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Chinese workers hold American factory owner ‘hostage’... sort of
06.26.2013
10:13 am
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Chip Starnes, founder and president of Specialty Medical Supplies, has been “held hostage” since Friday at his own factory in Beijing… kind of. Appearing totally unaccompanied by his “captors,” Starnes talked openly with a reporter through a three-foot high gate. When the reporter asked why Starnes doesn’t just climb over and leave, he replied, “I think I could absolutely do that, but I think that would probably be the wrong impression to give at this point in time.”

Starnes says the dispute is over demands for unmerited pay. He recently laid off 30 workers after moving their jobs to India, and they received severance. He says the 80 employees refusing to let him leave “got jealous” and demanded the same severance, which he insists it would be “business suicide.”

The workers, who were quite happy to talk to the press, say that they haven’t been paid in two months, and that they simply want their wages.

Now, I can’t find much on Starnes, (except that he lives in lovely Parkland, Florida, where the estimated median house value is $873,176), but the minimum wage in Beijing is 1,400 Chinese Yuan, or $227.77 a month. While CBS seems all but assured of his innocence and victimhood, I am, to say the least, skeptical.
 

Posted by Amber Frost
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06.26.2013
10:13 am
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Unemployed steelworker in anti-Romney ad not voting for Obama, either
07.17.2012
06:12 pm
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“We didn’t know who the hell Mitt Romney was when all that stuff started. It wasn’t until later we found out who Romney was. We just knew he was just another guy with money. It wasn’t until his boys came and started gutting the place that we found out he was an asshole.”

—Former GS Technologies steelworker Donnie Box, of Kansas City, Missouri

Although Donnie Box is the star of a pretty darned effective anti-Mitt Romney web ad produced by Priorities USA, that doesn’t mean he’s voting for Barack Obama in November, as Mike Elk reports in In These Times:

For Donnie Box, it doesn’t matter whether Romney had a direct day-to-day managerial role when Bain Capital closed his plant. Box feels Romney was still in a position to change things and that Romney had no problem profiting from his suffering. And Box notes that it was the actions Bain took before 1999, when Romney was indisputably head of the company, that led to the plant closing.

“There is no doubt in my mind when he came in with Bain Capital, he was the President and CEO of that corporation,” Box says. “He was responsible for the people who came in there and started loading up on debt. They knew with that much debt that there was no way that the place could survive.”

The scandal has led to a serious credibility problem for Romney among working-class voters. But being disillusioned by Romney is one thing; voting for Obama is another. And Box, for one, says he won’t be doing the latter.

Despite appearing in a controversial ad for the pro-Obama Super PAC Priorities USA, denouncing Romney’s role in the GS Technologies plant closing, Box, a lifelong Democrat, says he won’t be voting for the first time since 1971 because he has lost faith in politicians.

“I could really care less about Obama,” says Box. “I think Obama is a jerk, a pantywaist, a lightweight, a blowhard. He hasn’t done a goddamn thing that he said he would do. When he had a Democratic Senate and Democratic Congress, he didn’t do a damn thing. He doesn’t have the guts to say what’s on his mind.”

Box’s refusal to vote for Obama shows the challenges that organized labor faces in convincing its members to vote for Democrats. Many union members like Box feel the party hasn’t pushed hard enough for jobs bills or labor law reform while making sure to pass trade pacts, like the South Korea Free Trade Agreement, which the AFL-CIO and the United Steelworkers opposed.

As the son of a life-long union member who retired early in disgust at the way he and his co-workers were being treated—and I’ve briefly been in a few labor unions myself when I was younger—I can easily see why Donnie Box would say “Fuck it” to Obama. Who could blame him? The White House hasn’t done much of anything for the unions (except talk) and labor gets next to nothing out of its unquestioning support for the Democratic Party. Although I believe that it most certainly is worth voting this year, if only to keep the GOP wolves at bay, I fully understand where Mr. Box is coming from and I wouldn’t argue with him that I think he’s wrong, either. Because I don’t.

As far as I’m concerned, the best thing that Obama and the Democrats have got going for them in 2012 is that they aren’t fucking Republicans. That isn’t enough for Donnie Box and god bless him for having the guts to say so.

Read more of Mike Elk’s
Laid Off Steelworker in Anti-Romney Ad Says He Is Not Voting for Obama (In These Times)

After the jump, see what ABC News is calling “The Bain Ad That Romney Should Fear the Most”

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
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07.17.2012
06:12 pm
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