Newshoggers.com

Old School Labour Relations

By BJ Bjornson

Seems to me that I’ve read about this kind of thing happening in North America in decades past, or at least the precursor of what made this a story, a plant manager calling in the police to beat and kill a union leader. The counterattack doesn’t seem to be quite as common.

Workers at the Regency Ceramics factory in the India raided the home of their boss, and beat him senseless with led pipes after a wage dispute turned ugly.

The workers were enraged enough to kill president K. C. Chandrashekhar after their union leader, M. Murali Mohan, was killed by baton-wielding riot police on Thursday. The labor violence occurred in Yanam, a small city in Andra Pradesh state on India’s east coast.Police were called to the factory by management to quell a labor dispute. The workers had been calling for higher pay and reinstatement of previously laid off workers since October. Murali was fired a few hours later. The next morning, at 06:00 on Friday, Murali went to the factory along with some workers and tried to obstruct the morning shift, local media reported. Long batons, known as lathis in India, were used by police who charged the workers, injuring at least 20 of them, including Murali. He died on the way to hospital, according to The Times of India. Hundreds of workers gathered outside the police station and demanded that officers be charged with homicide.

I didn’t bother commenting on the recent NYT article on conditions at Apple’s supplier factories in China a couple of days ago since that story was more than well-covered already, but it does an excellent job of showing the costs of pushing the costs of manufacturing ever downward.

Per the Forbes story above, India is the poorest of the BRIC countries and its factory workers are paid the least, so maybe it isn’t too much of a surprise that disputes between management and labour are far nastier there than elsewhere, but I do wonder sometimes if the continued “flattening” of wages worldwide might bring such scenes back to these shores one day.

A win in Scotland, a Republican debate, and Pakistan

By Steve Hynd

For those of you who don't yet listen, I thought maybe I should summarize last night's Polizeros Radio. It was one of our widest ranging discussions yet, with a lot packed into 60 minutes. Our host Josh Mull dived straight in with the Scottish National Party's landmark win in the elections there and its possible impact. As my co-panellist Bob Morris puts it:

The SNP describes itself as center-left, which by US standards would be considered far left. They favor no fees at universities and have already instituted free prescriptions for drugs. Scotland has huge mostly untapped wind, wave, and tidal power and could easily support itself should it vote for independence, something the SNP plans on bringing to referendum within five years.

The SNP, who have been around for decades, won because they a) never gave up, b) clearly stand for something. This is how to win in America too.

The SNP's members, as lefties, could have decided to be a part of the larger UK Labour Party but didn't because they had that one agenda item - greater representation and eventual independence for Scotland - that Labour was never going to have. Over the years, and especially under Blair, the Labour Party moved towards the center and that left the SNP's members with a realization: they were now the only party advocating the rest of their democratic socialist agenda too. The lesson for American lefties should be obvious. Why vote for a party that will only ever enact a small portion of your agenda? You deserve to have a party to vote for that will represent you 100%. If that party doesn't exist, form it and build it, even if it takes decades.

From there, we moved the discussion to the first Republican debate. I didn't watch it but Josh was struck by both the amount of antiwar and anti-drug war views coming from the podium and the amount of cheering those views were getting. The Republican leadership are now more anti-war than Democratic leaders. The tea party seems to be waning in power and saner (paleocon) Republican views seem to be resurgent. That's a good thing in my opinion but there's also a certain amount of "lets do to them what they did to Bush" going on, I think. Neither party seems to be particularly anti-war when it's in office. Still, we're seeing a Republican race which isn't anywhere as crazilly wingnut (yet) as many expected. I repeated my prediction from a Polizeros Radio show weeks ago - we're going to see the Right elect a grey, uninspiring, compromise candidate this cycle, basically "doing a Kerry" as the Dems did in 2004.

All this talk of Republicans being anti-war led us to Pakistan. After all, the way in which Osama Bin Laden's death and hiding place have highlighted the fact that the Afghan war can never be won by the US. If Pakistan is aiding and directing militants and terror groups, offering them safe haven, then no amount of "clear, hold, build" will be effective. Maybe Republicans in opposition are just faster to get that than Democrats cheerleading their president for right or wrong - especially when it tallies nicely with the Right's "zomg the deficit!" schtick.

But Pakistan may have finally bitten off more than it can chew at a regional level. Two weeks ago, it was the consensus that the Afghan government had finally decided to offer Pakistan whatever it wanted just to get the violence to stop. But now we see a new Afghan intransigence, a sense of vindication that what they'd been saying about Pakistan's double-dealing has finally been brought out in the open by the OBL raid where US officials can't pretend any more. And India has been quick to step into the breach, with a strategic trade agreement and an increase of around 25% (some $500 million) in its aid to Afghanistan.

I'll go waaaay out on a limb and suggest that we may see the residual force in Afghanistan after 2014 now not be Americans or NATO but Indians in UN blue hats. For India, its a move in their cold war with China - one in which Pakistan is already firmly in the Chinese camp. So far, that cold war has been entirely waged by economic leveraging and a bit of proxy feuding but there's always a chance of it turning hot in future as both regional powers bid for economic superpowerdom the only way there is - maritime trade.

In fact, i wonder if analysts in the US are missing a key Chinese motivation when they look at the Chinese military/industrial complex through glasses that say it always has to be about the US. For instance, China's anti-carrier ballistic missile is supposedly incredibly innacurate and unlikely to break through a US carrier group's AEGIS defenses. But if it is aimed at India's future single carrier then it makes far more sense - because then a dozen missiles only have to score a hit once. It may be that the Chinese are as focussed on India as the Indians are on them. In which case the US is peculiarly irrelevant, if China has no intention of competing with American military might. It's not always about us.

Anyway, as I say it was one of our most wide-ranging shows. You can listen to the whole thing here and please, join us next week.