NGO

OURMedia 6th International Conference held in Sydney is really more like a shopping mall than an academic conference. That's why the first question of the exit survey is about how many contacts during these four days one made. So I'd better talk about the interesting websites and media project we came across rather than the issues.

I like the Italian project of EuroMayDay which has been promoting an alternative image of workering class for the "precarious labourer". A group of Italian activists design a lot of interesting icons for people to make use of in their movement. As a catholic country, the icons of saint are so popular. They invent a holy icon for the precarious. They further design a lot of cards to showing some the images of different kinds of workers.

GP Batteries (GP Batteries International Limited), held by Gold Peak Industries (Holdings) Limited, took legal action against Hong Kong labour groups in order to stop them from exposing the heavy mental poisoning situation in their production line and fighting for workers' compensation.

On 28 June 2006, Gold Peak applied to the High Court of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region to issue a summons against two labour NGOs (Globalization Monitor and the Neighbourhood & Worker’s Service Center) and the local trade union Confederation (The Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions), which had been assisting the workers, for defamation.

In response to oiwan's letter, I would like to make some remarks on the situation of Chinese rural migrant workers. The China government recently collaborated with international NGO, including ILO, to produce a TV drama series about the success story of rural migrant labor in Sichuan province. During my field study of the Chinese rural migrants, I met a lot of small business owners. Many see it as the only way out of the difficult situations as a cheap labor in the "World Factory". I haven't watched that TV drama series but I doubt if it is necessary for the government and NGOs to encourage the migrants to run small business.