SolidarityEconomy.net

by Jerry Harris

. Bill Gates wants Bolivia on-line
Gates wrote Bolivia’s socialist president, Evo Morales, offering Microsoft’s help “in the goal of providing all of Bolivia’s people access” to the internet. Gates added, “I am excited to know that our campaign is contributing to your government’s plan” to promote education and economic improvements. Microsoft has just launched a new Word program in Quechua, one of the major languages spoken in Bolivia.
(Financial Times, 11/21/06, Gates seeks common ground with Morales)

. GM crops on over one billion acres
Genetically modified crops are growing at 10 percent a year. Over the past ten years GM crops have been planted on over one billion acres reaching 222 million acres in the single year of 2005. The US has more than 90 percent of all global biotech acreage. In 2006 Monsanto lead the way with 217 million acres followed by Syngenta of Switzerland at 7.9 million; Bayer of Germany with 6.1 million; and Dow/DuPont with 4.7 million.

. From the files: IT workers in Mexico and China
Some of the world’s biggest computer producers such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard and IBM employ workers in China and Mexico in what the Financial Times calls “humiliating and harsh” conditions. In China the mostly female workforce is often paid less than minimum wage and sometimes labor 16 hours a day, seven days a week. Workers testing monitors can spend 11 hours a day in front of flashing screens and receive no health and safety training.

In Mexico Aurea del Carmen Juarez, a psychologist who helped screen employees for IBM reported that, “What they want is people who don’t have much self-esteem or aspiration.” The application process was described in the following manner; “If they have ever been involved with a union, have relatives who are politicians or lawyers, or have spent time in the US, their chances end there. These all indicate ambition and the potential to cause trouble…the process is designed to recruit the least ambitious and imaginative candidates.” Even tattoos and body-piercings are examined. Ms. Juarez went on to detail how she would have workers draw a tree. “Those who drew a small stick tree, unadorned, were likely to be accepted. Those who drew trees with big root systems, colored in the leaves and put fruit on the branches, betrayed too much ambition and imagination.” About 90 percent of the workforce are women. Reported one technician, “The ones they like best are single mothers because they are the least able to protest.”
(Financial Times, “The human cost of the computer age.” John Authers and Alison Maitland)