Enterprise bargaining UNSW style against the union, the NTEU.

This also involves ADFA, ACT.

http://www.nteu.org.au/unsw/blog/view/post/postId/367

Please support some 70 academic and general staff who have been stood down without pay by UNSW VC Fred Hilmer for imposing bans on the recording and transmission of student results to the university.

Contribute to the special UNSW Local Hardship Fund.

Click this link to donate directly

https://www.nteu.org.au/shop_tools/donations/unsw

Posted 13 July 2010 by Ros O’Grady from University of New South Wales.

These protected action bans were necessary to get the VC to negotiate over long-contested conditions, on reinstating limits on fixed tern employment and the return of members to have union representation.

Negotiations are continuing.

The UNSW Student Representative Council organised a protest to support NTEU staff.

The CFMEU and other unions have declared support.

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Workplace safety on Australian waterfronts must be overhauled to stem the mounting death toll among stevedoring workers.

Three deaths and a spate of serious injuries and near misses in a little over six months is not good enough and suggests that waterfront deregulation has reduced safety, said ACTU President Ged Kearney.

At memorial services today, unions around Australia are joining their colleagues in the Maritime Union of Australia in remembering the waterside workers who have been killed on the job in recent years.

The most recent death is that of Stephen Piper, who was killed in a work accident on Melbourne’s Appleton Dock on 14 July. His funeral service is being held today.

Ms Kearney said the waterfront remained one of the most dangerous workplaces in Australia, despite major productivity improvements.

“The growing death toll among stevedoring workers – eight in the past seven years – has to be stopped,” Ms Kearney said.

Australia’s wharves are busier than ever yet there are weaknesses in the underlying safety culture of the industry that stem in part from the deregulation of stevedoring that occurred during the Howard Government years.

“Deregulation and casualisation of the stevedoring workforce has had an impact on skill levels and training, competency standards, and the way work is structured.

“Maritime workers report that there is also inconsistency of approaches to safety management and safety practice.”

Ms Kearney said the ACTU backed the MUA’s call for an urgent and high-level national stevedoring safety task force to investigate what needs to be done to improve waterfront safety.

“Every worker should be able to go to work at the beginning of the day secure in the knowledge that they will return to their family unscathed,” Ms Kearney said.

“We need to lift workplace health and safety standards for all workers, not reduce them.”

Also:

NSW Premier Kristina Keneally today expressed deep sorrow over the death of wharfie Stephen Piper and the awful statistic of 3 deaths on Australian wharves in 5 months.

Speaking before nearly 400 maritime workers, their families, friends and dignitaries, Ms Keneally, also pledged her support – and the NSW Government’s – to the Maritime Union’s campaign to achieve consistent safety guidelines and regulations right across the country.

The Premier was visibly moved as Mich-Elle Myers read the email written by Fremantle wharfie Ash Huish, the message encapsulated in

“No family should sit and wait at the end of the working day for a loved one who never returns”.

Ash’s words were recited at every service around the country.

Unions leant their support headed by Unions NSW’s Secretary Mark Lennon.

Wharfies and their families held up banners with the faces of 8 workers killed on the wharves in less than 10 years.

One of those bore the smiling face of Nick Fanos, crushed to death at Port Botany in April. Nick’s sister Maria bravely held up his banner.

Later Sister Mary Leahy of Apostleship of the Sea offered comfort for those grieving.

The Sydney service was repeated across the country, lead by the highly emotional and dignified funeral in the Boyd Chapel, Springvale in Melbourne.

National Secretary Paddy Crumlin said that the church service was a celebration of the wonderful life of a loving dad and husband.

“It was about family and friends from the wharves and all walks of life. They paid homage to the joyful and generous character that was Steven Piper”, said Crumlin.

A full service could not hold some 200 wharfies who gathered outside the church.

The mourners included ACTU President Ged Kearney and former National Secretary John Coombs, arm in arm with his wife Gwen.

Kearney subsequently sent out a press release calling for “workplace safety on Australian waterfronts to be overhauled to stem the mounting death toll among stevedoring workers”.

Close to 1000 workers attended the Fremantle service led by a number of politicians including the leader of the opposition Eric Ripper, ALP Canning candidate, Alannah McTiernan and Fremantle Federal MP Melissa Page, as well as reassuring words from Father Patrick Moore of the Stella Maris Seafarers Centre.

“There was a lot of sorrow and just as much anger from workers. There was a feeling that everyone has had enough, that we can’t wait for this to happen again”, said West Australian Branch Secretary Chris Cain.

Even on a public holiday in Darwin 60 wharfies attended a service that ended in a wreath floating in the sea off Stokes Hill wharf.

In Brisbane the ALP candidate for Wright Andrew Ramsay was among the mourners. We will add more stories on the Brisbane and other services as they come to hand.

Read more
http://www.mua.org.au/

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Ark Tribe’s lawyer has suggested to the court that the ABCC has acted beyond it’s powers. As a result the defense has called into question much of the evidence put forward by prosecutors.

For more than two years, Mr Tribe and his family have struggled under the threat of imprisonment for doing nothing more than speaking up on a safety issue.

In extraordinary evidence this week the community learnt a great deal about the way the ABCC does business.

The construction industry Star Chamber is supposed to exhaust all other channels before it uses its big guns (the controversial section 52 orders which compel workers to attend a secret interrogation).

But under cross-examination, ABCC Inspector Seamus Flynn admitted that not much had been attempted before the Commission resorted to its extreme coercive powers.

All Mr Flynn did before he fired the cannon was to make two quick telephone calls to CFMEU member, Ark Tribe.

No letter, no text, no visit – straight to the compulsory secret interrogation.

A pattern is emerging of an organisation that may not have operated within its powers and functions under its own legislation.

The Commission does not seem to have paid proper attention to making sure it acted even in accordance with the very limited safeguards placed on its unprecedented powers.

The trial will now move to written submissions.
A further hearing will now take place on 13 September.

Mr Tribe and his family will continue their uneasy wait for justice.

Construction workers, unions and the community will wait with them. And they will keep up the fight.

Thanks for your support.

Dave Noonan and the Rights on Site Team

www.rightsonsite.org.au

joe hill

Automotive News China

http://www.autonewschina.com/en/article.asp?id=5488

Automotive News | 2010-7-22
GUANGZHOU/TOKYO(Reuters) – Chinese factory workers at two suppliers for foreign automakers returned to work on Thursday after winning hefty pay rises, ending strikes that again highlighted the carmakers’ vulnerability to their China suppliers.

The strikes at Atsumitec Co, which supplies Honda Motor Co’s China operations, and Japanese electronics maker Omron Corp.were the latest in a series by workers demanding a bigger slice of China’s growing economic wealth.

The walkout at Atsumitec, which produces gearsticks for the Honda Accord, ended after workers agreed to a 45-percent pay raise to 1,420 yuan ($210) per month, from a previous 980 yuan, said a worker who took part in the strike.

The agreement followed a meeting with the company’s Japanese managers late on Wednesday, the worker said. Honda confirmed the strike had ended.

“We’re all ready to go back to work now, and everyone is happy with the outcome,” said the worker, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the situation.

Production at the Guangzhou factory of Omron, which supplies switches and ignition keys to Honda, Ford, BMW and other carmakers, restarted Wednesday at around 0530 GMT, said a spokesman for Omron in Tokyo.

The company agreed to pay an additional 300 yuan per month in salary and benefits, up from a current pay level of 1,270 yuan, said one worker. That’s significantly less than the 40 percent rise strikers were demanding.

The Omron spokesman declined to say what concessions the company had agreed to.

Stoppages at foreign-run factories across China by workers demanding pay increases disrupted operations for several weeks in May and June, but the wave of unrest had tapered off by the end of last month.

SUPPLY CHAIN QUESTIONED

The burst of labour disputes has affected more than a dozen mostly foreign-owned factories, including suppliers to Honda and its bigger rival Toyota, raising questions about the region’s future as a low-cost manufacturing base.

Japanese carmakers have been a particular target of strikers, partly because their lean inventories and heavy reliance on individual suppliers makes them more likely to give in to worker demands than American or European firms.

But Japanese executives, including Honda’s chief executive, have said they do not intend to change their supply chain model in China since more inventory or supply sources would raise the cost structure, hitting their bottom lines.

Analysts said the strikes may also underscore deeper issues, including cultural differences between Japanese managers and their Chinese employees.

“Japanese-invested companies have their own special cultural characteristics,” said Wang Jing, dean of the Labour Relations Department at Capital University of Economics and Business in Beijing.

“Workers have to obey every aspect of the company’s culture. Japanese companies also have much stricter discipline requirements compared with other firms. In some companies the managers are all Japanese, and don’t really understand China’s national conditions. It’s harder for them to communicate with Chinese workers on their demands.”

The string of events highlighting the plight of workers in China began after a number of worker suicides at a massive factory complex in southern China operated by Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry Co, the world’s biggest electronics parts maker.

Hon Hai and its cellphone-making subsidiary Foxconn International Holdings later doubled salaries for entry-level production line workers, prompting employees at other factories to seek similar pay increases.

Hon Hai said late on Wednesday that it would seek higher product prices from clients in an effort to offset the rising wages at its China plants.

Beijing has been tolerant of such industrial action so far, as the higher salaries fit into its broader economic policy of diversifying China’s economy into one driven by domestic consumption.

China's workers protesting

Statement of the SEARCH Foundation Committee, July 21, 2010

The best outcome from the high-stakes federal election campaign now underway would be the return of a Labor government with the Greens holding the balance of power in the Senate, and perhaps making a breakthrough into the House of Representatives.

It is vital that the Abbott Coalition – which is essentially a more extreme version of the Howard brand of patriarchal neo-liberalism – is soundly defeated and forced to abandon its extremism.

Not only would this be the right kind of criticism of both major parties by the voters, but it would take national politics in a progressive direction and enable a faster transition to a low carbon economy than is likely at present.

In the last parliament, despite the general preference swap between Labor and the Greens at the 2007 election, when Green preferences were crucial to the defeat of the Howard conservatives, Rudd Labor studiously marginalised the Greens. The Labor government much preferred to find a Senate majority with the Liberals, Nationals and rightwing independents, contributing in particular to the calamity over the policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Labor’s disdain towards its supporters risks alienating them and shifting support to the conservative Coalition – a pattern so clearly shown by UK Labour. The risk of electing the most rightwing Coalition leadership seen in Australia in many years should not be underestimated. An Abbott Coalition government would be a disaster of historic proportions.

An emphatic voter shift to the Greens rather than the Abbott Coalition will provide the best insurance that a Gillard Labor government won’t repeat this rightwing approach to the constituencies which support the progressive movements in Australia in the new parliament.

Despite the current picture with opinion polls putting Labor in front, the campaign up to August 21 could have some nasty surprises for Labor, because its first-term record is tainted, and because it is not speaking clearly to the people about what it would do in a second term.

The trial of union activist Ark Tribe in Adelaide, for refusing to answer the interrogators from the Australian Building and Construction Commission, could lead to one of these ‘surprises’. The report on the schools building stimulus package could be another.

For now, voters are presented on the one hand with the Abbott Coalition, which is playing up fear of asylum seekers, and fear of government debt, without putting any clear program forward; and on the other with Gillard Labor in a policy vacuum called ‘moving forward’.

This cynical dumbing-down of the campaign will react on both parties, and the hope is that strong progressive voices can shift more votes to the Greens.

Prime Minister Gillard is right – Australia can face any challenge if the society works together, but why won’t she and her Ministers speak out clearly about the challenges? Because they don’t want to be held accountable in the coming three years?

What are the challenges?

The first challenge is at the moral level – respecting the rights of the first Australians, the indigenous peoples of the land, and compensating them for the loss of their lands and culture. This should mean a rejection of the authoritarian policy of the Northern Territory Intervention, and a renewal of the people’s movement for reconciliation which created real possibilities in the 1990s, only to be cut off by the Howard government and largely ignored by the Rudd Labor government.

Clearly the global capitalist crisis is continuing to unfold, rather than fade away, with the ‘double-dip’ recession now looming in the USA and Europe. There is a huge challenge for the next government to keep people in work, and to push for the new low-carbon, fair society which is urgently needed. This requires much more refurbishing of existing dwellings and commercial buildings, as well as radical shifts in investment in the energy and transport sectors. This has to be led by government, and needs a mobilised people’s movement to push it through, with all the education and training, child-care support, public and affordable housing, fair workplace systems and changed taxation needed to support it.

To meet the challenge of climate change, there is an urgent need to put a price on carbon emissions and to implement other measures to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels.

Despite the Labor government’s real success with stimulus spending, Prime Minister Gillard says she ‘believes in surpluses’ as if it’s some article of religious faith. The facts are that Australia’s public debt and budget deficit are small by world standards and should not even be issues in the campaign. Australia’s federal government debt in 2009 was 8.9 per cent of Gross Domestic Product. In contrast, the USA is 53.1 per cent, the UK is 75.1 per cent, France is 60.8 per cent, and Germany 43.8 per cent. Greece stands at 125.7 per cent, and Italy at 106.6 per cent. The latest figure for Japan is from 2008, when its central government debt stood at 178 per cent of GDP. The Abbott attack on government spending is dangerous as well as absurd. The Left must tackle this economic debate head-on.

Another major challenge is the global security crisis, where the ‘war on terror’ so blindly prosecuted by the Howard and Rudd governments at the behest of Washington, has catastrophically failed. A new policy is urgently needed to end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, help the democratic movement in Iran and increase pressure on the Israeli government to respect the human and national rights of the Palestinian people. The Afghan War is not ‘winnable’, costing civilian and military lives every day, and forcing more and more people to flee as refugees.

Our major river systems are in crisis due to over-demands by irrigators, as demonstrated by the failure of any water from two flood events in the Murray-Darling Basin to reach the Murray mouth. The ‘market’ approach to this crisis has also failed and needs radical change based on community involvement, not corporate dictat.

While Labor’s reforms to the industrial laws have been positive, removing the worst features of Work Choices, much remains to be done – including the abolition of the punitive Australian Building & Construction Commission – to achieve a balanced system in which international norms of workers’ rights and standards are recognised.

Abbott’s Shadow Cabinet has, at its kernel, those who pushed the policies of the Howard Government and who were rejected by the electorate in 2007. These include Kevin Andrews, Phillip Ruddock and Bronwyn Bishop. No matter how Abbott evades and denies the issue, a return to those days is foremost on their agenda. He says Work Choices is “dead buried, cremated” but, like Phoenix, it would rise from the ashes if somehow the Coalition wins.

Australia’s Howard government signed up to the Millennium Development Goals back in 2000, aiming to significantly reduce global poverty by 2015. These goals will not be achieved, but it is a vital part of global security and Australia’s future well-being, that this effort is renewed. This requires Australia to move up its official overseas aid budget to 0.7 per cent of Gross Domestic Product, and to embrace its obligations under the UN Refugee Convention to properly process the claims for protection from all asylum seekers who reach our territory. On this we know the stand taken by Abbott’s Coalition, Gillard Labor and the Greens.

In the four weeks left of the election campaign, community organisations and trade unions need to work to ensure that these challenges are discussed and that Labor, the Greens and the Coalition spell out their policies on them.

Whether or not the parties take any notice of the community on these issues, the organisations and networks trying to respond to these challenges will be better mobilised and educated if this effort is made, and thus more capable of engaging with the new government after August 21.

Democracy is definitely much more than casting a vote every three years, though casting the vote as intelligently as we can is a precious capacity won by our forebears that we cannot afford to waste.

Peter Murphy
Coordinator
SEARCH Foundation
www.search.org.au

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Since the early 1970′s OHS law has been “de-lawyer-fied”.

The intention of the law is to empower workers and employers to manage safety in the workplace to meet basic human rights – the right not to be injured at work, the obligation not to hurt others.

Good law allows for the basic legislative tenets to be readily understood. Poor law is difficult to understand and leads to increased business and personal costs in order to determine compliance.

I would argue that Australia’s recent aim of the national harmonisation of OHS laws will lead to complexity and cost – the opposite of what was intended – and a disempowerment of the workforce as the legal imperative overrides the safety management obligation.

The major weakness in the law is its seeming reliance on the Courts to clarify the laws, their application and their relevance.

Legal commentators on the laws have stated publicly that the impact of the law will not be clear for several years and that many questions about the laws will only be answered when prosecutions are brought and the Courts hand down decisions.

This process is sloppy, should not be accepted unquestionably by OHS professionals and does almost nothing to help the vast majority of Australian businesses to comply.

The argument is that the laws will not change but be harmonised. The fact is that in some States, the laws will change and change for businesses that have no trans-boundary operations.

OHS laws, enforcement strategies and impacts in Australia would benefit from a review similar to that undertaken by Thomas McGarity and others at the University of Marylands School of Law, as reported in the Regulation At Work newsletter. According to the newsletter:

“The authors suggest that regulatory dysfunction stems from the agency [US-OSHA] being starved of resources, operating under a statute weakened by 30 years of appellate court decisions and White House initiatives that increase time and effort needed to implement a proactive regulatory agenda.”

There are distinct similarities with OHS enforcement and regulation in Australia.

http://safetyatworkblog.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/ohs-law-reform-should-not-rely-of-courts-for-clarification/

His ‘crime’? Sticking up for his safety rights on site and then refusing to be coerced into an interview with the unfair Australian Building and Construction Commission.

For this, Ark now faces up to six months in jail.

But most Australians are still asleep to what the ABCC is or how it trashes the rights of ordinary working people like Ark.

If they learn the truth they will want to defend construction workers who operate in an industry where safety is a daily matter of life and death.

A tragic reminder of this came on Friday, when a construction worker was killed by a falling steel beam at Adelaide’s desalination plant site.

Rallies are being held around the entire country to mark Ark’s trial on July 20, 21 and 22, but we need a mass of people to turn up if Australia is going to actually sit up and take notice.

Your voice needs to be heard to end this injustice.

Workers standing up for their rights have changed Australia for the better throughout history and we need that to continue this week.

Rallies kick off in Ark’s hometown of Adelaide, starting from the Tent Embassy in Victoria Square at 8:30am.

There will be one near you, just check the full list of times and locations below.

Show your support for Ark and make the nation aware of what the ABCC actually does to ordinary construction workers.

We’ll be tweeting updates from the court, you can follow us on #dontjailark

July 20
Adelaide, South Australia -Tent Embassy, Victoria Square, 8:30am
Sydney, NSW – Sydney Town Hall, George St, 12pm
Melbourne, Victoria – March to ABCC offices, Cnr St. Kilda and Toorak Roads, 10am
Canberra, ACT – on-site meetings over the three days of Ark’s Trial
Perth, WA – March to office of ABCC, Perth Esplanade (near glass pyramid), 10am
Warrnambool, VIC – Cannon Park, 10am

July 21, 22:
Wonthaggi, VIC – Lions Park, 1:30pm (July 21)
Brisbane, QLD – Roma St Forum, 10am (July 22)
Gold Coast, QLD – Southport Broadwater Parklands, Gold Coast H’way, 10am (July 22)

Rights on site campaigns to abolish the ABCC

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/world/7590095/new-strike-hits-honda-parts-supplier-in-china/

Don Durfee, Reuters July 15, 2010, 3:54 pm
HONG KONG (Reuters) – A strike has broken out at a south China factory supplying parts for Japan’s Honda Motor, the latest in a string of stoppages by Chinese workers demanding a bigger piece of the country’s economic wealth.

The strike, at Atsumitec Co. in the city of Foshan, began on Monday, with 170 workers striking after management fired about 100, a worker who declined to give his name told Reuters by telephone.

“The local government has sent police to our factory and will be here in the afternoon,” he said.

A Honda spokeswoman in Tokyo said the factory supplies shift levers (gear sticks) to the car maker’s local plants, and said the workers had been on strike since July 12.

She said the action has not had any impact yet on Honda’s car-making operations in China, some of which were affected last month by strikes at other parts makers.

The new strike marks the end of a couple of weeks of relative calm for foreign-run Chinese factories, which saw several weeks of work stoppages in May and June by laborers demanding higher wages.

The government appears to be prepared to let such strikes continue as a way to let wages gradually rise, said Geoffrey Crothall of the China Labour Bulletin.

“I think it’s going to happen throughout the year. It’s not going away unless the government stops it. But it’s the government’s position that they really want to raise income level in order to support the consumption growth of the country,” he said.

“And we are seeing rising expectations on the part of workers — people know that other factories are having these pay raises and they will expect that from their own employers.”

TURBULENT JUNE

The strike follows a turbulent period in June, which saw hundreds of workers at a number of foreign-owned factories, many of those in the affluent Pearl River Delta, walk off the job demanding better pay.

Japan’s top automaker, Toyota Motor, was also affected by labor unrest, but is confident it can handle such situations going forward, a China-based executive told China’s official Xinhua news agency.

The report, unrelated to the labor action in Foshan, cited Liu Peng, Toyota Motor (China) Investment Co Ltd, saying the company was confident it could “properly handle labor disputes, which are increasingly being heard as Chinese workers become more vocal about their interests.”

“In the long-term, Toyota will also build a platform for better communication between management and employees,” Liu was quoted as saying.

ASSERTIVE WORKERS

The strikes also highlight how just-in-time manufacturing, now highly popular among western manufacturers, can put companies at risk because it allows little margin for error when supply chains get disrupted.

The strikes are a symptom of a broader trend that many investors will have to consider: a Chinese workforce becoming more assertive and selective, and sometimes inclined to protest by strikes, slow-downs and, most often, quitting.

“The chance of more strikes increases the more successful the previous strikes are. There’s been more and more communication between workers and advocacy groups,” said Duncan Innes-Ker, Beijing-based China analyst for the Economist Intelligence Unit.

“The workers have networks to exchange information even when there has been a state media blackout. The example set in one place tends to encourage others.”

The wave of current unrest hit a peak in June, but reports tapered off at the end of the month. The last reported stoppage, at Japanese-owned Tianjin Mitsumi Electric Co, ended on July 3.

China’s domestic media have been largely mute about the strikes, apparently due to state censorship. But Xinhua has issued reports about the unrest on its English-language service.

Labour costs in China have been rising, partly encouraged by a government that wants to turn farmers and workers into more confident consumers, even as it tries to keep a lid on strikes.

Earlier strikes disrupted production at auto makers Toyota and Honda, and have laid bare the rising demands of China’s 150 million migrant workers, especially younger ones wanting to secure a foothold in urban areas.

(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard and Emma Graham-Harrison in Beijing and Chang-Ran Kim in Tokyo; Writing by Doug Young; Editing by Alex Richardson)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/technology/06iphone.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2&src=busln

New York Times

IPhone Supply Chain Highlights Rising Costs in China

By DAVID BARBOZA
Published: July 06, 2010

SHENZHEN, China – Last month, while enthusiastic consumers were playing with their new Apple iPhone 4, researchers in Silicon Valley were engaged in something more serious.

They cracked open the phone’s shell and started analyzing the new model’s components, trying to unmask the identity of Apple’s main suppliers. These “teardown reports” provide a glimpse into a company’s manufacturing.

What the latest analysis shows is that the smallest part of Apple’s costs are here in Shenzhen, where assembly-line workers snap together things like microchips from Germany and Korea, American-made chips that pull in Wi-Fi or cellphone signals, a touch-screen module from Taiwan and more than 100 other components.

But what it does not reveal is that manufacturing in China is about to get far more expensive.

Soaring labor costs caused by worker shortages and unrest, a strengthening Chinese currency that makes exports more expensive, and inflation and rising housing costs are all threatening to sharply increase the cost of making devices like notebook computers, digital cameras and smartphones.

Desperate factory owners are already shifting production away from this country’s dominant electronics manufacturing center in Shenzhen toward lower-cost regions far west of here, even deep in China’s mountainous interior.

At the end of June, a manager at Foxconn Technology – one of Apple’s major contract manufacturers – said the company planned to reduce costs by moving hundreds of thousands of workers to other parts of China, including the impoverished Henan Province.

While the labor involved in the final assembly of an iPhone accounts for a small part of the overall cost – about 7 percent by some estimates – analysts say most companies in Apple’s supply chain – the chip makers and battery suppliers and those making plastic moldings and printed circuit boards – depend on Chinese factories to hold down prices.

And those factories now seem likely to pass along their cost increases.

“Electronics companies are trying to figure out how to deal with the higher costs,” says Jenny Lai, a technology analyst at CLSA, an investment bank based in Hong Kong. “They’re already squeezed, so squeezing more costs out of the system won’t be easy.”

Apple can cope better than most companies because it has fat profit margins of as much as 60 percent and pricing power to absorb some of those costs.

But makers of personal computers, cellphones and other electronics – including Dell, Hewlett-Packard and LG – deal with much slimmer profit margins according to several analysts.

“The challenges are going to be much bigger for them,” Ms. Lai said. Most other industries, from textiles and toys to furniture, are under considerably more pressure.

One way to understand the changes taking shape in southern China is to follow the supply chain of the iPhone 4, which was designed by Apple engineers in the United States, sourced with high-tech components from around the world and assembled in China.

Shipped back to the United States, the iPhone is priced at $600, though the cost to consumers is less, subsidized by AT&T in exchange for service contracts.

“China makes very little money on these things,” said Jason Dedrick, a professor at Syracuse University and an author of several studies of Apple’s supply chain.

Much of the value in high-end products is captured at the beginning and end of the process, by the brand and the distributors and retailers.

According to the latest teardown report compiled by iSuppli, a market research firm in El Segundo, Calif., the bulk of what Apple pays for the iPhone 4′s parts goes to its chip suppliers, like Samsung and Broadcom, which supply crucial components, like processors and the device’s flash-memory chip.

In the iPhone 4, more than a dozen integrated circuit chips account for about two-thirds of the cost of producing a single device, according to iSuppli.

Apple, for instance, pays Samsung about $27 for flash memory and $10.75 to make its (Apple-designed) applications processor; and a German chip maker called Infineon gets $14.05 a phone for chips that send and receive phone calls and data. Most of the electronics cost much less.

The gyroscope, new to the iPhone 4, was made by STMicroelectronics, based in Geneva, and added $2.60 to the cost.

The total bill of materials on a $600 iPhone – the supplies that go into final assembly – is $187.51, according to iSuppli.

The least expensive part of the process is manufacturing and assembly. And that often takes place here in southern China, where workers are paid less than a dollar an hour to solder, assemble and package products for the world’s best-known brands.

No company does more of it than Foxconn, a division of the Hon Hai Group of Taiwan, the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer.

With 800,000 workers in China alone and contracts to supply Apple, Dell and H.P., Foxconn is an electronics goliath that also sources supplies, designs parts and uses its enormous size and military-style efficiency to assemble and speed a wide range of products to market.

“They’re like Wal-Mart stores,” Professor Dedrick said. “They’re low-margin, high-volume. They survive by being efficient.”

The world of contract manufacturers is invisible to consumers.

But it’s a $250 billion industry, with just a handful of companies like Foxconn, Flextronics and Jabil Circuit manufacturing and assembling for all the global electronics brands.

They compete fiercely on price to earn small profit margins, analysts say. And they seek to benefit from tiny operational changes.

When a company is operating on the slimmest of profit margins as contract manufacturers are, soaring labor costs pose a serious problem. Wages in China have risen by more than 50 percent since 2005, analysts say, and this year many factories, under pressure from local governments and workers who feel they have been underpaid for too long, have raised wages by an extra 20 to 30 percent.

China’s currency has also appreciated sharply against the United States dollar since 2005, and after a two-year pause by Beijing, economists expect the renminbi to rise about 3 to 5 percent a year for the next several years.

“It takes 3,000 procedures to assemble an H.P. computer,” says Isaac Wang, an iSuppli analyst based in China. “If a contract manufacturer can find a way to save 10 percent of the procedures, then it gets a real good deal.”

Contract manufacturers like Foxconn are now searching for ways to reduce costs. Foxconn is considering moving inland, where wages are 20 to 30 percent lower. The company is also spending heavily on manufacturing many of the parts, molds and metals that are used in computers and handsets, even trying to find larger and cheaper sources of raw material.

“We either outsource the components manufacturing to other suppliers, or we can research and manufacture our own components,” says Arthur Huang, a Foxconn spokesman. “We even have contracts with mines which are located near our factories.”

Many analysts are optimistic the big brands will find new innovations to improve profitability. But within the crowd, there is growing skepticism about China’s manufacturing model after years of pressing workers to toil six or seven days a week, 10 to 12 hours a day.

“We’ve concluded Hon Hai’s labor-intensive model is not sustainable,” says Mr. Wang at iSuppli Research. “Though it can keep hiring 800,000 to one million workers, the problem is these workers can’t keep working like screws in an inhuman system.”

This type of low-end assembly work is also no longer favored in China, analysts say, because it does not produce big returns for the companies or the country. “China doesn’t want to be the workshop of the world anymore,” says Pietra Rivoli, a professor of international business at Georgetown University and author of “The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy.”

“The value goes to where the knowledge is.”

Chen Xiaoduan contributed research.

China's workers protesting

They will keep Gillard’s Fair Work Act ‘that is not bad’, but with ‘tweaking’.

The ruling corporations and employer organisations know major sections of WorkChoices remain in the Fair Work Act.

Gillard and Crean promise no changes to the Fair Work Act.

Australian workers campaigned for Our Rights at Work. But as this blog shows, citing ACTU submissions, the Fair Work Act fails to deliver what was wanted for new legal effective rights.

WorkChoices has not disappeared, in the real world of industrial relations and laboor law.

This spin of the 2010 election is like Orwell’s 1984.

Abbott and Abetz are targeted on their lies by unions. See ACTU press releases below.

As well, union activists are campaigning amongst union members in marginal seats in a strong anti-Abott push.

We see Abetz committing to not change the Fair Work Act.

This is unbelieveable in the face of demands by the corporates and their associations the BCA, Minerals Council, Mines and metals, AIG, MBA etc.

But Abetz admits ‘tweaking’.

Such as by regulation!

Regulations avoids Parliament.

Here is one example amongst hundreds.

Howard under WorkChoices had repressive anti-union ‘prohibited content’ regulations.

These extensive regulations banned unions and employers from agreement on many issues that these parties wanted to agree on.

These regulations were a severe breach of free collective bargaining.

Employers were forbidden to agree in collective enterprise bargaining to long-established rights.

One right forbidden was trade union training leave.

Union training is back under the Fair Work Act – see earlier blogs.

Abetz with his legal corporate lawyers will “tweak” regulations to continue making employees active in their unions ineffective and bias employers.

Prohibition by regulation severely legally restricted the ability for unions facing hostile management to disorganise.

WorkChoices’ essential anti-union thrust can be reintroduced as tweaks by the right-wing zealot Abetz – no doubt.

In the anti-Abott campaigning, unions promote the principles of a good industrial relations system.

The legislative framework has to be an advance of a labour law for the legal protection of collective rights for workers to effectively campaign for our economic, social and political interests.

Yet has Gillard a ‘way forward’ for workers’ rights?

Only minimally.

On the merits of industrial relations policy reform, the Greens have to be supported – at the local, regional and national level – and specifically in the Senate.

Here in Canberra, Lin Hatfield Dodds is the Greens candidate for one of the two ACT Senate positions.

The popular Labor Senator Kate Lundy Canberra will be returned comfortably.

Canberra has to reject the incumbent Liberal Senator Garry Humphries – in the past it was close. We shall see this time.

Abbott and Abetz are targeted on their lies by unions.

ACTU Your Rights at Work

Coalition and WorkChoices pose big risks to jobs and Australia’s economic recovery

15 July, 2010
The biggest clouds on the horizon for working Australians are Tony Abbott’s plans to change the economic policy directions of the country and bring back the worst aspects of WorkChoices.

Australia’s economy is outperforming the rest of the developed world because of good management by the Labor Government and industrial stability from the Fair Work Act, but this would all be put at risk by the Coalition, said ACTU President Ged Kearney.

Ms Kearney said more than 350,000 jobs were created over the past year, coinciding with the end of WorkChoices, and another 475,000 were forecast over the next two years.

But the reintroduction of WorkChoices and savage cuts to public services and infrastructure investment under the Coalition would jeopardise all that, Ms Kearney said.

She said the Labor Government’s economic record was in stark contrast to the Coalition’s plans.

“Last year as the Global Financial Crisis threatened Australia, the Government took tough decisions that protected jobs and set a platform for the recovery,” Ms Kearney said.

“Yesterday’s updated economic statement from Treasury gives working Australians cause for optimism for the next few years.

“The Labor Government’s Budget provides for investment in national infrastructure, skills and training, productivity and participation, better healthcare, and long-term improvements to national savings.

“Australia’s public debt is lower than almost all developed economies, and the Budget will be back in surplus within three years.

“The Liberal alternative would hurt working families.

“Tony Abbott opposes measures to stimulate the economy, will cut jobs and public services and is refusing to increase superannuation.

The Liberals will also abandon the National Broadband Network and wind back other key infrastructure projects.

“His main economic policy is to bring back WorkChoices by another name.”

Rights for working Australians is key issue for 2010 election
17 July, 2010 | Media Release This federal election is about the rights of all working Australians and the threat of a future return to WorkChoices under the Coalition, say unions.

Australian unions welcome the announcement today by Prime Minister Julia Gillard of a federal election on August 21, said ACTU President Ged Kearney.

Ms Kearney said the 2010 election will be a referendum on the rights of people to have job security and decent working conditions.

“In this election working Australians have a clear choice between the Coalition which brought in WorkChoices and Labor which restored rights and protected jobs during the Global Financial Crisis.

“Unions will be campaigning in the election to ensure working Australians know the facts about the Coalition’s record of attacking workers’ rights and putting jobs and services for working families at risk.

“Australia’s economy is the best-performing in the developed world and 1000 new jobs a week have been created since the end of WorkChoices and the introduction of Labor’s Fair Work laws.

“Real wages have grown with low paid workers gaining a $26 a week pay increase and productivity is almost four times higher than under the Liberals’ last year in government.

“The Labor Government deserves credit for making a very solid start considering the difficulties of the GFC and working Australians and unions will expect more from its next term.

“The election of a Tony Abbott government will hurt working families.

“The Coalition opposes stimulus measures that are protecting hundreds of thousands of jobs and will cut government funding for jobs, infrastructure and important health and education services that families rely upon.

“The Coalition will abandon the National Broadband Network and other infrastructure projects and skills programs that are essential to drive national productivity.

“Workers will also be denied financial security in retirement by the Coalition’s refusal to support Labor’s move to increase national superannuation to 12%,” said Ms Kearney.

http://www.actu.org.au

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