dammit
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing on March 20, 2008
Why can’t I remember to keep an eye on the meter and buy electricity before it runs out? Oh well, guess I’m going to find out whether the laptop battery will last through breakfast.
for your reading pleasure
Posted by wangbo in tilting at windmills on March 19, 2008
Seven things you didn’t know. I find the seventh to be particularly relevant at this time. Thanks to these guys.
air new zealand responds
Air New Zealand responds, explains why they use Fasco, and insists the package offered to their Shanghai-based crew is far more generous than was first reported.
The package of approximately $3160 gross per month (exclusive of social security payments) compared with the average monthly wage of urban Chinese workers of $325.
The figures are, of course, in New Zealand dollars. That would work out very roughly to 15,000 RMB per month, which seems pretty reasonable. Perhaps I should try and join their Beijing-based crew if they really do get their Auckland-Beijing flights up and running….
Only trouble with this article is it is very one-sided and merely repeats what Air New Zealand have said.
Of course, the whole thing could’ve gone much more quickly and smoothly had Air New Zealand come out with this right from the get-go.
flight attendants again
Audrey Young points out the apparent inconsitency of Labour’s stance on the Air New Zealand pay gap (gap? yawning chasm would seem more accurate):
It seems the Government is happy to be the owner of Air New Zealand for some purposes but not for others .
It is happy to be the owner with “please explain” rights when it comes to calling the airline to account for carrying Aussie troops off to the Middle East for duty in Iraq.
But when it is exposed as paying less than the minimum wage for its Shanghai -based cabin crew, well that’s the market operating, says Helen Clark. It might be what Sir Roger Douglas would say were he back in the cabinet. But Labour?
Um, I thought Roger Douglas was in Labour….
Also, I like her comparison with the laws regarding ship crews.
courage
Posted by wangbo in tilting at windmills on March 17, 2008
I recommend that before you read this post, you check your ideological baggage at the door and switch off your rush to judgement. This kind of post takes balls- and not the kind that dangle between a man’s legs. Good on ya, Stef, for putting this out there. Hopefully your post will inspire some deep thought about these issues. Now, go read it.
oh, and…
Oh, and by the way, in addition to thinking “smaller countries usually fly under the radar”, I fully support the idea of looking for news in languages other than Chinese or English. Staying away from the big, famous, English-language, usually Yank or Pommie sites tends to minimise net nanny hassles. And here’s one big, famous, Yank newspaper that seems to somehow not be attracting unwelcome attention.
still more flight attendants
And now the Prime Minister, who is doing so well on another current issue, has
to join the stupid side of this discussion. Now, I must set about searching for Chinese reactions to this…
just for the record
Just for the record, so far I still have free, direct, unfettered access to New Zealand media. I’m just about to start checking, but so far, apart from one or two hiccups which were soon resolved, even articles containing a multitude of k3ywørds have come up poxy-free. Ah, yes, still not tripping any k3ywørd f1lt3rs. So my recommendation for anybody looking for easy access to foreign media from inside China is to think: Small countries generally manage to fly under the radar.
Now, this next bit won’t carry any links cos I really don’t want to give these clowns any publicity: I am not surprised, but still thoroughly disgusted, to read that the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand supports racially-motivated violence- at least when the violent party is a member of one particular ethnic group inhabiting southwest China which has a very vocal band of liars and propagandists working out of a small hill town in India, and the victims are members of other ethnic groups in China. Unlike the Greens, I have certain principles I stick by, one of which is non-violence. I do not, under any circumstances, support or condone violence, especially when such violence involves members of one ethnic group targeting members of other ethnic groups, their businesses, and their places of worship.
It really is very strange to watch Labour react more intelligently to an issue than the Greens, but there you go.
Oh, and all comments will be moderated, and all will be edited to minimise the risk of tripping any k3ywørd f1lt3rs.
more on the flight attendants
There’s more on the flight attendants’ pay dispute, the head of the EPMU, Andrew Little, calling on the government to act. Turns out the union had heard of this way back in October and passed the message on to the Flight Attendants’ Association. Of course, one has to wonder if anything was done about this and why it apparently took a newspaper report months later to spur anyone into action. Anyway, quotations:
Andrew Little, head of the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union, said the Government should hold Air New Zealand to account after revelations that Shanghai-based flight attendants were paid quarter the salary of their New Zealand colleagues.
“The Government, as the principal shareholder of Air New Zealand, needs to take a close interest and make sure the national airline is meeting the standards the Government would expect as an employer.”
and:
Mr Little said Air New Zealand was “hiding behind the apron strings of a third-party agent”.
“The end user of the labour of these people is Air New Zealand, and Air New Zealand has to take some responsibility for what is going on.
“As principal shareholder, the Government needs to make sure that the airline looks very closely at the situation and puts it right.”
And now it seems the Herald has opened a “your views” section on this, which I open with a vague feeling of trepidation…. Do I really want to read this? I suspect I know what several ignorant people are going to say, and indeed, the first comment I see is:
Yes, of course if the staff live in China, where the cost of living is less than it is in NZ.
Well, not as bad as I was expecting, but one “MRB” of Wellington City perhaps needs to take a trip to Shanghai, where the flight attendants are based, to see what kind of cost of living the flight attendants have to deal with when they’re at home, and remember that they spend significant periods of time in New Zealand. And scanning through, I see there are plenty more people who don’t seem to understand the difference between Shanghai and rural Sichuan, and one even mentioning Thailand, of all places, because, y’know, Asia is just one big monolith. Oh, and regardless of how far their pay would allegedly stretch in Shanghai (Shanghai, people! Not Chiang Mai or Ulan Bataar!), they still have to spend significant periods of time in Auckland! Alright, closing that tab before it starts me ranting at the sheer ignorance of so many of my compatriots.
Still haven’t seen any reaction to this in the Chinese internet, but then again, I haven’t been looking so far this morning, and that wedding yesterday took up a fair chunk of the day.
Update: There’s more. The Labour Minister, Trevor Mallard, wants a report. Whoopdedoo. The same article also contains some spectacular idiocy from the Alliance Party deputy leader:
The Alliance Party co-leader Victor Billot in a statement said the issue was a “red alert” to workers about what free trade deals would mean for New Zealand.
“This situation is exactly what we will see more of under the free trade scam being pushed through behind closed doors the use of cross-border labour with inferior conditions, contracting out, aggressive corporates, and a hands-off approach by Government to push down wages and conditions for workers.”
Mr Billot predicted the new step would be for Air NZ to contract out all their international and domestic flight crews to Chinese labour hire agencies.
I didn’t even know the Alliance still existed.
a wedding
Posted by wangbo in jiu, life in Beijing on March 16, 2008
I woke up real early this morning. I don’t know why, but at 6:30, I was up, turning the computer on and jumping in the shower (uh, leaving the computer on the desk to warm up, no taking it into the shower).
Then some time between 9 and 9:30 we wandered over the road to catch the bus. We were taking the 852 up to somewhere in the Jiuxianqiao/Wangjing sort of area- more Wangjing than Jiuxianqiao, but neither of us really knew, and we only had the vaguest instructions and the worst map in the entire history of maps, so that’s what we were working with and heading for…
And eventually, with the help of Beijing’s best and most classic lao Beijing-ist taxi drive, we got there.
And were, unfortunately, disappointed.
Look, if you’re going to get married in China, make sure the PA system works. Honestly. I couldn’t figure out whether the MC was calling the groom 新郎 or 色狼- and that, my friends, can make a hell of a difference.
Actually, the wedding was alright, or would’ve been, had we been able to hear anything that was said. The banquet was adequate, but only adequate, and nothing more. But it was a good time.
And I’m just a little intrigued by one thing: There was a bottle of “Feel Wine” on the table, but I couldn’t figure out what corner of China it had come from. Googling suggests the wine was produced somewhere in Hebei, perhaps a county of Qinhuangdao. Well, anyway, it was far from the world’s best wine, but it was, at least, drinkable. It was a bit lacking in flavour, as if it were Australian in origin, but it did not have the skankiness one would normally associate with regular Great Wall or Dynasty brews. It was alright, in other words.
Well, then we walked in some directions randomly towards what we (I, having taken over navigation-duty) thought should be the way to find a bus home… Only to find our friends had found our bus’ terminal well before we had found a bus stop. But we found a bus stop, and a bus arrived soon enough, and before we had time to complain, we were on our way back to civilisation.
Doesn’t matter what may be good about that Jiuxianqiao/Dashanzi/Wangjing area, it still looks and feels like it’s the edge of nowhere.
So we’re back in civilisation again.