MULTINATIONALS AND WORKING WOMEN 69 worker, working one hour, produces enough to pay the wages of 10 workers, working one shift, plus all the cost of material and transport." This shows how profitable the moves of these multinational companies have been, how clever and wise they were in bringing the electronic companies to Asian countries through the stooge governments of the United States of America to exploit the cheap labour of women in Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaysia and other places. The multinational companies try to keep wages as low as possible by various methods. To compensate the low wages, companies use bonuses to be paid to the workers. If they take part in any union activity or agitations, women lose the extra pay. If the worker is late by 15 minutes she will lose all her allowance for the day. After removing the legal protection like prohibition of night shifts and reducing the maternity benefits and leave, the Malaysian government tried to crush all forms of protests by workers. "As soon as the protests began, car loads of police and government officials descended on the plant ..." Of course, there is no need to say that all the protest actions are banned by law as this is supposed to be a ''vital" industry and foreign owned. It is to be noted that these multinational companies have established a "global culture" by now. Sixty thousand assemblers work in the plant at Silicon Valley, California. In fact, workers in Asia and California share the same fate; the problems and conditions arc the same, including the health hazards, pressure of production and «trict discipline. The women in California are always reminded of their counterparts in Asia who are doing the same type of work. This is an indirect threat to these women that if they formed unions, or put forward demands, the whole plant could be shifted to Asia. This is also an attempt to divide the workers who are now becoming aware of unions and struggles. Resistance of the Workers on the Increase In spite of the managements' tricks, lessons on "How to Make Unions Unnecessary", a number of seminars on "Family Spirit", "brain washing" by psychologists and so on, resistance is beginning to show up in these multinational companies. Regular reports of protests, sit in strikes, work stoppages arc coming from Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea. In Philippines, workers in one American owned plant arc developing a union despite heavy government restrictions on labour organization. Workers there halt production often for short periods to press their demands. As a first step towards developing an international labour movement to con-