International Law

Sympathy for Factory Owners

By Stan

Whatever your stance on free trade and companies that have relocated manufacturing operations from their home country to a lower-cost jurisdiction, you have to admit that it’s tough out there for the unabashed capitalists these days. In addition to all those blue collar types in the U.S. and elsewhere complaining about the sad state of the U.S. manufacturing sector, now enterprises have this kind of thing to deal with (from the AP):

Unemployed worker Wang Wenming was angry at his boss for shutting down a massive Chinese factory this week that made toys for Mattel Inc., Hasbro Inc. and other American companies.

But the assembly line worker was also furious at the United States.

"This financial crisis in America is going to kill us. It’s already taking food out of our mouths," the 42-year-old laborer said Friday as he stood outside the shuttered Smart Union Group (Holdings) Ltd. factory in the southern city of Dongguan.

The company, which has struggled as global growth has slowed in recent months, employed 7,000 people in mainland China and Hong Kong. It wasn’t immediately clear how many have lost their jobs.

Economic upheaval in the U.S. is already changing and shrinking China’s vast manufacturing hub in the southern province of Guangdong, long regarded as the world’s factory floor. However, factory closures won’t just be a China problem — shoppers will feel the effect in malls and stores in the U.S. and Europe.

It sucks to be the boss sometimes. I wonder what will happen after these factories move to Vietnam (or elsewhere). Will the disgruntled worker in Dongguan team up with the pissed off guy in Ohio or Michigan and start a global labor movement? Perhaps the American will continue to blame the Chinese (and vice versa), and the Vietnamese worker will, by flying under the radar, go unnoticed.

Either way, the factory owner will be vilified by everyone. I’m not generally not known for being an apologist for the bosses of this world, but in this case, I’m making an exception.

Full post as published by China Hearsay on October 20, 2008 (boomark / email).