[Thoughts] Contemporary Harmful Working Environment

     Today, I went to Taiwan International Labor Film Festival. This Festival is in corporation with Canadian Labour International Film Festival, and is held in NGO conference, near Taipei Main Station. The film I saw was a documentary, and was about how fashion industry has changed.

     Nowadays, most of the fancy clothes we see at fashion shows come from sweatshops. In sweatshops, the labors work in very uncomfortable and dirty environment. They work for long hours till it's dark outside, and they quickly run back to home to avoid being harassed. When they want to use the bathroom at work, they are not allowed to. Lots of them are young females. Some of them are between 12 to 14 years old.

     In one incident happened in Bangladesh, the generator in the factory went out of control and everything broke down. It went all dark. And then the factory was on fire. The workers wanted to get out of the factory to save their lives, but the door was locked to prevent them from escaping. In the end, there were 46 corpse lying on the floor. All were young females. They died just because they had to work in a factory in which they were locked.

     The host invited all the participants to join discussion after we saw the film. One participant strongly thinks that, it is our moral responsibility to start doing something in order to alert people how the human society could be damaged by the deprivation of labor's rights. She suggested two ways: one is to do as much as you could to spread this whole concept to people you know. Another is to start being a labor and start doing things by yourself. For example, cook by yourself, sew by yourself, and try to experience the joy of laboring, instead of being alienated from what you have produced.

     The host also reminded us, most of us would not be capitalists. We are just white-collar workers. If we watch the capitalists deprive the labors while keeping silent and doing nothing, then we can't maintain our lives, either. Because the work, the classes, the industries are all in a chain. The labors are the foundation of the chain. Blue-collars keep this chain functioning.

     I feel very thankful that I have the chance to attend this event. Also, I get a lot of inspirations today. Next time, I'll go to Women's Film Festival held in summer.

     By the way, before I go to this festival today, I saw another documentary by Michael Moore, it's called "Capitalism: A Love Story", and that helped a lot, too. The ideas in that movie and in the film today are interconnected, and all are good inspirations for people who doubt the existing job distribution system.