Caught in a whirlpool of capitalist exploitation and communist control, they have become the indentured servants of today's global sweatshops. For these women, the celebrations surrounding the regime's 50th anniversary represent only a cruel irony. To keep us supplied with a constant stream of cheap consumer goods, these young women are worked to the bone and paid a pittance. Although China has decent wage, hour, health and safely laws, all are routinely ignored by corrupt government officials in cahoots with foreign factory owners. The women work 12-hour days, sometimes sev en days a week, for 25 cents an hour.
Corporal punishment is common and workers are pushed to complete superhuman quotas.
In the worst factories, workers endure beatings, insults, arbitrary fines, body searches, forced overtime, restricted use of bathrooms, few or no holidays, and embezzlement of their wages. They are exposed to dangerous chemicals and hazardous conditions that lead to fatal fires. Workers who try to form independent trade unions or merely stand up for their rights end up fired, beaten or thrown in jail. First of all, they are desperate for work. Second, and worse, they are often not free to leave.