau, for example, nicely shows how the transmigration policy of the Indonesian government, which relocated families from heavily populated regions to less populated and remote areas, placed tremendous burdens on women. Plagued by infertile soils, long distances to markets and a paucity of flexible jobs nearby, women found it very difficult to fulfil their responsibility for domestic work and also contribute to the family’s welfare through farm or waged work. Even men had difficulty finding regular jobs, leading many to search for work outside the transmigration settlement. The absence of husbands left women wholly responsible for farming the family’s land, fulfilling community work obligations, and providing domestic labour; women also became more vulnerable to unexpected interruptions of income if their husbands did not regularly remit money. At the same time, Dawson shows how government development policies based on male headship of households both fortify the man’s status as head of the household and systematically close off opportunities for women to participate in certain economic activities in the transmigration settlement.

The breadth, depth, thematic coherence and quality of the individual contributions in Women and Work in Indonesia make it a valuable addition to the growing body of research on gender, women and work in the archipelago.

Michele Ford and Lyn Parker (eds), Women and Work in Indonesia. Routledge: London, 2008.

Teri Caraway (caraway@umn.edu) teaches political science at the University of Minnesota. Her book, Assembling Women: The Feminization of Global Manufacturing (ILR Press 2007), examines the feminization of the manufacturing workforce in Indonesia during the Suharto era.

Getting Tough on Exploitation - Nation

Image by New York Public Library via Flickr

Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that the Obama administration would seek legal status for 12 million undocumented immigrants in early 2010. Hard-right tea party organizers reportedly switched gears immediately to denounce the move. Congressman Lamar Smith found it "ironic" that Napolitano framed the push for comprehensive immigration reform as a way to improve the economy. But Napolitano is absolutely right: reforming the nation's immigration laws to bring millions of people already participating in our economy out of the shadows would boost tax revenue, lift the economy and protect working Americans from the unfair labor market competition they now face. The biggest problem is that Congress may be dangerously slow to act: even the much-needed extension of unemployment benefits took the Senate months to approve.

While legislators drag their feet, the Obama administration can act quickly on its own to stop the erosion of middle-class jobs. Directing his agencies to enforce the nation's existing labor and employment laws more vigorously, while halting the enforcement of broken, economically harmful immigration laws is one powerful way to do it.

To the uninformed, the relationship between unemployment and immigration looks simple: if we could just deport all undocumented workers and restrict legal immigration, those jobs would instantly become available to American citizens, driving down unemployment. But the old "immigrants steal American jobs" myth holds no water. The reality is that all types of immigrants, including the undocumented, boost the American economy as taxpayers, workers, consumers and business owners. Through their work and consumption, immigrants generate economic activity that creates new jobs, jobs that wouldn't exist if immigrants were not part of our economy. As the President's Council on Economic Advisors concluded in 2007, US natives gain $37 billion a year from immigrants' participation in the economy. If enforcement efforts were effective and we somehow succeeded in pushing undocumented workers out of the country (not a likely scenario, even in these dark economic times), we would lose jobs rather than gain them.

But if the presence of undocumented immigrants doesn't harm the US economy, the fact that they are so vulnerable to exploitation in the workplace does. Because undocumented workers are often too afraid of deportation to speak up about workplace abuses, unscrupulous employers can cut immigrants' wages and benefits and degrade working conditions with impunity. Exploiting undocumented workers can drag down wages for other workers, especially those with little education: as their employers are forced to compete with companies that exploit immigrants, entire industries may see wages decline. Indeed, violations of minimum wage, overtime and workplace safety laws are rampant in the nation's immigrant-dominated low-wage industries, according to a recent eye-opening study by researchers at UCLA, the University of Illinois and the National Employment Law Project. Their in-depth investigation in three American cities reveals that as many as one in four low-wage workers--including hundreds of thousands of American citizens in these cities alone--were paid less than the minimum wage in the week prior to the survey. And while undocumented immigrants appear to be the most vulnerable to abuses, this research vividly illustrates the way that exploitation of immigrants goes hand-in-hand with an atmosphere in which citizens are also taken advantage of on the job. As long as such violations persist, economic recovery will never reach these workers.

That's why a shift from immigration enforcement to labor and employment law enforcement is so critical. Enforcing laws against undocumented immigrants--even by penalizing employers rather than raiding workplaces, as the Obama administration has chosen to do--increases immigrants' fear and corrupt employers' incentive to keep workers off the books. As a result, immigrants are driven further underground and see their risk for exploitation increases. In fact, immigration enforcement itself can be manipulated by employers to undermine all workers' rights and continue to pursue workplace violations, as another recent study illustrates.

Legalizing undocumented workers is ultimately the best way to ensure that they can exercise rights in the workplace and stop undercutting other American workers. Once everyone participating in the US economy is openly subject to American labor laws, pursuing violations of workplace protections, including minimum-wage laws, will become easier. What's more, an analysis of the mass legalization enacted in the United States in 1986 suggests that legalization would raise immigrant wages and lift up entire communities, boosting the US economy. Legalization would require an act of Congress, which may be slow in coming. But the Obama administration could unilaterally halt the enforcement of broken immigration laws, delivering tremendous economic benefits. As the Progressive States Network has pointed out, state governments can also improve conditions for workers by shifting enforcement emphasis from immigration infractions to workplace violations.

The Obama administration is moving in the right direction with the recognition that it is corrupt employers, not undocumented workers, who are a threat to the middle class, but it needs to focus on the real problem: not immigration violations but the exploitation that often accompanies them. While we wait for stronger economic recovery measures and the overhauls of immigration and labor law that American workers need, a shift in enforcement strategy can begin to provide an immediate boost to the economy and the nation's hardest-hit workers.

About Amy Traub

Amy Traub is the director of research at the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy and author of the recent report, Principles for an Immigration Policy to Strengthen and Expand the Middle Class.

HCMC seeks stricter measures against illegal foreign workers - Thanh Nien Daily

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The Ho Chi Minh City administration will ask the government to increase fines imposed on firms that employ illegal workers by ten times.

Le Hoang Quan, chairman of the city’s People’s Committee, said the fines against employers found using illegal workers, currently between VND5 million (US$280) and VND10 million ($560), were too low to act as a deterrent.

The city will suggest fines of VND50-100 million instead, he said at a meeting held on Friday to discuss the rising number of violations related to hiring foreign workers.

A total of 16,800 foreigners are currently working in the city and nearly 3,000 don’t have labor permits, the city’s Department of Labor, Invalids, and Social Affairs estimated. Most of them are employed in footwear and textiles and garment companies.

But Le Xuan Vien, deputy head of Vietnam’s Immigration Management Bureau under the Ministry of Public Security, said the real number may be higher.

“A recent inspection by the ministry of seven companies in the city showed three quarters of 1,338 foreign workers don’t have labor permits,” he said.

Nguyen Van Xe, deputy director of the city’s Department of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs, said many companies began using foreign workers before asking for labor permits while many others did not report to the authorities that they were employing foreign workers.

Nguyen Van Anh, head of the city’s Immigration Management Department, said many unskilled Africans have entered the country as tourists and stayed on to work temporarily for businesses in the city.

Some of them have asked Vietnamese people to seek investment certificates for opening restaurants, hotels, and karaoke parlours, he said.

Vien said foreign workers without permits could be expelled from the country.

He said companies that had employed foreigners for three months in Vietnam without work permits would get three more months to get them. After that, foreigners without work permits will be asked to leave, he added.

Quach To Dung, deputy director of the city’s Department of Industry and Trade, said her agency had revoked 400 of 2,398 foreign companies’ operation licenses due to different labor law violations this year.

But as no fines have been imposed on such cases, most of then have yet to close down, she said.

In the first nine months of this year, the HCMC police registered 52 crimes involving 127 foreigners.

Of them, 16 were involved in drug trafficking, 16 others in swindling and 12 in robberies. Most of the violators were from Nigeria, Turkey and some Asian countries like Iran, Korea, the Philippines and India, city police said.

Source: Thanh Nien, Agencies

Story from Thanh Nien News
Published: 26 October, 2009

America’s high-tech sweatshops - BusinessWeek.com- msnbc.com

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U.S. companies may be contributing to the exploitation of workers

By Steve Hamm and Moira Herbst

Business Week

updated 1:12 p.m. ET, Sun., Oct . 4, 2009

Vimal Patel was studying for a master's in business administration in London when he saw an advertisement for work in the U.S. The ad offered a job in the tech industry, as well as sponsorship for the kind of work visa that allows foreign nationals to take professional-level jobs in the country. So Patel applied and paid his prospective employer, Cygate Software & Consulting, in Edison, N.J., thousands of dollars in up-front fees. But when Patel arrived, Cygate had no tech job for him. He ended up working at a gas station, and Cygate nevertheless took a chunk of his wages for years, according to documents in a criminal case against Cygate.

After a federal investigation into Cygate, Patel and five other natives of India recruited by the company pled guilty to visa violations in June. They were sentenced to 12 to 18 months of probation, assessed fines of $2,000 each, and now face deportation. But at Patel's sentencing in the federal courthouse in Newark, N.J., his lawyer said the slim 36-year-old, with a mop of brown hair spilling over his forehead, was more victim than villain. Like many ambitious workers from abroad, he came to the country seeking his fortune, and he suffered for the effort. "It's a sad day," said Anthony Thomas, the public defender assigned to represent Patel. "He always dreamed of coming to the U.S."

Cygate, which changed its name to Sterling System after the lawsuit, is one of thousands of low-profile companies that have come to play a central role in the U.S. tech industry in recent years. These companies, many with just 10 to 50 employees, recruit workers from abroad and, when possible, place them at U.S. corporations to provide tech support, software programming, and other services. While many outfits operate legally and provide high-quality talent, there is growing evidence that others violate U.S. laws and mistreat their recruits.

Several types of fraud have become common, according to documents from recent lawsuits and interviews with foreign workers, employers, lawyers, and consultants. In some cases companies target young men and women hungry to get well-paid tech jobs in the U.S. and charge them exorbitant fees for visas, which is not allowed under American immigration laws. Even after paying, some workers never get a visa; those who do may find the company they paid has no job for them, as Patel did. This violates U.S. law because companies are supposed to have an open position before they apply for a work visa.

Workers who land tech jobs may face other kinds of trouble. Some companies place foreign workers at client sites and then siphon off part of their pay or charge ongoing fees, which violates U.S. law. Many workers allege they're not paid in between jobs at client sites, though such "benching" without pay isn't allowed either. In other cases, companies claim they're employing people in low-salary regions when they're actually working in high-wage areas, in violation of rules requiring payment of the region's prevailing wage.

Sterling President Nilesh Dasondi was charged with multiple counts of visa violations in the case filed by the U.S. attorney in New Jersey. The government says he collected fees of up to $15,000 from the six workers, left them to find jobs on their own, and extracted more fees to launder their pay through his company. The workers acquiesced because Dasondi, like all employers of visa recipients, held their visa documents and could have revoked the papers if they objected. "This is a microcosm of a big issue that's facing our country — visa fraud," said Sandra L. Moser, the assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting the case in an interview after Patel's sentencing.

Dasondi greeted a reporter at the doorway to his offices in Edison one summer day. From a glass door on the parking lot side of a beige one-story building, he led the way through a warren of cramped rooms, with half a dozen people pecking away at computer keyboards. "My life is such a mess right now," he confided once he was seated in a small conference room. He wouldn't discuss details of the cases against him or Patel, but he promised to talk after it is resolved. Dasondi's lawyer, Eric R. Breslin, says his client "has been an asset to his community" and that Sterling "performs legitimate services for its customers."

‘Body shops’
Tech service outfits such as Sterling have thrived in recent years because of shifts in the U.S. economy. As cost-cutting pressures have increased, companies turned over management of tech systems and other back-office operations to outsourcing firms, including many that bring workers from India and other countries into the U.S. on temporary visas such as the H-1B.

One important way outsourcers hold down costs is by keeping a lean workforce at each client site — then turning to smaller companies, such as Sterling, when they need to increase staff for specific projects, such as installing new software or building a new Web site. These companies are known as "body shops" because of their role, and often rely heavily on foreign workers who come into the country on H-1Bs and other visas. "This is where a lot of the shenanigans take place," says Ron Hira, an assistant professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology who has written extensively on work visas. A study by the federal government last year estimated that 54 percent of visa rule violations were committed by companies with fewer than 25 employees.

U.S. companies usually don't know — and don't press to find out — which body shops are tapped to support their tech operations. The result is that prominent American companies can easily end up doing business with tech service outfits that violate visa laws. Breslin wouldn't identify specific Sterling clients, but he says they include "significant companies." Dasondi named Computer Sciences as one customer in a 2006 lawsuit: Dasondi wanted the technology giant to pay him for hiring away one of his employees. Computer Sciences would not comment on the case beyond saying it had been settled.

In recent months workers have alleged mistreatment while working for body shops in the offices of Qualcomm and JPMorgan Chase. In a civil suit filed in May and a complaint to the U.S. Labor Dept., Prasad Nair charged that Unified Business Technologies got him an H-1B visa in 2007 by saying he would work in the company's Troy (Mich.) offices and receive $60,000 a year as a programmer and analyst. Instead, UBT sent him to work at chipmaker Qualcomm's offices in San Diego, where the cost of living and prevailing wage for such a position are much higher. The 32-year-old alleged UBT made unlawful pay deductions, delayed payments, failed to pay overtime, and postponed health benefits for his family. David Blanchard, Nair's attorney, says he struggled "paycheck to paycheck" to take care of his wife and 9-month-old daughter and regularly ate at Burger King to save money.

An opaque system
UBT's lawyer, John G. Coutilish, says Nair's charges are "baseless." Coutilish says UBT agreed to make a "nuisance" payment of $2,500 to end the civil suit, though the Labor Dept. investigation is continuing. UBT has filed its own suit against Nair alleging he quit without giving proper notice and defamed the company with his accusations. Qualcomm declined to comment on the case, but a spokeswoman says the company requires vendors it works with to "explicitly acknowledge that they must comply with all applicable laws and regulations, including employment and immigration laws."

In another complaint to the Labor Dept., Benly Ebenezer alleges he was underpaid or not paid at all while working in the Manhattan offices of JPMorgan. In the complaint, Ebenezer, who has two master's degrees in computer science, was brought to the U.S. on an H-1B visa by Itek Consulting in 2005. Ebenezer says Itek paid him about 10 percent less than the promised $50,000 a year while he worked at the bank, and then stopped paying him altogether between December 2006 and February 2007. The Labor Dept. ruled in Ebenezer's favor in May. He declined to be interviewed because his situation remains "sensitive."

The phone number for Itek is now disconnected. JPMorgan declined to comment on the case.

U.S. executives often have little visibility into the treatment of contract employees because several layers of companies are involved. One recruiter for a major U.S. outsourcing firm says there's no way his clients know how body shop workers are treated because, until recently, even he didn't know. He discovered that some of the firms he was hiring for short-term projects weren't using their own people but instead bringing in subcontractors, which often underpaid workers. He just put in place new policies so he knows when a firm he hires is using a subcontractor, but he still can't find out how much workers are paid or in which state they're supposed to be working. "We don't like it," he says. "The agreements seem almost criminal."

RIT professor Hira says the situation is similar to what happened years ago when Western companies began using sweatshops in China for manufacturing. Companies such as Nike sought to lower costs by using overseas manufacturers, which in turn squeezed workers with low pay and poor working conditions. After a public outcry, Nike, Disney, and others started to monitor labor standards abroad. American companies may know little about the tech contractors who work for them in the U.S. now, but Hira says companies should take steps to track the situation more closely. "I don't know of any [top executives] who have made an issue of this," he says. "We haven't had a public discussion of what the clients' responsibility is."

Moving against corruption
While American companies may overlook the treatment of contract workers in their midst, the workers are vulnerable because of government policies. When a foreign worker comes into the country on an H-1B visa, the visa is held by the employer, not the worker. If an employee complains, the company can terminate its visa sponsorship, forcing the worker to leave the U.S. Workers can't shift jobs unless they find another sponsor, which can be difficult. And while workers can gain their freedom with permanent citizenship, the wait even for high-skilled visa holders can be 5 to 10 years. "Many of these people don't know their rights," says Michael F. Brown, an attorney in Appleton, Wis., who handles immigration cases. "They're essentially captives."

Most of the discussion of U.S. work visas in recent years has focused on the effect of visas, when used legally, on the American workforce. Some U.S. tech workers contend that bringing in foreign workers drives down their salaries and makes it easier to move jobs overseas. Senators Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) have introduced a bill to overhaul the visa program aimed at protecting U.S. workers. But they also want to boost enforcement to combat the mistreatment of foreign visa holders. "We want to stop corruption of [all types in] the [H-1B] program," Grassley said in an interview.

Body shops have sprung up around major metropolitan areas to be close to their clients. One cluster is in northern New Jersey, across the Hudson River from Manhattan. Hundreds of small tech services firms operate in such towns as Belleville, West Windsor, and Edison, where Sterling is headquartered.

At times, the region feels like a front in the battle between foreign and domestic workers. U.S. tech workers in the area have lost thousands of jobs in recent years with the decline of AT&T (T) and Lucent Technologies, and many blame outsourcing firms for taking the remaining well-paid jobs in finance and other sectors. Tech services companies say they're simply responding to clients' needs and are being blamed unfairly for any loss of jobs. In this heated debate, cases of visa abuse, like those alleged against Sterling, have fueled passions on both sides.

John Miano, a 45-year-old software programmer and labor rights attorney, waits for a reporter in a booth in the Summit Diner, a classic mid-20th century eatery in tony Summit, N.J. Miano is the founder of the Programmers' Guild, an association of U.S. software programmers. Over cheeseburgers, he argues that the work visa program is hurting demand for American workers. "The job situation for American tech workers in this area is horrible," he says. "The consulting market has been wiped out. Now it's mostly Indian-owned companies, and they're looking for people with H-1B visas."

He says the rise of body shops has made the situation worse: The companies are usually so small they're overlooked by regulators and law enforcement, so they can squeeze foreign workers and put Americans at even more of a disadvantage. Miano clutches a list of companies in the Summit area that have applied for H-1B visas. They are all over the place — some tucked away in offices on the second or third floors of buildings; one filling the entire first floor of a white-columned brick building on a side street; two of them just mailboxes in a UPS Store. Venkateshwara Computers, in a modest home in nearby Livingston, put in for two programmers. Ajay Pimpariya, the owner, complains that his visa applications weren't approved because he followed the rules, while other companies falsify documents. "If Homeland Security wants to take the information," he says, "I'll tell them who's doing what."

Immigration authorities acknowledge that one reason it's difficult to stop visa abuses is that checking on so many small companies is labor intensive. "The cases are difficult to investigate and difficult to prove," says James Spero, who heads Immigration & Customs Enforcement's fraud unit.

The Dasondi case illustrates how the visa system ties into a human supply chain that reaches halfway around the world. According to court documents, the New Jersey businessman recruited workers in Britain and India. In October 2001, he arranged through an intermediary to meet with Kishor Parikh, a mechanical engineer in the western Indian city of Ahmadabad. Dasondi allegedly instructed him to buy a fake university degree and coached him on how to lie to interviewers in the U.S. Consulate. Parikh allegedly paid $9,000 to Dasondi for sponsoring his H-1B application.

When Parikh arrived in the U.S., he learned that Dasondi didn't have a job for him. Instead, Parikh found work at a greeting card shop. He lived in a one-bedroom basement apartment with his wife, parents, and two children, according to his lawyer, John McDonald. Parikh sent Dasondi about $4,000 per month in money orders, which Dasondi ran through his payroll system as if the money came from a corporate client to pay for Parikh's services, according to court records. The payment scheme, which made it look like Parikh was a legitimate tech worker, is a common strategy called "running the payroll."

‘We were like prisoners’
A tech service firm called Vision Systems Group has been charged, in a criminal suit filed in February, with taking another approach to visa fraud. Under federal law, companies that apply for work visas need to pay the prevailing wage for a specific occupation in a particular region. The rule is aimed at preventing employers from reducing their costs by hiring foreign workers to replace Americans.

Federal prosecutors say Vision Systems, based in New Jersey, set up an office in low-wage Coon Rapids, Iowa, and claimed that up to 25 immigrant employees worked there between August 2003 and December 2008, when they actually worked in higher-wage regions. That would allow Vision Systems to pay a visa holder the prevailing wage of $20.05 per hour in Coon Rapids for an entry-level computer specialist instead of $30.43 at its headquarters in New Jersey. Vision Systems CEO Viswa Mandalapu could not be reached for comment.

Vision Systems identifies JPMorgan Chase and insurance giant Cigna as two of its clients on the reference site Hoovers.com. Both companies declined to comment.

When Akhil Gupta heard about the Vision Systems bust, he celebrated. The Mumbai native who now lives in London had paid the company nearly $3,000 in 2006 for an H-1B visa that never came through. "Vision Systems exploited my dreams," he says. "All I see is a huge amount of money and time lost."

Even workers who land jobs in the U.S. can end up on the bench, without a paycheck for weeks or months. Rajiv Dabhadkar, an Indian who was assigned to such companies as AT&T and Merrill Lynch on guest worker visas, recalls that when a staffing company replaced him with a new visa holder from India, he was so short of cash he couldn't pay the electric bill for his Belleville apartment. He and his wife and their 5-year-old daughter had to wear coats indoors for a few days in the winter. Ultimately, he says, his wife returned to India and filed for divorce. "I am a survivor and a witness," says Dabhadkar, who now lives outside Mumbai and runs the National Organization for Software & Technology Professionals, which publicizes abuses of guest workers.

One Brazilian worker originally came to the U.S. as a college student but was unable to find work when he graduated. Desperate to stay in the country, he took a job with a body shop in New Jersey that promised to sponsor his visa application, train him, and place him in an IT position in a corporation.

Things didn't work out as he had hoped. The company put him up in a two-bedroom apartment in West Windsor that he shared with half a dozen other trainees. It was so cramped he slept in the closet, with his feet sticking out the door. Not a fan of the curries favored by his roommates, he ate his meals at a nearby Subway sandwich shop. At the office, he studied hard in his training courses but was taken aback when the managers instructed him to write up a résumé full of false claims about his skills and work experience. He ended up working for $800 a month. "We were like prisoners," says the man, who would not let his name be used because he is in the country illegally. He ultimately quit and got a tech job in another state.

Foreign workers aren't waiting for American companies or the U.S. government to address the issue of high-tech sweatshops. They've set up Web sites to discuss their experiences with different companies. On sites such as Desi Crunch and Goolti, they talk anonymously and steer one another away from the worst employers. On Desi Crunch, one writer marvels that a company can still attract any potential employees. The worker compares the firm to "an H-1B prison camp" and says, "trust nothing they say or write."

Still Unpaid, Workers Take Protest to BGMEA - Bangladesh News

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Hundreds of garment workers demonstrated in front of the BGMEA Bhaban at Kawran Bazar on Saturday, demanding payment of still-due salaries and allowances ahead of Eid, barely days away.

Workers of factories in Savar and Gazipur also erupted in protests as, still owed salaries and bonuses, they remained unpaid just days ahead of Eid.

Employees of Season Sweaters Ltd, in Ashulia, arrived at the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association head office in three trucks at around seven in the evening and continued their agitation for over two hours, police said.

"Our salaries have now been due for two or three months. After an earlier protest, the factory authorities assured us they would settle pay back pay and allowances by Sept 6; this failed to happen," factory worker Al Amin told bdnews24.com.

He said Saturday's demonstration was sparked when the factory's owners said the workers would not receive their dues after all ahead of the Eid break.

Top Ramna police officials went to the scene, while a huge number of law enforcers were deployed to check any unpleasant situation during the demo.

BGMEA president Abdus Salam Murshedi told bdnews24.com, "It's a very sad incident. We are trying to contact the owner of the factory. He too is giving inconsistent statements. And now, he is not even taking phone calls."

After discussions, the workers received some compensation from BGMEA to tide them over. Murshedi told bdnews24.com: "Considering humanitarian grounds, a temporary solution has been found. We tried our best to give them some help."

He said BGMEA, the industry's largest trade body, would try to bring a more permanent solution through a meeting with the factory's owners on Sept 30.

"Steps will be taken after discussion on Sept 30."

Asked what steps might be taken against owner Ziaul Amin, the BGMEA president said, "He will most probably get a show-cause notice. After discussion we will decide if any other action should be taken against him."

Savar unrest

Labour unrest had erupted earlier in the day at two Savar garment factories, including Season Sweater Ltd.

Ashulia police chief Monowar Hossain told bdnews24.com workers of Season Sweater had protested at Ashulia Police Station, demanding immediate payment of the last three months' salary and Eid bonus.

They also sought cooperation from police in making the owners pay. The workers later went on to demonstrate in front of BGMEA Bhaban.

Savar police officer Abu Taher told bdnews24.com workers of Biswas Group of Industries Ltd of Rajfulbaria abstained from work and demonstrated instead for their dues and Eid bonus.

Police went on the spot and try to calm them. Later police managed to communicate with the factory owner.

The situation became normal in the evening as factory authorities paid up the workers' dues.

Gazipur also erupts

Earlier in the day, employees of four garment factories in Gazipur also refused to start work on Saturday and instead demonstrated for dues, including allowances and 15 days' salary for the current month, police said.

Workers at Rita Textile Mill, in Konabari Bangladesh Small and Cottage Industries Corporation industrial area in Gazipur Sadar, began their agitation at nine in the morning.

The workers called off the demonstration at 1:30pm when factory authorities promised to meet their demands, Mohammad Yusuf Ali, sub-inspector of Konabari Police Post, told bdnews24.com.

At one point police intervened to stop a fight between sewing machine operators and security guards of the factory, said Ali.

Employees of Stylo Fashions Limited, in Gazipur Sadar upazila, also organised a demonstration demanding payment of their arrears.

The workers shattered a number of windows in the factory building, although they called of the action when the owners promised to clear their back pay, sub-inspector of Hotapara Police Station, Mohammad Rafiqul Islam, told bdnews24.com.

In a third incident, over 600 employees of garment factory Win Wear Ltd, in the Kolomeshwar area of Gazipur Sadar, withdrew their labour and organised a rally demanding payment of salaries and allowances.

The workers started their action at noon, and only called a halt to their demonstration at 3.45 in the afternoon when factory authorities promised to clear their arrears, said Mollah Shoeb Ali, sub-inspector at Joydevpur Police Station.

Deadlines come and go

Workers unions had earlier given the deadline of Sep 16 (Wednesday) for owners to pay up the dues and bonuses that workers depend on to celebrate Eid with their families.

Workers of at least six garment factories, who had closed their doors without paying salaries and festival bonus to around 1,500 employees, marched towards the prime minister's office last Wednesday, with only one working day to go for payment of their salaries and festival allowances before the long Eid holiday began.

The plight of workers of closed factories ahead of Eid was mentioned in parliament earlier in the week, against the backdrop of protests over late payment of dues and bonuses.

Commerce minister Faruq Khan said his ministry would address the issue, making sure all workers were paid up in time for Eid.

He told parliament last Tuesday, "The owners have assured the government that they will pay the workers all dues ahead of Eid."

"The government has been closely monitoring the situation."

However, Thursday was the last working day before Eid, Saturday was the last banking day, and many factories were yet to pay their workers by Sunday.

There are around 2,010 garments factories in Dhaka and adjacent areas of Narayanganj, Savar, Ashulia, Tongi, employing over one million workers.

Some 80 factories have shut down in recent months due to recession-related troubles, according to authorities.

According to a police intelligence report another 51 factories with "no work orders" were in danger of closing their doors with owners absconding—as they had no way to pay dues before Eid—and their workers most likely to go unpaid.

Whose Religion Is This, Anyway?

Gershom Gorenberg | August 13, 2009 | web only

The American Jewish filmmaker told me he was doing a documentary on possible answers to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- one state or two -- and human-rights issues. When he showed up at my Jerusalem apartment on a recent afternoon to interview me, he was wearing a beret. His wife and producer wore a maxi skirt; a scarf covered her hair. Their attire showed they were Orthodox Jews. Hers, in particular, fit the stereotyped look of the Israeli religious right, of settlers and their supporters, including some Jews abroad. I was surprised. Maybe, I thought, I was the token leftist interviewee in a project by settlement backers aimed at showing that there is no exit from the conflict and that Israel must hold the West Bank forever.

I was also painfully aware of an irony: My own skullcap identifies me, correctly, as an Orthodox Jew. Countless times, my appearance has also caused people to assume, incorrectly, that I belong to the religious right. One look has been enough for them to assign me to the camp that regards Israel's establishment and its conquests in 1967 as part of a divine plan for final redemption and has made settlement and Israeli control of the West Bank into principles of faith. I'm weary of being prejudged and could feel the reflex was to prejudge my visitor. I gently asked him about the purpose of his project. His concern, he said, was to "see a just and equitable solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." Once the cameras were running, he asked if I thought the theological right was distorting Judaism. Yes, I said, realizing he'd come to record me saying what he felt himself. Afterward, I told him of my initial concern, and we laughed.

It was another reminder that being an Orthodox dove in Israel is a complicated business. The tension, I should stress, is not between my religious and political commitments. I have no doubt that the pursuit of peace is the most basic of Jewish obligations, that the first lessons of Judaism's sacred texts is that all human beings are created in the divine image and deserve freedom. The first religious figure who inspired me was Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, the European-born American theologian who returned from marching at Selma with Martin Luther King Jr. and declared, "Our legs were praying." That is, seeking social justice was not only a religious requirement, it was an act of worship. Heschel protested the war in Vietnam though it meant challenging the polices of the country that gave him refuge during the Holocaust. His kind of faith did not allow him to stay silent. I can’t know for sure what Heschel would be doing were he alive today, but I believe strongly that he would be working for peace in Israel.

The tension of being an Orthodox dove is partly sociological. Most Israeli Jews with whom I could pray don't share my political views. Most Israelis who share my politics do not understand why I enter a synagogue. More basically, the presumption of the society in which I live is that one cannot be an Orthodox critic of the occupation. That matching up of the political divide and the secular-religious one is a mistake. For a religious dove, however, there is an additional dimension to the argument about territories, settlements, and peace: The stakes are not only the future of one's country but also of one's religion.

One of the most accepted historical narratives in Israeli society is that since the conquest of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Golan Heights in 1967, the driving force for keeping the "Whole Land of Israel" has come from the country's religious minority, while opposition has come from secularists. That's part of the real story, but not all of it. The victory of '67 did create a wave of messianic excitement among those known as religious Zionists -- the segment of the Orthodox community that is integrated into general society, unlike the ultra-Orthodox. The victory was seen as part of a divine plan to bring final redemption.

Since the mid-1970s, the most vocal proponents of settlement in occupied territory have been Orthodox. Religious Zionists dominated the protests against the Oslo process and the Gaza withdrawal. The most shocking event in Israeli political history was the assassination of secular Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a religious extremist. Today the settlements deepest in the West Bank -- the ones most certain to be evacuated in any two-state solution -- are almost all small religious communities.
On the other hand, settlements wouldn't exist without the support of every Israeli government since 1967. Nor would the two-tier legal system of the West Bank, in which settlers enjoy the rights of Israeli citizens and Palestinians do not. Ariel Sharon, architect of settlement under successive Likud governments was not Orthodox. Nor were Likud prime ministers Yitzhak Shamir and Menachem Begin, nor is Benjamin Netanyahu.

Going further back, the original decisions to settle Israelis in the West Bank after 1967 came under Labor governments, which followed the secular Zionist left's gradualist strategy from pre-independence days: settling land to establish a Jewish claim to it. In reality, the religious right has created a dangerous synthesis: It has adopted Labor's settlement ethos and the secular right's intransigence and transformed them into theological principles.

Part of what obscures the secular role is that the secular-Orthodox fissure dates back to the beginning of the Zionist movement and still runs deep among Israeli Jews. It shapes debate not only on social issues but on the meaning of Jewish identity, as an ethnic or a religious category. It's convenient to adopt a unified field theory of politics, to map all other divisions onto this one.
Besides that, the range of views among secular Israelis is easier to ignore because opinion appears one-sided among religious ones. "It is completely and unequivocally obvious that the majority of religious Zionists position themselves on the right," Bar-Ilan University political scientist Asher Cohen has written – though he stressed that many are "pragmatic hawks" rather than radical rightists.

And yet, there has always been a dovish religious minority. One of the earliest and most outspoken critics of the occupation was Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, a scientist and theologian who began warning almost immediately after the 1967 conquest that ruling over the Palestinians would lead to the "corruption characteristic of every colonial regime" and eventually erode the ties between Israel and Diaspora Jews. The religious right's view of the Land of Israel and the state of Israel as inherently sacred was a form of idolatry, Leibowitz argued. Holiness, he said, could not be imputed to soil or to human institutions. Members of the dovish religious minority today include – just as one example – the leader of Breaking the Silence, the organization that recently published soldiers' testimony challenging the official version of last winter's war in Gaza.

Leibowitz, who died in 1994 at the age of 91, is remembered as a strident, raging man -- a rationalist philosopher with the impatient fury of a prophet. Going back to his early writing against the occupation, it seems clear that he feared not only the corruption of the state but also the corruption of Judaism.

Today it's clear that his fear was well-founded. In the public sphere in Israel, Judaism is identified with the worship of land, not with the pursuit of peace. For those of us in a half-visible minority of a minority, that's one more pressing reason to end the occupation.