Posts by Simon Grigg
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Thanks again for a most encouraging post.
Whilst its not all good news here (I'd hate to think what the conditions are like in the Djarum factory, in a nation which won't ban or reduce tobacco advertising because their is too much damn money in the end product), the major change that has come from the growing enfranchisement of the populace..in terms of physical numbers actually voting, this is the world number two...is the demand for reform. It's easy to forget that after 5 decades of authoritarian rule, the last three of which were under a dictator who is estimated to have amassed, with US, World Bank, and Australian connivance, over $20Bln, it was the people who threw him out...and then threw Megawati out five years later by popular vote largely because she was not pursing reforms fast enough. The current guy, SBY, knows he is on notice.
If the workers in these factories were paid Western levels the "turmoil" that would lead to would be 1) less vulnerable Western workers losing their jobs, and 2) an increased proportion of profits staying in-country rather than being repatriated to the West.
It would also lead to a massive class of several million workers being paid the equivalent of $5,000 a week, far more than the Chief Justice, the President and any Cabinet Minister combined. I get the feeling that might cause some turmoil.
The thing is, that things are slowly improving but as much as anything here, as my post to Joe's comment indicates, it's the Indonesians (and the Thai, and the Malaysians, and the Vietnamese) who are doing it, not the paternalist foreigners...Western influence often having been very disruptive as we know. Last year the Labour strikes in Jakarta were big news in Asia...the city was completely stopped, and the unions were legally flexing their growing muscles. It was a very big deal here, and I thought it was fantastic. Workers are being more and, especially for the export markets, paid well above minimum wage and being given health and job protection benefits.
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So the international manufactures seek new low wage economies to produce their goods in
and as much to the point, rake their as much of their profits from grossly overcharging the first world as they may do from exploiting the third.
Why does the same car, manufactured in the same factory in Japan cost 300% more in Sydney or Auckland as it does in Surabaya. Or a cellphone I can buy here for $200 cost $900 in NZ?.
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Simon: I would like to see you live on $3 a day
If I lived in the Indonesian Community I quite easily could...I'm not sure what you are suggesting....that everybody here working in a factory should be paid the US equivalent, or the NZ equivalent? That to satisfy your western guilt, imagined or otherwise, the whole economy here should be thrown into complete turmoil, because that's the obvious end result. The arrogance that implies, I throw back at you, is patronizing and I suggest the Indonesians I know would regard that as somewhat racist. Certainly its a theme heard over and over again here, the rejection of the implied racial superiority that comes out of, especially, Australia
That certainly looks very nice - but it seems a hell of a stretch that these laws can be effectively enforced in a huge country with no real welfare base.
I'd argue that this country has a welfare base, however it tends to be community based rather than institutionally based. And the various benefits introduced by the government in recent years are slowly adding to this. The beefing up of the labour inspectorate, and the slow, determined removal of the military from large scale commercial activity (and the assembly), is having an effect. In real terms they don't have the same power they did, thats evident on a day to day basis living here. The removal of the police from Army control has made a huge difference.
The thing is Joe, these laws are being fairly effectively enforced, not everywhere but more and more...witness Sony pulling out of Indonesia a couple of years back, moving to Eastern Europe, because the bad old days are gone...they said as much. Things have moved on from the the pre 98, as you put it, Suharto/Golkar kleptocracy.
The company that is laying off workers, the example I gave you being the most extreme, is a very large US owned corporation manufacturing in Jakarta and Bali. Many of the he staff they've laid off in the past six months, who have all had to have been paid redundancy, are floor workers, with, I can assure you, little likelihood of ties to either the Police or the Army. The three I mentioned, in Bali, are very junior mgmt, and they too are unlikely to have any links, nor will they have to pay a percentage to anyone.
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Sorry to be a little bit cynical here, but is this only going to be the "Good News from the Sweatshop" tour?
Whilst there is that and there are some terrible factories (I'm talking Indonesia here, but the sweatshop finger gets pointed this way as often as not), from my experience, which is not insubstantial...having visited and crawled around dozens of factories large and small over the past few years...the sweatshop angle is rather overstated. The labour laws in this part of the world are as tough as most found in western countries, and probably tougher than the US..and they are rigorously enforced as a friend of mine who is trying to lay off three staff is finding...one who's been there five years is entitled to a years salary.
I've been into several large apparel factories in the export zone aground Jabotek and the conditions are as good as anything in Auckland, and they pay far above minimum wage...that wage often being the raison complaint in the West...they only earn $3 a day etc...ignoring the obvious that $3 per day provides a reasonable standard of living, at a usually enforced minimum wage which buys more than the minimum in many western nations.
I've seen a couple of shocking places too, one in Jogja where workers were breathing in all sorts of fumes...it was closed down by labour inspectors, the biggest issue being whether these inspectors can be bought.
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your moment of international notoriety and you wanna know how many its sold, D?
You angling to sneak onto this
(come to think it it Johnny looks a tad like you in the photo).
And just to sidetrack your thread before the dicussion gets going WTF is with MacBloat trying to foist a 28mb browser download onto us.
Sorry, Damian, but it was a moment. As you were....
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Raffe, The reason the the A350 isn't attracting orders yet is that the design isn't finalised..rather simple. There is no doubt that the 787 is the star of the skies right now, but its a program driven by the fear of Airbus, even Boeing admit that.
My tin can analogy holds true in that, yes its up to the airlines to configure, but, it was Airbus that offered the viable, economic configurations that added customer comfort into the mix when Boeing seemed only to offer variable sardine options. I have to take an aisle seat on most 73/4/5/67s as I have to put my knees somewhere, and I'm only 6'1" which is not a unusual height in the western world.
Boeing, in the eighties, after McDonnell Douglas defacto withdrew, thought they had a global monopoly and customer comfort took second place to trying to squeeze as many bodies on to as small a space as possible. The philosophy that Air NZ seemed to follow until last year.
I'd still rather fly on an A3anything than any Boeing other than a late model 777.
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777s are the business
It depends on the 777....the short haul ones used by Singapore are cramped and horrible, whereas the long haul layout is fantastic. But its worth remembering that it's only the threat of Airbus that has forced Boeing to take a step forward from the tin can approach. My first flights on an Airbus many years back were eye openers.
In the same way it was only the fact that there other airlines up there that finally forced Air New Zealand to offer, in the last year or so, the sort of inflight entertainment that most of the world's trans-oceanic airlines have offered for a decade and a half.
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Please feel free to explain how taking away a pass port is not the removal of citizenship after being absent from your country for a period of time?
please feel free to offer an example of a country that does this
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Let's not quibble on the detail but acknowledge the principle is sound and used today by 1st world countries.
It's not quibbling on the detail at all...your assertion was plain wrong...its not used by anyone
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Michael, the Dutch only revoke citizenship if one has dual citizenship for more than ten years. It is not exactly what happens. Austria seems to have have similar provisions, without the ten year proviso. Renunciation or loss of citizenship if one acquires citizenship in another state is common, but I can find no example in 2007 where one becomes stateless if you are not resident (although I believe the late Robert Muldoon muttered such once or twice). As he was, the notion is quite bizarre..