Vietnam latest news - Thanh Nien Daily | Republicans’ most hypocritical economic argument

The Republican position on federal spending could not be clearer: It doesn’t create jobs. Except when it goes to defense contractors.

Under the debt-ceiling deal reached last year, planned spending is going to be “sequestered” -- that is, cut -- starting next January. The defense budget is going to take half the hit. On July 12, Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign issued a press release with a statement from Bill Bolling, the Republican lieutenant governor of Virginia, attacking President Barack Obama for cutting defense too much.

“We are very concerned about the impact that sequestration could have on Virginia’s economy,” Bolling said in the statement. He added, “It could also deliver a devastating blow to the private-sector defense contractors who make up a big part of Virginia’s economy, especially in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads. This is just another example of how the president’s approach to running the country is jeopardizing our economic viability.”

The same day, the state’s attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, made the same point in his own statement for the Romney campaign. And the campaign hosted a conference call where Representative Randy Forbes, a Virginia Republican, said, “If you look at it from an economic point of view, this is something that is going to have an enormous, devastating blow on Virginia, especially in northern Virginia and in the Hampton Roads area.” There would be “a huge impact on beauty salons, restaurants, car dealers, the entire economy.”

Virginia’s bounty

The cuts probably will hurt Virginia, since it is, according to a 2011 Bloomberg Government study, the top recipient of federal defense dollars. Is that really a reason to keep the spending going, though? I’ve got nothing against northern Virginia -- along with Hampton Roads, it’s one of my favorite closely divided parts of a swing state. The federal government, though, does more than enough for the region already. You would expect Republicans, at least, to think so.

It’s not just Virginia politicians and the Romney campaign who are making the economic argument for defense spending. It’s a case that has also been made by House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon, Senator John McCain and Senator John Cornyn -- Republicans all -- among others.

Representative Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, calls his Republican colleagues’ insistence that defense spending be protected to safeguard jobs “weaponized Keynesianism.” His accusation is unfair -- to Keynesians. The Keynesian argument for government spending applies only during economic slumps. The case Bolling and the others are making recognizes no such limitation: The federal government is supposed to keep the dollars flowing to particular communities for all time.

There is, of course, no reason to think that defense spending is more helpful to the economy than other kinds of federal spending. Republicans have been dead-set against sending federal money to states to help them avoid laying off teachers. Yet teachers, too, spend money at beauty salons and car dealerships. They, too, have “good paying and reliable jobs,” as the National Association of Manufacturers said of defense workers in a letter opposing cuts in April.

Endless spending

Needless to say, on the theory that the Republicans are advancing, the federal budget can never be cut. The US Conference of Mayors will be able to say that cuts in social spending will devastate the economy of our cities with at least as much justice as defense-heavy areas can complain about cuts to the military. Rural areas can say the same thing about farm subsidies.

Reductions in federal spending, whether for defense or social programs, will, of course, be disruptive to the people, businesses and communities who have come to rely on it. The cuts should not, however, hurt the broader economy. When federal spending falls and jobs tied to that spending disappear, private-sector spending should normally increase and create jobs tied to it.

So long as the Federal Reserve is targeting inflation or nominal spending, total economic activity should stay roughly the same, even if its composition changes. (If the Fed responds to government spending cuts by tightening money, jobs will be lost. But that would be the fault of the Fed, not the budget writers.)

The Bloomberg Government study listed the 10 states that depend the most on defense dollars. Seven of them voted for the Republican presidential candidate in 2008, and an eighth, Virginia, has usually voted Republican in presidential races. So the party’s interest in keeping defense jobs makes political sense.

Yet the purpose of the defense budget shouldn’t be to subsidize particular people or areas. We don’t buy tanks and train soldiers to keep beauty salons in business. The Republicans resisting big defense cuts generally think that they would jeopardize our national security. That’s a debatable proposition. So debate it. What Republicans should not do is make an economic argument for defense spending that is both untrue and inconsistent with everything else they say about spending and the economy.

When they do that, they treat the nation’s defense as little more than a source of political pork.

Wages for Vietnamese lower than Chinese Workers

Vietnamese workers have to struggle with Chinese for jobs, on home market

September 14, 2011  about Uncategorized

LookAtVietnam - On the construction sites in Vietnam, where Chinese
enterprises act as the general contractors, Vietnamese workers have to struggle
with Chinese for jobs.

Wages for Vietnamese lower for Chinese workers

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Chinese and Japanese enterprises won the bids to become the EPC (engineering,
construction, procurement) contractors of the Hai Phong thermopower plant.
The construction of the thermopower plants 1 and 2 was kicked off in November
2005, while Chinese contractors are the overwhelming majority on the
construction site.
A senior executive of the Hai Phong 1 thermopower plant which has been put into
operation, with four power generation units with the capacity of 300 MW per
each, contractors need to have at least 4000 workers working at the same time on
the construction site.
Therefore, the Hai Phong thermopower plant was hoped to help create thousands of
jobs to local workers. However, this has not come true in reality.
“In the peak period, in 2008-2009, the Chinese contractors brought 2000 Chinese
workers to the construction site, including the ones who took simple jobs which
can be absolutely undertaken by Vietnamese laborers,” said Nguyen The Khang,
Head of the Personnel Department of the Hai Phong Thermopower plant.
Sources said that the actual number of Chinese workers was higher than the above
figure, believing that the number of Chinese workers on the site once reached
3000.
Meanwhile, Vietnamese workers have to struggle to find jobs at the big project.
Nguyen Van N, a local laborer, who is working for the Hai Phong 2 power plant,
said that it is very difficult to obtain a job on the site. N said that when he
worked for the Hai Phong 1 power plant, he just earned less than 100,000 dong
per day for his work as mason or porter.
N said that local workers can earn much less than Chinese ones. A Vietnamese
welder, for example, can earn 150,000-180,000 dong per day, while the pay for a
Chinese welder is double or triple.
“Contractors and laborers negotiate about the wages directly, not through the
project’s investor. Therefore, I do not know to whom I have to claim about the
low wages,” N said.
“There always exists the discriminatory treatment to Chinese and Vietnamese
workers,” N continued.
Also according to N, if Vietnamese workers directly negotiate with Chinese
contractors, they will get 100 percent of their daily wages. Meanwhile, if the
workers get jobs via Vietnamese interpreters, they would not get the full pay.
For example, workers would get 130,000 dong a day instead of 150,000 dong.
However, no one dares complain about that, because they want jobs.
“If you complain, you will be sacked. If you don’t want this job, there will be
others who replace you,” N said.
Similarly, a Vietnamese worker who is in charge of kitchen duty can earn 2
million dong a month, while a security guard can earn 1.5 million dong, and no
allowance. Meanwhile, a Chinese security guard at the My Son residential quarter
is paid 10 million dong per month, or 10 times higher than the pay to a
Vietnamese worker.

Project’s investor has no right to intervene
Khang has confirmed that there exist the gaps in the pay for Vietnamese and the
pay for Chinese workers.
Ha Van Gian, Deputy General Director of the Hai Phong Thermopower Plant, said
that Chinese enterprises act as the contractors, who implement the BT contract
(build – transfer), which means that they build the plant and then transfer to
the Vietnamese side. Therefore, the Vietnamese side only has the right to
supervise and speed and the quality of the project, and it does not have the
right to intervene the contractors’ use of laborers.
Khang said that the Vietnamese investor once asked the Chinese contractors to
use Vietnamese workers, but the contractors reasoned many factors, including the
language barrier, to continue using Chinese workers.
Source: SGTT

Over 45,000 garment jobs lost | Business

Factory closures far outstripped openings last year, Ministry of Labour reports

AT Least 106 garment and shoe factories were closed last year, mostly because of a slump in Cambodia’s key export industry, forcing more than 45,000 workers out of employment, Ministry of Labour figures showed late Monday.

Oum Mean, secretary of state at the ministry, said that 66 additional factories had suspended operations over the same period, temporarily affecting an additional 38,124 workers.

“At the same time, we also saw 48 new established factories that employed 16,886 workers,” he said, adding that the government trained 40,000 unemployed garment workers in agriculture up to October.

It was unclear what percentage of closures were factories that had been hit by the global economic crisis – which prompted a 15.8 percent slide in Cambodian garment and apparel exports last year – and how many had closed and immediately reopened to benefit from tax breaks, reportedly a practice that happens frequently in the Kingdom.

The Ministry of Labour said at the end of September that 130 garment factories closed or suspended operations in Cambodia in the first three quarters, meaning an additional 42 factories had shut down from October to the end of December.

Just over 30,000 garment workers were made redundant last year up to the end of September.

Figures from the government showed a smaller closure rate than those by the Free Trade Union of Workers of the Kingdom of Cambodia, a body that represents workers’ rights across different sectors.

President Chea Mony said late Monday that according to union data 135 garment and shoe factories had closed since the start of the global economic crisis in Cambodia, around August 2008, causing 78,000 workers to lose their jobs. Most redundancies had been in the garment industry, he added.

“I am concerned that workers have increasingly been losing their jobs … it is the government’s duty to address this,” said Chea Mony.

Oum Mean said the government inspects every factory in the Kingdom to calculate its employment data.

“We have not finalised the figures [for closures and job losses in January and February] yet,” said Oum Mean.

“But we have hope for 2010 because ... we see that the garment sector is stable.”

Evidence so far has suggested that openings and closures were about the same, he added.

A representative of the Garment Manufacturers Association of Cambodia (GMAC) told the Post last week, however, that the sector is far from recovery.

Speaking after the release of Ministry of Commerce figures that showed an annualised 0.2 percent drop in garment and apparel exports in December, GMAC Secretary General Ken Loo pointed out that shipments were still down after dismal figures for the last quarter of 2008.

He added that anecdotal evidence for January and this month suggested the situation has yet to improve.

The Ministry of Labour’s report of extensive job losses in the garment sector comes as unions have threatened strikes and put pressure on GMAC to consider a rise in the industry minimum wage of US$50 per month, a move factory owners say is unfeasible given the continued slump.

GMAC said last week that it would look into the issue of wages, which unions said last year should be raised to more than $90 per month based on living costs in the capital.

Millions of Chinese migrant workers lose jobs | The Australian

LAST week's announcement by Pacific Brands that 1850 Australians were to lose their jobs to China spread gloom among workers at large-scale local manufacturing industries. But in reality Chinese migrant workers are faring much worse. More than the equivalent of the whole population of Australia, 20-30 million people, have already lost their jobs and thus also their housing in the factory towns.

They travelled from their rural homes where they had long been underemployed, barely scraping a living, to stay for extended periods in dormitories in factories in coastal cities, making goods mostly bought in the US, Britain and elsewhere in the West.

Credit and confidence have collapsed in the West, and so has the demand for the clothes, the toys, the plasma television screens they make.

And despite growing rhetoric from Beijing about broadening the base of China's economy by boosting consumer demand, the policies that would have achieved this were not put in place before the country's main export markets collapsed.

The Communist Party rules by consensus as well as control, and the leadership has found it difficult to balance the country's conflicting interests -- including between the developed coast, with the jobs, and the less developed heartland, with the struggling farmers -- while introducing a fresh wave ofreforms.

But there are signs that at last reforms to modernise the economy are under way. It is easier for party leaders to explain this on the grounds that without change now, the Government will be forced to confront scores of thousands more "mass incidents" as it calls the demonstrations and protests already stirring in rural China.

He Guangping, the deputy head of the public security department in Guangdong, the southern province that makes a third of China's exports, says: "Faced with the complicated changes in public security in society, especially given the impact of the international financial crisis, we expect the public security situation to be grim.

"All kinds of illegal and criminal activities will continue to increase ... The task of safeguarding social stability, law and order overall, is arduous."

China is big on anniversaries, and it has only just finished celebrating 30 years since Deng Xiaoping opened the door to business, beginning with the farmers.

Since then, China's remarkable development -- which has seen hundreds of millions of people emerge from poverty -- has been driven substantially by its becoming the world's factory.

About 60 per cent of China's exports are made by foreign-owned or foreign-invested companies, chiefly from Taiwan and Hong Kong, and some simply locked the doors after giving their workers their tickets home for their annual leave at Chinese New Year a month ago.

Most had made profits for years, but were confronting ever-narrowing margins as costs rose and the big buyers, such as Wal-Mart, kept screwing prices down.

And they lacked access to financial support. China's banks, all state-owned, rarely lend to the private sector and especially not to small or medium businesses.

The rural communities that have depended on the money sent home by the women and men working away -- about 200 million in all, 15 per cent of the population -- are deprived of the income on which they had grown to depend. Many now also have to sustain an influx of adults who have not lived there for years.





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