Foxconn - Eye opener
- Thread starter Azza
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It is still a masive diffrence. It all comes down to cost how much do you think working conditions, drop in hours, holliday pay, sick pay and everything elses costs? How many more rights do you think we can afford with over 5 times as much money.
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Associate
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I'm amazed at the amount of shock and outrage expressed here - people must be really naive! What did you think working in an assembly line was like?
For awhile you could buy Japanese products with a bit more confidence - protectionist laws over there meant Japanese companies couldn't export jobs to cheaper places as easily as American firms, so they tried to lower costs through innovation and increased automation instead. Those laws have been relaxed a bit now though, so they're gradually getting to be as bad as any other company (in fact, I think Foxconn makes the Sony-Eriksson X10 or whatever their latest Android phone is called, among many other products).
The article wasn't about "China" per se - the journalist who wrote it was also Chinese, and he was just as shocked as you lot are at what he discovered. The article is about the ever-widening income gap between the richest and poorest sections of the population, which is a world-wide problem (in fact, the UK has the highest income gap in Europe) and is one of the biggest argument in favour of stricter regulation.
And don't fool yourselves into thinking that jobs as bad as this don't exist in Europe and America. There's plenty of them - they're just mostly (but not exclusively) done by immigrants, so you don't get to hear about them. Plenty of jobs in fish gutting/canning factories even in the UK have much worse working conditions than this, and temporary farming jobs, especially around harvest time, are brutal: the Foxconn folks assemble devices on an assembly line for 12 hours, imagine instead bending down to pick strawberries for 12 hours, over and over again. Jobs like these are mostly done by illegal immigrants recruited by some very dodgy "agents" (slave-traders, really), who often confiscate their passports for the duration of their contract and retain part of their pay. All this is in your backyard.
For awhile you could buy Japanese products with a bit more confidence - protectionist laws over there meant Japanese companies couldn't export jobs to cheaper places as easily as American firms, so they tried to lower costs through innovation and increased automation instead. Those laws have been relaxed a bit now though, so they're gradually getting to be as bad as any other company (in fact, I think Foxconn makes the Sony-Eriksson X10 or whatever their latest Android phone is called, among many other products).
The article wasn't about "China" per se - the journalist who wrote it was also Chinese, and he was just as shocked as you lot are at what he discovered. The article is about the ever-widening income gap between the richest and poorest sections of the population, which is a world-wide problem (in fact, the UK has the highest income gap in Europe) and is one of the biggest argument in favour of stricter regulation.
And don't fool yourselves into thinking that jobs as bad as this don't exist in Europe and America. There's plenty of them - they're just mostly (but not exclusively) done by immigrants, so you don't get to hear about them. Plenty of jobs in fish gutting/canning factories even in the UK have much worse working conditions than this, and temporary farming jobs, especially around harvest time, are brutal: the Foxconn folks assemble devices on an assembly line for 12 hours, imagine instead bending down to pick strawberries for 12 hours, over and over again. Jobs like these are mostly done by illegal immigrants recruited by some very dodgy "agents" (slave-traders, really), who often confiscate their passports for the duration of their contract and retain part of their pay. All this is in your backyard.
Why does working in an assembly line necessitate this?
A lot of what people are shocked about has nothing to do with money...
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Why does working in an assembly line necessitate this?
I worked on or with assembly lines for 33 years and it caused no end of stress, nervous breakdowns and suicides with workers.
Try to imagine the same job day after day doing the most repetitive thing and then some arse is having a go at you because you're not keeping up or doing it right.
It can be the most mind numbing job on the face of the planet.
After Creda, Hotpoint, Indesit, Ariston shut down in Stoke in 2007 people are now realising what a good thing they were on and we all miss the friendships we made because working on an assembly line did bring excellent bonds.
An ex Creda employee made a video and I've just uploaded it to You Tube for him.
If you didn't work there, this is going to be the most boring video you will ever watch but looking at the images will make you think that nobody was sad - how wrong.
Part 3 shows when Merloni took over and then when the factory was emptied and it's one of the best uses of a song I've ever heard on a piece of film.
It's quite sad and I must admit that I really miss the place.
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because for the moment whilst wages are so low its cheaper to do it manually than mechanically...
once they get rights, better conditions etc it might become more cost effective to mechanise the production line, thus cutting the need for a lot of low skilled roles...
so what do you want, better conditions - but the risk of more unemployment to widen the wealth gap, or less wages but higher employment.
the drive to keep wages low is simply capitalism. if wages are pushed too high, then the big businesses will simply set up in lesser developed economic regions - because it will become more profitable to do so. you can review the migration of industry away from the UK as an example of this as costs rose and the attactiveness of producing abroad due to financial benefits also grew.
once they get rights, better conditions etc it might become more cost effective to mechanise the production line, thus cutting the need for a lot of low skilled roles...
so what do you want, better conditions - but the risk of more unemployment to widen the wealth gap, or less wages but higher employment.
the drive to keep wages low is simply capitalism. if wages are pushed too high, then the big businesses will simply set up in lesser developed economic regions - because it will become more profitable to do so. you can review the migration of industry away from the UK as an example of this as costs rose and the attactiveness of producing abroad due to financial benefits also grew.
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Write that in English please?
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Haha. Share of the profits? Do you know how businesses work? You think workers are paid out of profits? If you get money from after tax profits, then you are getting dividends for an equity claim. If its before any taxation, then it isn't profit at all but simply part of costs.
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Nevertheless, barring strict protectionist legislation like they used to have in Japan, or exponential advances in robotics, it will always be cheaper to get unskilled minimum-wage labourers to work assembly lines than machines. Once the wages and standard of living in China rises enough, companies will start moving factories out of there and into even cheaper places (possibly Africa). (Although it has to be said that the Chinese government are doing their best to delay this by artificially deflating their currency.)
The only other thing that might improve conditions for minimum-wage earners (be they factory workers, farm labourers or whatever) would be mandatory profit-sharing or other labour-protecting legislation. But then again you'd have to agree to pass the same legislation in EVERY country, an impossible task, or companies will no doubt find a little hole where they'll be able to evade it.
PS. Chavez's "petro-nationalism" regime is one example of breaking the power of big multinationals. He basically kicked out all the big foreign oil companies and renationalised their operations. He ****ed off every major Western government in doing so, and legally I suppose it was basically theft on a multi-billion dollar scale, but that's how far you have to go to get the changes those of you who are surprised and outraged want.
The only other thing that might improve conditions for minimum-wage earners (be they factory workers, farm labourers or whatever) would be mandatory profit-sharing or other labour-protecting legislation. But then again you'd have to agree to pass the same legislation in EVERY country, an impossible task, or companies will no doubt find a little hole where they'll be able to evade it.
PS. Chavez's "petro-nationalism" regime is one example of breaking the power of big multinationals. He basically kicked out all the big foreign oil companies and renationalised their operations. He ****ed off every major Western government in doing so, and legally I suppose it was basically theft on a multi-billion dollar scale, but that's how far you have to go to get the changes those of you who are surprised and outraged want.
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dmpoole said it better than I could, having never worked in a factory, but basically it's repetitive, boring, low-paid work by nature. Unless it's robots doing the assmbly and you're basically just an engineer overseeing it.Why does working in an assembly line necessitate this?
Sorry, but if you'd be the type that would go and commit suicide if you were called "pubic hair", then I dread to think what you'd do if you were working long shifts plus overtime for minimum wage doing something this dull and soul-crushing!
My question was, why does working in a poor country or an assembly line mean that it's ok to completely disrespect the workers like that? I have no idea what you're talking about.
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The article actually said the workers call EACH OTHER that, not that the bosses call them that. (could've been a mistranslation though, I was actually thinking if the human translation is that bad what was the machine translation like? 
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Ignoring the actual conditions of the factory, which by most genuine accounts are among better factories in that area of China. This story breaks because of a string of 10 suicides bringing the Foxconn total to 13 suicides in one year. Ignoring that they might not have been related to working conditions (although as dmpoole says it's not unheard of for factory workers). This rate of 13 suicides in 400 thousand employees (I think only 10 were at the factory with 400k, but it doesn't make a difference) is actually one quarter of the average suicide rate in China for an even male/female split across the ages 15-54 (roughly working ages).
So this has become massive news because there's loads of suicides there, yet actually there aren't there are relatively few suicides there. And the Chinese suicide rate is considerably lower than the international average. That wouldn't sell papers though would it.
So this has become massive news because there's loads of suicides there, yet actually there aren't there are relatively few suicides there. And the Chinese suicide rate is considerably lower than the international average. That wouldn't sell papers though would it.
And? my colleague did a 36 hour shift last week... and from what I can gather this will have been to get overtime rather than being made to do it.