This week, the New York Times article on how the US lost out on iPhone manufacturing has been making the rounds all over the Internet. From what I’ve read so far, I think that Wade Rathke the chief organizer for ACORN International has the best rebuttal to the Times article out there.

Good news that we are really talking about manufacturing. Bad news that the ideology underpinning the conversation is that there can only be manufacturing at the expense of workers’ rights and wages in sweatshop conditions.

Shame on Apple, the Times, and the rest of the tribe that makes these rationalizations!

One of the examples in the Times article that Rathke criticizes, is the ability of Chinese corporations like Foxconn to mobilize eight thousand workers in a heartbeat, with this supposedly being impossible to do in America.

The reporter and others marveled at how on a whim 8000 workers could be pulled out of bed in company owned and run dormitories and put to work on a last-minute changeover. Wow, the article and others seemed to say, that couldn’t happen here in America.

Well, that’s wrong. It could happened here in America, but Apple would have to pay for it, and that’s still the real difference (emphasis added).

That’s the truth! Apple would have to pay a lot more to do this stateside and rightfully so. Another thought I had was that some of the examples that supporters of this sort of manufacturing tout, would be frowned upon in the United States. There’s a reason why sweatshops are reviled in this country.

The other point that the Times article attempts to make about corporations not being able to find thousands of people ready to work in rapid fashion is also refuted by Rathke.

Even in the pages of the New York Times, if they were interested they can read about the skilled works by the thousands that have trucked themselves into North Dakota (of all places!) to live in, yes, bunks, trailers, and all manner of man-caves in order to work in the oil industry on the planes. But, whoops, once again, I should add that they are doing so, because they get paid, and paid pretty damned well to do so!

So basically when corporations say they can’t find people to hire in the United States, what they’re really saying is that they don’t want to pay a fair and just wage for it.  Lastly, there was an argument made that besides the so-called lack of workers, the infrastructure and resources to manufacture on a large-scale and in a specialized manner, has simply left the U.S. The United States cannot compete with the coordinated system of manufacturing in Asia we’re told. If we tried, it would just add to the cost of making each iPhone. Even so, Apple would still make a handsome profit!

Apple could build their iPhones & MacBooks here and STILL make a profit. So why don’t they? NYT: mmflint.me/yerTkq

— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) January 25, 2012

The problem is really about the existence of what author Phillip Bobbitt calls the market-state, and its attempt to supersede the nation-state.

The “market-state” is the latest constitutional order, one that is just emerging in a struggle for primacy with the dominant constitutional order of the 20th century, the nation-state. Whereas the nation-state based its legitimacy on a promise to better the material well-being of the nation, the market-state promises to maximize the opportunity of each individual citizen.

If we embrace the market-state then all the talk of “made in the U.S.A.” becomes irrelevant and that is troubling.

This video actually goes along with the recent article in the NY Times on how corporations are resorting to lockouts more than workers ever resorted to striking.

An anti-worker law by any other name stinks the same bit.ly/xcA9Ee @MTaflcio #1u #fb

— IBEW233 (@IBEW233) January 23, 2012

#NewtGringrich has a lot of interest in fetuses. He knows they can become child janitors, and he’s proud to help them. #tlot #p2 #p21

— Leslie Lafayette (@TheSpringChickn) January 22, 2012

When one thinks about essential services that a government can perform; things like sanitation, fire, police, education and water systems may come to mind. In Lithuania, the courts have decided to add beer to the list. So inalienable is the service of beer, that the judicial high priests of barley and hops have decided nothing may stand in its way–not even a pesky little labor union and their strike efforts. How dare they make this country dry?! Yes, whether rain, sleet or snow the suds shall flow, especially for those in the global 1 percent at the world’s 4th largest brewery.

A planned strike by union workers at the Carlsberg brewery in Lithuania has been declared illegal by an outrageous court decision which is now the subject of an ILO complaint.

A new motto is in order for Lithuania and I propose that it be: don’t give me liberty, just give me beer! It would seem that Carlsberg has been studying what other brewers like Yuengling have done as America’s oldest union busting brewery. But even Yuengling didn’t get the US Supreme Court to declare beer an essential service! I just hope that the next time US President Barack Obama decides to hold a “beer summit” that he seriously makes sure none of these sorry brewers are at the table.

What a great parting shot! As if President Obama’s recess appointments to the NLRB weren’t enough, one outgoing member, Craig Becker decided to take on arbitration only laws.

This decision affects a lot of workers:  estimates are that 25% of all non-union workers have signed exactly these kinds of individual arbitrate only agreements.  The immediate decision involved a case with the big home builder, D. H. Horton, where a required employment agreement had mandated not only that the worker with an issue had to arbitrate but also barred the arbitrator from making a decision which could apply to any other workers or group of workers.

It’s going to be challenged but it was a great move.

Yes, even lawyers deserve the right to organize and bargain collectively as a unit if they so choose.

A total of 46 lawyers in the Douglas County Attorney’s Office have filed paperwork with the state labor court to organize a collective bargaining unit.

Omaha attorney John Corrigan is representing the deputy prosecutors and civil attorneys seeking to form the Association of Deputy Douglas County Attorneys. The group petitioned the State Commission of Industrial Relations on Wednesday to become a labor organization.

They are seeking an election. The unit would be made up of non management attorneys.

So far the powers that be in China have clamped down on elements that would spark a version of the Arab Spring from happening in their own country. As this story shows however, there are cracks that are beginning to form in the authoritarian control structure.

Villagers in Wukan are fighting to prevent the government from handing their land over to developers.

By December, as with many land-rights struggles in the Global South, direct action was apparently the only leverage villagers had to push back against the local government. The death of a leading protester in police custody catalyzed their outrage, and after driving out local officials, the activists launched an ad-hoc self-governing occupation.

It sounds like an Occupy movement to me. It actually sounds like a lot more honestly.