Archive for the ‘china’ tag
If Wal-Mart has to listen to the Chinese government why is the US such cowards?
I happened to come across this article that Wal-Mart is going to sign collective contracts at all it’s stores in China. I bet the evil US Chamber of Commerce is shivering over this one.
The announcement in the Workers’ Daily on 31 July came just two weeks after Wal-Mart signed its first collective wage agreement in Shenyang, which mandated an eight percent pay increase for all workers this year, with another eight percent next year.
This was soon followed by the signing of similar collective contracts in the Quanzhou store, which formed the first Wal-Mart union in China in August 2006, and close to 20 other outlets, including those in Shenzhen.
All the agreements reportedly covered remuneration, working hours and paid vacations, labour insurance and welfare benefits, and stipulated that workers should be paid more than the local minimum wage.
Because Oil Prices are High Will Manufacturing Return to the US?
I really find this ironic.
Rising costs are starting to eat into what American managers fearfully call the China Price, the once-formidable 40% to 50% cost advantage enjoyed by Chinese manufacturers-and demanded by customers. “Fuel prices just shot up so fast that everyone was caught flat-footed,” says Allen J. Delattre, who heads Accenture’s (ACN) global supply chain practice. “Now logistics costs are an overarching priority.” Richard Sinkin, a San Diego consultant who scouts manufacturing sites in the U.S., Mexico, and China for multinationals, also senses a major strategic shift. “A lot of clients who were thinking about going to China are now saying, Not at these prices,’” says Sinkin. “The high cost of fuel is going to radically transform the way people look at the geography of their manufacturing.”
Well I guess the rise in oil prices has a silver lining in an otherwise dark cloud. However, if manufacturing were to begin to return to American shores, don’t think that corporations won’t still be looking to cut costs at the expense of workers anyway. I think too many of them got used to what they were able to get away with in China.
