Chinese Ad Resellers On Anti-Google Hunger Strike 151
itwbennett writes "About 200 employees from 7 Chinese ad reselling companies are protesting outside Google's offices in Shanghai in response to Google terminating their contracts, said Fan Meiyong, a representative for the group. 40 of those have gone on a hunger strike that will last until the group's grievances are resolved, Fan added. The ad resellers have said they have held talks with Google about the matter but they still don't know why the contracts were terminated. The group has even written an open letter to Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, asking them for their intervention."
Pointless (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Google "reselling" is over (Score:1, Informative)
The guys in China are getting hit by this, but they're just collateral damage of a major policy change.
Or perhaps they are just experiencing the backlash of being worthless human beings who fail to offer anything of value to society. Is there any way we can get the rest of the link-farmers, fake bloggers and forum spammers to starve themselves to death? Failing that, can we just shoot them?
Newsflash (Score:4, Informative)
Chinese labor laws are not the same as those in the US or Europe.
http://www.chinalawblog.com/2010/01/terminating_your_china_employe.html [chinalawblog.com]
Re:Hunger Strike? (Score:1, Informative)
In china you can hire professional mourners for funerals
Similar used to apply in Ireland and Scotland. It's where the surname "Keener" comes from, from the irish/scottish gaelic "caoineadh". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keening [wikipedia.org]
Re:Newsflash (Score:3, Informative)
The article says that google didn't terminate a contract with the employees, but with the resellers that were employing them. It effectively put them out of work, but the protesters were never actually employed by google.
Re:Hunger Strike? (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, Gandhi made several hunger-strikes, but they all occurred only after he was a hugely popular leader- which meant that the possibility of his death, brought massive pressure over the ruling British Government who would have to deal with anarchic rage riots that could break out in the population.
To protest the Salt tax, he simply marched to the sea and made his own , with about a few hundred other people.
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Re:Newsflash (Score:4, Informative)
Your link discussed China's* sobering anti-layoff laws that make USA's at-will employment look like the joke it really is.
So looking beyond "ad resellers" and Google to the whole outsourcing deal, it's hard to see how laws against US companies layoffs are a problem today. It's here in the US that they can and have been aggressively shrinking forces, and over in Asia where they are growing, so it will be several years before they even think of shrinking, if US outsourcing doubiously ever reverses its growth.
Further, though there are tons of plants manufacturing and assembling stuff there, I thought they were Chinese-owned, so we won't be the ones doing the firing and the point is moot. For the giants who DO see a danger in Chinese land, they'll just do the sensible thing and open India centers like the rest of the world has been doing recently. I reckon India only seems to be used for coding and English-language phone support, so I've no idea about their manufacturing power.
But that's not our problem. The outsourcing will continue wherever it is linguistically and politically easier. Under recent signs of US prosperity, forced accretion has been obversed in US branches while headcounts rise in Asian branches. More power is going to India, Australia and the Philippines because it makes perfect sense to beancounters to avoid promoting American labor again, in spite of what that means to us here.
*Europe too, without additional detail.
Re:Hunger Strike? (Score:3, Informative)
If you were sacked and not given a reason, you would probably be asking questions.
If you are a permanent employee in the USA you still can be sacked and not given a reason. If you are a contractor in the USA nobody will even think about giving you a reason. Contractors are specifically employed for temporary, special jobs that are not expected to be needed all the time. This is becoming even more popular in the USA because labor laws put more and more burden on employers for the privilege of employing people.
Those contractors in China are likely disappointed, but that's the nature of their job. In the USA contractors are supposed to work for several companies, own the tools, etc.
Re:Newsflash (Score:4, Informative)
Please note though that Chinese courts have a history of showing "fairness", where the definition of fair is probably different from yours.
E.g. if my truck driver drives off a cliff while delivering the goods you ordered to you, you usually can't sue me for the loss of the goods. Instead you're likely to be asked to share in the total costs of the truck, the goods and damages to the drivers family. The fact that you did not directly employ the driver nor owned the truck does not matter. To the court, that's just meaningless paperwork. The driver and the truck were doing a job for you.
Re:Newsflash (Score:3, Informative)
Why do you believe you have the right to be overpaid for a job? Or that it's more moral to hire an American than someone in China? Simple racism?
It seems that my post just flew by and got tl;dr by some, so read my post to find what I really said.
Compare jobs with software: OpenOffice was in good hands, and the Oracle's ownership apparently killed it. Most people will take something produced by the original crew than the "new" our outsourced ones. Tech support quality loss is a prime example of that.
With the lost jobs that up and left the coutry, people can't just "
Do something that can only be done locally, or do something better than those who can work cheaper.
" is not how a country gets out of 10% unemployment, especially with expert economist forecasts asking to just wait it out another 2 years. A jobless someone with 20 years of management experience and 0 years as nurse has no way to compete with someone at a hospital who spent the same 20 years in their "hard to outsource field," and an oblig. established network of professionals with a foot in the door to resort to, to boot.
People can't switch fields in a heartbeat, like the US or any nation can't shift away from doing what it's best known for in just a few days or weeks to a more profitable venue. You're affected by the recession too, no matter your location, and my [and yours, presumably] IT job exodus plan is miles away from that "currently hard to outsource" nursing job in my prior example. Please be more sensitive.