International
News
- April 2006
New Zealand, March 28, 2006 (Dominion Post) - Air New Zealand is being accused
of chasing cheap labor after it was revealed yesterday that its new crew
uniform was partly manufactured in China.
Staff donned the new Zambesi-design garb yesterday, five
months after it was publicly unveiled.
Chief executive Rob Fyfe said then that "wherever
possible, we worked with New Zealand suppliers to help
support our local industry".
The airline said yesterday that the uniforms were designed
in New Zealand and used fabrics produced here and made
from New Zealand wool.
However, Green Party MP Sue Bradford said the "overwhelming
majority" of the garments were being made in China
. "It seems that the national airline, far from celebrating
`pride in our own country', is simply seeking the cheapest
bidder for the procurement of their goods and services."
In a letter to Ms. Bradford, Air New Zealand general
manager of marketing Steve Bayliss said two thirds of the
uniform was produced in New Zealand .
Ms Bradford's comments "demonstrated a lack of appreciation
of the degree to which Air New Zealand already supports
domestic business".
Spokesman Mike Tod said the suits component of the uniforms
were put together offshore, while the wrap, women's merino
top, men's belts, buttons and hats were all made in New
Zealand.
Lower Hutt firm Booker Spalding was awarded the contract
to manufacture the uniform and in turn sent the work to
China .
The specialist large scale uniform manufacturer was responsible
for ensuring the uniform was produced at the required cost,
quality and within the time available, Mr. Tod said.
Ms Bradford said the decision to send the work overseas
meant a Christchurch clothing factory, which had made the
previous uniform, lost the contract.
"Outsourcing labor at the expense of New Zealand
jobs seems to be becoming a trend for Air New Zealand ," Ms
Bradford said.
In December the airline sent the engines for its large
international aircraft overseas for maintenance, costing
110 jobs. A deal with maintenance division workers saved
all heavy maintenance for the planes being sent offshore,
but at the expense of about another 200 jobs.
March 27, 2006 (Time Asia, as reported by Michael Elliott)
- At the museum of history in Hong Kong last month, you
could visit an exhibition whose centerpiece was a old,
bleached, shaped piece of wood. To be honest, it didn't
look much. But it told a tale. For the wood was a rudder
post from a huge Chinese junk built around the time, nearly
600 years ago, when the Chinese Muslim eunuch admiral Zheng
He embarked on seven epic voyages that took him to southeast
Asia and the shores of India, Arabia, and Africa, trading
for spices and fabrics, livestock and raw materials.
After centuries, when Zheng He's exploits were forgotten
even in China , he has deservedly entered the pantheon
of the world's great explorers. The admiral has been adopted
in his homeland as a symbol of an old, outward-looking,
adventurous China —all things, perhaps, which it
is once more. But the memory that China once traded with
the world is not the only lesson of Zheng He's life. Here's
another: when he died, so did China 's global ambitions.
Mandarins decided that oceangoing voyages were a waste
of time and money.
It's a cautionary note, a reminder that the waves of
trade that knit us together can ebb as well as flow. There
is a famous passage in The Economic Consequences of
the Peace, written by John Maynard Keynes in 1920,
which every student of globalization knows by heart. Keynes
describes life as it existed in 1914, when a man in London
could travel the world freely, invest wherever he wanted,
and "could order by telephone, sipping his morning
tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, in
such quantity as he might see fit, and reasonably expect
their early delivery upon his doorstep." Not only
that, Keynes' Londoner "regarded this state of affairs
as normal, certain, and permanent, except in the direction
of further improvement." It was not to be. World War
I brought the modern world's first great era of globalization
to a jarring halt; trade atrophied, and legislation like
the Smoot-Hawley tariffs passed by the U.S. Congress in
1930 gave a legislative imprimatur to protectionist sentiment.
Could such a moment be upon us again? Are the walls around
national economies being built once more? From the numbers,
the argument seems absurd. World trade is growing healthily,
by over 7% a year. The U.N. Commission on Trade and Development
estimates that the value of global flows of foreign direct
investment grew by a remarkable 29% in 2005. Yet a quick
look around the planet might lead to the impression that
globalization is in crisis. Ahead of Chinese President
Hu Jintao's visit to Washington next month, U.S. Commerce
Secretary Carlos Gutierrez told China that it must shape
up on a host of issues if it is to continue to benefit
from its trade with America . Last week, indigenous people
in Ecuador protested against a proposed free-trade agreement
with the U.S. that they thought would deliver their economy
and culture to the colossus of the North. In Seoul , the
attempt by U.S. corporate raider Carl Icahn to get a seat
on the board of tobacco company KT&G has, says Jang
Hasung, dean of Korea University 's business school, "reignited
anti-foreign-investor sentiment."
In France , an effort by the Italian gas company Enel
to acquire Groupe Suez appears to have been thwarted by
a hastily arranged, government-sponsored marriage between
Suez and Gaz de France. The very idea that a state-owned
company from Dubai might take over P&O, a British company
that controlled six ports in the U.S. , gave most members
of Congress an attack of the vapors; Dubai Ports World
has now said that it will sell P&O's U.S. assets to
an American buyer. When Russian gas behemoth Gazprom started
stalking the British supplier Centrica, officials let it
be known that "any new ownership would face robust
scrutiny."
Put all those straws in the wind and you've got a flying
haystack. "We're at a point here," says Kenneth
Courtis, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs Asia, "where
if this is just a little pop it doesn't mean very much.
But if it's the beginning of a trend, it's big."
Free trade—which is at the heart of globalization—has
never been uncontroversial, even if economists regard its
tenets as revealed truth. Those who gain from trade—the
great undifferentiated mass of consumers who enjoy a range
of products from around the world sold at prices that reflect
intense competition—are by definition less identifiable
than those who lose from it. And just as in the 1980s,
when U.S. legislators had panic attacks after Japanese
investors overpaid for everything from Hawaiian beachfront
hotels to the Rockefeller Center , the foreign ownership
of key domestic industries is promoting a backlash. "Countries
are still trying to keep some poles of industrial strength
within their economies," says Courtis. "I wouldn't
have any problems whatsoever if the British apparel industry
was taken over entirely by Bangladesh firms," Wade
says. But as for "strategic industries" like
energy, water, airports and aerospace, he continues, "then
you do have to pay much more attention to the consequences
of fast-growing foreign ownership."
National ambivalence about the new global order can be
seen most clearly in France . In his first speech to the
National Assembly last year after becoming French Prime
Minister, Dominique de Villepin said, "Globalization
is not an ideal; it cannot be our destiny." In the
last few months, de Villepin has championed a policy of
economic patriotism, putting in place a takeover law that
gives the government a veto on deals in 11 sectors of the
economy deemed to be strategic. They include biotechnology,
arms manufacturing and casinos. But de Villepin's boss,
President Jacques Chirac, blustered last week that it was "absolutely
absurd" to think of France as protectionist, and he
has a point. For much of the 1990s, France was the largest
recipient of foreign investment in the European Union;
by the end of 2003, one in seven French employees worked
for a foreign company, compared with just one in 20 in
the U.S.
Perhaps above all, those who believe in the ineluctable
march of globalization insist that technology—the
Internet, ever-bigger container ships, multi-nation sourcing
of goods that depends on sophisticated logistic software—will
continue to bring the world closer together. And so it
will, probably. But remember: that rudder post in Hong
Kong was on the stern of a ship more than 120 m long, or
six times the size of the little craft that Columbus sailed
across the Atlantic a few decades later.
Yet once it had decided to turn its back on the world,
all the Ming dynasty's magnificent technology was not enough
to compel a change of mind.
Brunei, March 22, 2006, (Brudirect.com) - Diners who
frequent small restaurants, particularly at villages and
remote areas, are calling for owners to provide uniforms
to workers, as the sight of food handlers in dirty attire
is off-putting.
Some waiters and waitresses do not seem to bother wearing
good and clean attire, they said.
"We have noticed that a few waitresses did not even
bother to change their jeans daily. When asked, the waitresses
told us that their attire was still clean even though they
had worn them for a few days.
"However, we feel attire should be changed daily
especially for restaurant workers," they said.
They added that by wearing uniforms, waiters and waitresses
would be able to look good in the eyes of diners.
"To ensure their uniforms are clean and changed
daily, they should take them off after closing time, and
put it aside to be cleaned and ironed.” If they were
to clean their own uniforms, they may not do so everyday," they
added.
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