KE00110174
IMPACT OF GLOBALISATION 2: USA, CHINA & EUROPE
Three films look at how countries around the world are feeling the bitter effects of globalisation.

USA: Detroit, the city of Motown music and big cars is turning into an industrial wasteland.

When the car industry was booming Detroit was the fifth largest city in the US. But now Japanese and other foreign car companies have taken more and more of the US market.

General Motors, whose headquarters are in Detroit, was once the world's biggest car maker, but now it's a shadow of its former self, and has been bailed out by the US government.

Businesses are being killed off and residents have fled the city. Car workers who thought they had secure jobs, are facing the reality that the wheels are falling off Motor City. Now General Motors is gambling its future on more environmentally friendly cars.

CHINA: This once booming supplier of cheap goods to the world is now seeing factories close their doors and workers fired and sent back to their poor villages.

A watch factory owner says: "I have been in the watch business for forty years. This is the most difficult time I've ever seen."



The Chinese government has set up a four thousand billion yuan program to help big companies and revive the economy, but smaller enterprises are still going bust.

In China's poorer rural areas, leaving for work in the city has become a way of life for young people - a way of life that suddenly seems far more precarious.

EUROPE: 2300 Nokia employees have been laid off following the factory's move to Romania.

Despite record profits, the mobile-phone maker's move to Romania is spurred by the search for cheap labour. Says one German worker: "The company has exploited us. They have taken us for a ride - and that's putting it mildly.'

But in Romania many welcome the move - they see Nokia as a new source of jobs and economic growth. The Romanian village of Jucu has been renamed Nokia Village and the mayor is planning what to do with the new income.

But how much will Nokia actually pay their new Romanian workers? And how long before Nokia goes elsewhere in search of cheap labour? The film offers a fascinating example of the ups and downs of "caravan capitalism".
DVD
46 minutes
2009
 
Requirement :
Qty :