Zambian miners kill Chinese supervisor over pay

[Zalatix]

I'm withholding my opinion on this lest I be taken out by a drone.

http://news.yahoo.com/zambian-miners-kill-chinese-supervisor-over-pay-100110409.html

LUSAKA (Reuters) - Zambian miners killed a Chinese supervisor and seriously wounded another on Saturday in a pay dispute at the Collum coal mine, labour minister Fackson Shamenda said on Sunday.

Chinese companies have invested more than $1 billion in copper-rich Zambia but animosity towards them is growing as Zambian workers accuse firms of abuses and underpaying.

Workers at the Collum mine, situated 325km (200 miles) south of the capital, attacked the Chinese men demanding wage rises in line with those stipulated by the government in July.

Zambia last month raised minimum wages to 522,000 kwacha for maids and household servants, and to 1.1 million kwachafor shop workers without unions.

"We are yet to establish the exact circumstances but the report I have is that one Chinese was killed and another injured as the workers demanded the new minimum wage," Shamenda told Reuters on Sunday.

[Marengo]

1. The Chinese businesses may find it more dangerous...

to play the kind of tricks with African workers that they do with Chinese workers. Without the authoritarian regime to back them up anyway.

A favorite scheme with urban developers in China is to hire peasants illegally as construction workers, promise to pay the full amount of wages owed when construction is complete, then skip out right before completion without paying as much as a jiao to the workers.

[Zalatix]

4. The Chinese got caught without the police gangs to help them.

Those riots won't happen here because of our trigger-happy cops.

[leftyohiolib]

2. sounds like those negotiations took a turn for the worse

[Zalatix]

3. I am thinking of a quote from the Phantom Menace:

Obi-Wan: You were right about one thing, master. The negotiations were short.