You can’t exclude any hypothesis … It’s practically impossible that here in an [oil] installation like this which is fully automated everywhere and that has thousands of responsible workers night and day, civilian and military, and that there is a gas leak for 3 or 4 days and nobody responds. This is impossible.” – President Chavez responding to US media and opposition charges that the explosion and fire at the oil refinery was due to government negligence. August, 26, 2010 Introduction Only 43 days before the Venezuelan presidential election and with President Chavez leading by a persistent margin of 20 percentage points, an explosion and fire at the Amuay refinery killed at least 48 people – half of those were members of the National Guard – and destroyed oil facilities producing 645,000 barrels of oil per day. Immediately following the explosion and fire, on script, all the mass media in the US and Great Britain, and the right wing Venezuelan opposition launched a blanket condemnation of the government as the perpetrator of the disaster accusing it of “gross negligence” and “under-investment” in safety standards.
Tag: workers
Mineworkers and their supporters have continued to express outrage at the police killing of 34 strikers at the Marikana mines on August 16 through mass memorial services and rallies. In addition, strike actions spread to…
Lonmin, Platinum Industry at Root of Marikana Massacre in South Africa: 44 people killed in week of violence prompting government to declare week of mourning Lonmin Platinum PLC has ordered its striking workers back to…
Struggling US Internet pioneer Yahoo! says it will slash some 2000 jobs in a purge aimed at transforming into a “smaller, nimbler, more profitable” company. Yahoo! chief executive Scott Thompson, who took the helm in…
Chen Xin (China Daily) and Reuters reports on the latest decision made by Foxconn in terms of improving work conditions for its workers. Foxconn vows to reduce hours at factories Foxconn, the largest supplier of Apple Inc, said on Friday that it will remedy its workplace abuses after a US labor auditor commissioned by Apple inspected Foxconn’s three plants in China. A report, filed by the nonprofit Fair Labor Association and released on Thursday, found that Foxconn employees work 56 hours a week on average – which is more than the 40 regular hours a week and 36 hours of overtime a month that they are allowed under Chinese law. In some cases, the report found that employees had worked more than seven days in a row without taking a 24-hour break, as they are required to. And many were not properly paid for working overtime, it said. In February and March, the Fair Labor Association surveyed more than 35,000 workers in three Foxconn factories, two of which are in the coastal manufacturing hub of Shenzhen and…
A Symbol of Labor Exploitation In 1984 I bought one of the first Apple Macintosh computers to roll off the line in Cupertino, California. At 132 K ROM (hardly enough to power a toaster by today’s…
On November 28, 2011, five workers at the Port of Suez took a stand for justice by officially refusing to allow a U.S. shipment of lethal tear gas into Egypt. According to documents seen by…
Two migrant workers carry bags of cement from the production line in a dusty cement plant in Huaibei city, East China’s Anhui province, on Wednesday. [Woo He / For China Daily] Documents will be used…