A Chinese factory employee set fire to a textile plant in China’s southwestern Sichuan province in his frustration over unpaid wages of just 800 yuan (or US$111), according to videos posted on social media and eyewitness accounts shared with Radio Free Asia.
My dear overworked and underpaid fellow Americans please take notes…
Should have just given the man his stapler.
Should have given him his $111
This is how you do it!
We (the west) often look at the chinese with some amount of arrogance about them being “peasants”.
Truth is, Winnie Pooh has to take some care, because they will fuck things up if their situation gets worse instead of better.I mean, people who think the Chinese people are just ‘peasants’ tend to be pretty goddamn ignorant.
Systems are difficult to oppose in every society. We’re all just trying to get by.
ignorant is too light, I say racism, say whatever you want about china, if you see Chinese people as peasants you’re a racist POS
I see plenty of typical* Americans on the streets who can barely plot their own country on a world map. At some point, it is an actual lack of information, ignorance, whether by their environment or their own disinterest, rather than some racial or nationalist prejudice. It’s offensive and stupid, and shouldn’t be excused, but sometimes I think it isn’t even racism. Or, at least, their own racism - it’s still the effect of a nationalist exceptionalist government and culture, so racism is still relevant to their ignorance regardless of what their own opinions, morals and character might be.
Now, all that said, there are millions who are just racist pieces of shit who know better. So fuck them.
* I know the country isn’t homogeneous and there is no typical American, but I’m not talking about just super rural folk or the centers of cities
The vast majority of people saying Chinese people are ‘peasants’ are racist, but if someone told me that they met someone in Fuckknowswhereville, USA, who genuinely thought that mainland China was still struggling under a feudal regime, living hand-to-mouth with villages of illiterates who lacked the educational tools to organize against their overlords, and was genuinely overjoyed to hear the contrary, that the Qing Dynasty had fallen and that China entered the modern world, rather than disbelieving or dismissive… well, I’ve heard too many innocently stupid opinions from my fellow Americans about international issues to reject that out of hand.
Admittedly, being from Fuckknowswhereville, USA, also greatly increases the chance of them being horrifically racist pieces of shit.
But that was absolutely the same for peasants? Which then would make it accurate again to call them oppressed peasants?
That’s not the defining characterisric for peasants, you pawn :p
“Peasant” has much more wide-reaching connotations than just powerlessness.
Peasants? In one of the top capitalist countries?? Haha, good one… They certainly have farms, but that’s just one end of the production …
Nothing wrong with being a peasant, in this context: History is full of peasant revolts. People in the European middle ages were perfectly aware of how the system was stacked against them. Arguably, more than they’re now.
“just 800 yuan (or US$111)”
“just”
Fuck man, I’d go ballistic over $111 of unpaid wages, and that’s probably a bigger chunk of that employee’s monthly wages than mine.
Most payments in China are monthy, not weekly/bi-weekly as with in the west.
You’d be mad too if you find out you’re not gonna be paid for work done for the past month*.
Edit: *Or if its only partial payment
With west you mean usa? Most of Europe gets paid on a monthly basis.
Most payments in China are monthy, not weekly/bi-weekly as with in the west.
Where in “the west” do you live? My paychecks (Switzerland) are definitely monthly.
I only ever heard of North Americans getting paid weekly/bi-weekly as standard.
A bunch of Europeans in this comment section forgetting there are more “western” countries than just western Europe and the USA/north America.
Fortnightly is the most common in Australia, with some people paid monthly also (depends on the company).
And thankful for this. Monthly sounds terrible
Notice how I specifically talked about places I heard of, never claimed I knew of every country. And I don’t really care one way or another myself tbh, I guess monthly mostly serves to reduce paperwork. More frequent sounds like it might better as the employee.
https://www.erieri.com/salary/job/factory-worker/china
The average pay for a Factory Worker is CNY 58,959 a year and CNY 28 an hour in China.
That’d be 26 hours at average factory wage, according to this site. I don’t think that it’s likely more than a week, if that.
My first reaction was “That’s not very much - guess they should have paid him!”
I doubt they actually owe ¥800 in total, because they could have just pay 99 other workers ¥8 less and can still pay this person ¥792, this way, the factory owner only owes ¥8 to 100 different individuals rather than oweing ¥800 to one individual. I doubt someone is gonna do arson for ¥8 delayed payment.
So I assume they probably owe other employees as well. Just to illustrate:
If they owe ¥800 to 100 employees, each.
That’s ¥80 000 Yuan/RMB ≈ $11 140 USD
A lot of debt.
Ummm, based?
We should all strive to be more like this man.
Meanwhile most Americans who are forced to work full time with no paid vacation or healthcare instead go off and say, “I don’t pay attention to politics, it’s depressing. I’m just gonna work on myself,” as they accept never being able to afford their dream vacation, their own home, or that new truck they desperately need.
BASED
Fight back!
If the CCP’s all about championing the humble worker then surely they’ll approve of this guy’s actions, right?
CCP shuts down alternative unions and prevents any left wing demonstrations, it’s ironic, you don’t have to fall into a party line when you’re not a party member yet they’re being hunted down as if they just broke the rules of
centralised democracydemocratic centralismcentralised democracy
I think you mean democratic centralism.
“Centralised democracy” I think would make sense when contrasting parliamentarian vs. direct democracy. None of the ML parties ever implemented democratic centralism but bureaucratic centralism (ie. party leaders decide, base follows). It was never intended to be an organisation principle for a whole country, just a party, OTOH it’s a neat way to dress up autocracy as democracy so of course it’s been done plenty of times.
Lenin described the SPD as democratically centralist and well, yes, maybe back then. The structures are still in place but the whole party is paralysed when it comes to making decisions so in the end the Seeheimer rule, i.e. the neoliberal wing. It’s a rather perverse situation: An actually still lefty base, or at least union people, following a neoliberal vanguard with red paintjob.
Yea brain fart, good catch
it’s ironic, you don’t have to fall into a party line when you’re not a party member yet they’re being hunted down as if they just broke the rules of centralised democracy
It’s because you just broke the rules of dictatorship ;P
Stakanov found a lighter
Surely they’d prefer workers to go through official channels so the owner of the factory can be prosecuted, not act alone and go on adventurist rampages. They’re not anarchists lol
From the article:
Police, however, said the claim that “800 yuan in wages were owed” was false, and that the company was in the process of approving payment of 5,370 yuan in wages. It blamed the factory fire on the arsonist’s suicidal thoughts, and said police would deal strictly with those spreading rumors.
So the “official channels” would just tell him unpaid wages don’t exist
What about the ACFTU? Or one of the labour inspectorates? Going to police is the first step, but it’s hardly the only official channel.
The education system clearly failed to prepare this worker for what they should do if their boss steals their wages, but there were definitely other options besides going all propaganda of the deed on the factory. I certainly sympathize with them though!
You know what’s funny, is that on Voyager, you can’t instantly see what instance someone is registered too unless you tap on the username or respond, but I could still tell your tankie ass was from .ml before doing any of that.
PS: hilarious that someone with a username pun of communist is defending the capitalist business owner so hard too
Even other .ml users in the thread are praising the worker. You can’t make this shit up.
defending the capitalist business owner
I did no such thing, don’t accuse me of defending some bougie piece of shit for stealing wages.
I’m just saying, the solution isn’t to destroy productive capacity or go on an individualistic adventure. It solves nothing and now those other workers just lost their jobs.
There were other steps that could have been taken. If they had exhausted every avenue then maybe an adventure is all that’s left, but I just don’t think that’s what happened here.
And if adventure is the only hope, at least just target the boss and don’t take way peoples’ work opportunities.
Official Channels
So same as an US-American petitioning trump? 🤣
so the owner of the factory can be prosecuted, not act alone and go on adventurist rampages
I guess you oppose burning teslas? Bootlick much?
Have you lit a factory on fire or are you a bootlicker too?
So same as an US-American petitioning trump? 🤣
What if I told you that the US and China are different countries and that they have different governments?
I guess you oppose burning teslas? Bootlick much?
I oppose adventurism.
People should be organized and follow democratic centralism, parties and unions and organizations and such. They shouldn’t just go off on whatever adventure pops in their head because they’re mad at some rich guy for being a piece of shit.
Again, that shit is for anarchists, and in case you haven’t noticed they haven’t been very historically successful.
Based
Note that RFA is mentioned as a very bad source in other communities.
RFA is a literal CIA propaganda outlet. Like directly created and funded by the CIA to spread anti China propaganda.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Asia_(Committee_for_a_Free_Asia)
Radio Free Asia (RFA) was a news agency operated from 1951 to 1955 by the Central Intelligence Agency, through the Committee for Free Asia, to broadcast anti-Communist propaganda.
Well China is more or less state capitalist now so… Based CIA?
I don’t know if I’m joking or not, I hate both the CIA and China so whatever.
Where’s his picture so we can canonized him like St Luigi.
