Growing Resistance

Resistance and labour organization among industrial workers in multinational branch plants is continuously on the increase as are the repressive measures used by corporate management. The first example comes from r/7e/700/r Minangkabau! Stories of People vs. TNCs in Asia. This 154 page book interperses recent case studies of multinationals in Asia with a clear and concise overview of the issues. It covers three areas such as why corporations are investing in Asia, the myths of benefits to the third world countries, the mechanisms for dominating the economy, and the actions people are taking to combat the negative effects of multinationals.

The following three short articles come from the Global Electronics Information Newsletter, which is published at the Pacific Studies Centre. The Centre also publishes a quarterly. Pacific Research, which focuses on U.S. foreign and military policies, multinational corporations, and the political economy of Asia and the Pacific. For copies of the Newsletter contact: Pacific Studies Centre 222B View Street, Mountain View, California 94041USA Telephone (415) 969-1545.

UNIONIZATION OF ELECTRONICS WORKERS PENANG, MALAYSIA

Penang's problems had been brewing for months, thanks in part to a higher inflation rate this year (1980) - somewhere around 10% or twice the average of recent years. This has caused dissatisfaction among workers in the zone, who are seeking higher pay. The situation was aggravated by big pay hikes for civil servants starting July 1. This made private sector workers feel they were getting a raw deal compared with their counterparts in government employment.

In late September, someone lit the fuse that started a number of sudden industrial stoppages of varying length at foreign electronics factories in the zone. Worst hit was the German owned RUF Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., which makes transistor radios and assembles a variety of electronic components. The firm's 850 workers - more than 90% of them female - downed tools on Sept. 19, demanding more benefits.

The company immediately sacked all the strikers for their action (illegal in Malaysia, but later offered jobs back to all but 13 employees whom it considered the trouble-makers. After five days, workers began returning and by the first week of October about 95% were back on the job.

One complicating factor was that the RUF workers - as well as 7,000 other electronics factory workers in the zone - are not unionised. Officials of the Malaysian Trades Union Congress (MTUC) were quick to argue that the absence of unions was the reason for wildcat activity since management does not have a recognised body with whom to negociate over grievances.

The strike at RUF gave the Electrical Industry Workers Union (EIWU), affliated with the MTUC, a chance to push for unionnisation of zone workers - an effort hindered in the past. During the stoppage, the EIWU reported that 600 employees had agreed to join a union and it expected the figure to rise to 800.

On October 6, EIWU officials met with Labour Minister Richard Ho and told him their union had accepted applications for membership from 600 RUF employees, and were
sending a claim for recognition to the company's management. Recognition is also required from the Registrar of Trade Unions, (whom the MTUC claims has sat for two
years on other applications to organise workers in the electronics industry). 'The strike has given us a golden opportunity to organise, EIWU executive secretary Bosco Anthony told ASIAWEEK. "In the past we've never had a chance to meet workers who are taken by bus right into the factory compound", he added.

Anthony is confident big changes are coming to the Penang labour scene. 'The moment we get this factory unionised, the others in the zone will follow suit", he said. Others feel that Anthony's optimism is less than justified, noting that all will depend on how the application from RUF employees fares with the authorities.

The RUF management is not at all pleased with the prospect of having a union in its factory. Company Managing Director H.R. Marquardt told ASIAWEEK he believed union organisers had a hand in the agitation leading to the strike. Now he charges, they are exploiting the situation to push for unionisation. "In a normal situation, the union would not get the support of 50% of the workers", he said, adding that in the tense situation surrounding the strike "it is easy to get people to sign". Marquardt doubts that the EIWU can claim to speak for workers in electronics who, he says, do different work from those in electrical industries.

Meanwhile, RUF has recognized that it has to meet its workers - unionised or not - part way. Shortly after they reported back to woric, the company announced it would provide free transportation from Nov. I and would discuss with the workers' committee other possible new benefits. But the management was standing firm against higher pay demands. It gave pay rises on July I which it says made their conditions among the best in the zone. Other factories raised wages recently in response to RUF's move, Marquardt contends. "We can't have a chain reaction of more rises".

The Labour Ministry is naturally hoping all the trouble in the zone will be quickly resolved since it couki mar Malaysia's record of relatively few labour problems. Not surprisingly. Labour Minister Richard Ho charged that striking workers had been "misled" and did not even know their actions were illegal. The question was whether finding those who misled the workers would bring an end to trouble in the zone, which by last week had settled into an uneasy calm.

(ASIAWEEK, October 17,1981)

GROWING RESISTANCE AND ORGANIZATION OF WOMEN WORKERS IN MULTINATIONALS

A.M.D.

Advanced Micro Devices, the Silicon Valley-bases chip-maker, recruited employees not too long ago with the slogan, "Catch the Wave". There turned out to be a catch in the wave. The company is ordering about half of its 4,500 employees in Sunnyvale to work four hours extra each week, without additional pay or to take a pay cut. The order affects all salaried employees, from clerks and secretaries to engineers and managers. Less than 100 ADM employees in Austin, Texas are also affected by the order.

The order will fall heaviest on low-paid non-exempt workers such as secretaries and clerks. Even in normal times, "exempt" professionals are expected to work long hours without extra compensation if they want to advance, but state law mandates overtime pay for "non exempts". To satisfy state law, AMD will pay those employees overtime,but will reduce their basic pay 13% to compensate (San Jose) Mercury, January 27 1982).

Global Electronics Information Newsletter. No. 18 January 1982

MATTEL

A correspondent from Australia Asia Worker Links recently visited the Bataan Export Processing Zone in the Philippines, where she investigated conditions at Mattel's doll-making plant. Though Mattel is not primarily an electronics firm, its international sourcing strategy is similar. (See PSC's report in Volume XI, No. 2 issue of Pacific Research).

Mattel currently employs 4,000 workers at Bataan. They normally work 12 hours a day, six days a week, plus compulsory overtime! The daily wage is 18.65 pesos plus 12 pesos cost-of-living allowance for eight hours work. The company pays time-and-a-quarter for overtime, but there is no additional allowance. Since actual overtime hourly pay turns out to be less than base hourly pay, the company has a strong incentive to keep employees for long hours.

Living and working conditions are bad. The correspondent describes a woman who had nausea and headaches from the chemicals she worked with, and another who "lived in a hostel where there were 8 girls living in the one room, just large enough to fit 4 double bunks".

Finally the correspondent pointed out that Mattel, always in search of cheap, productive labor, has opened a factory in Malaysia. Three hundred workers there make model cars, and the factory has the capacity to employ 2,000.

Global Electronics Information Newsletter. No. 2 March 1982.

STRIKE AT S.M.I.

Workers at the two biggest integrated circuit assembly subcontractors in the Philippines, Stanford Microsystems (SMI) and Dynetics, staged strikes earlier this year. The Dynetics workers walked off the job for one day on May 16 and a number of the strikers were arrested. Strikes are illegal in the Philippines electronics industry.

SMI was shutdown for three days (May 29-June I) when some 7,500 workers (75% of the workforce) at all three Manila plants went out on strike. They were protesting the abuses of Tony Odtohan, a supen/isor in an assembly area at the Ugong. Pasig, plant. On May 20, he reportedly scolded aloud the women assemblers for letting quality suffer. "You are all uneducated and uncivilized", he allegedly shouted

The workers in his area, IC-5, petitioned the management to have him replaced. When management ignored their demand, they went to the Ministry of Labor and Employment (MOLE), which also brushed them aside. Then, on May 27, the IC-5 workers came to work wearing red t-shirts and red ribbons to
show their determination to be heard.

Two days later, on May 29, the Stanford League of Unions (SLU) issued a strike call, to begin on the third shift. The workers walked out and immediately management called in the Metrocom police to protect company property. Some strikers formed picket lines at the gates, while others went to the pick-up points for employee buses to encourage fellow workers to join the strike.

On June 4, management agreed to the SLU's demands to transfer Odtohan to a position where he would not be bossing other workers, and to reinstate one worker who was fired for her role in the strike. The workers at Stanford have scored a small, but significant victory.

Global Electronic Information Newsletter. NO. 4 Sept/Oct. 1980