This "journalist" puts 1 single Chinese company under a microscope and incites people of first world nations to pick up their pitch forks and torches in protest. Sure the conditions at Foxconn are terrible in comparison to my world view, but I'm not Chinese and my world view is irrelevant here. You know how I know this article is trash? This statement right here: "It also appears that windows have had bars put over them in an attempt to cut down on suicides." The suicide thing was covered pretty well recently and my recollection was that the workers of Foxconn were threatening suicide in a round about way of collective bargaining. Foxconn handled the situation very poorly and it's been a huge fiasco ever since. My understanding from the follow-up articles I read is that there is nothing abnormal about actual suicide rates at Foxconn when compared to any other company.
Let's be real here. What matters is how Foxconn compares to other Chinese factories. For all I know, Foxconn could be providing better pay, better living conditions, and better benefits than every other Chinese company. However, since there's nothing in this article to give me a better perspective, I have no way of knowing. There's no reason to expect Foxconn to act any differently than any other Chinese company. The issue here is the Chinese government and their lack of concern for fair and equal treatment of workers. Don't blame Foxconn simply because they make Apple products when they are doing the same thing as every other Chinese company.
Also, what's with this fixation on Foxconn and Apple? Foxconn does a whole hell of a lot more than just assembling ipads and iphones. I'm sure Apple accounts for but a small fraction of their total revenue.
Apple is the most successful business in history. They have literally billions of dollars in the bank. The fact that they have reached this position by exploiting international labor conditions is dissonant with the glowing opinion of them in the American press. It is seen as hypocritical.
From your tone, I infer that you think you may agree - but that you feel conflict, and conceal that from yourself by lashing out at the messenger.
It is not a valid excuse to say they're Chinese, any more than it is valid to allow West Virginian mine workers to die of black lung to provide cheap heat for Philadelphia.
Injustice doesn't have to be in your own street for it to be injustice.
Injustice means one thing for me and another for someone living in China. I have no idea what the standard of living is over there for a typical factory worker. Is it better or worse than the alternatives? I don't know. Foxconn could be a pioneer of beter living and working conditions for the country and I'd never know it. I'm biased towards a first world view on these matters. Everything must be considered when doing these types of comparisons, but there is no comparison here, just an editorial on how deplorable working conditions are. Again, at Foxconn in China. I assume Foxconn factories aren't this way in other countries with better labor laws.
My stance is that this is an issue the government needs to resolve. It's unreasonable to expect Apple or Foxconn to do anything about this on their own accord. I doubt they are behaving any differently than any other company with manufacturing operations over there. There's no need to crucify Apple or Foxconn over this.
Injustice means one thing for me and another for a negro. I have no idea what the standard of living is for typical negros. Is it better or worse than the alternatives? I don't know. Confederate cotton farmers could be a pioneer of better living and working conditions for negros I'd never know it. I'm biased towards a Union view on these matters. Everything must be considered when doing these types of comparisons, but there is no comparison here, just an editorial on how deplorable working conditions are. Again, on confederate cotton farms. I assume cotton farms aren't this way all over the country.
My stance is that this is an issue the government needs to resolve. It's unreasonable to expect cotton farmers or t-shirt manufacturers to do anything about this on their own accord. I doubt they are behaving any differently than any other company with cotton manufacturing operations. There's no need to crucify cotton farmers or t-shirt manufacturers over this.
Sounds kinda ridiculous when you change a coupla words, no?
The situation for slavery in America was resolved only because of civil war. For the problems that exist in China, the Chinese government's number one fear is that something similar could happen because they can't fix their problems any other way. And while ignorant people in the west may cheer and comment that it's necessary to break a few eggs to make an omelette, that is not a situation that would be considered preferable by any means for anybody.
I always see a lot of people complaining about Foxconn and the like, but nobody offering any solutions that would actually work. It's especially annoying when they don't acknowledge exactly why the problem is so difficult to solve, considering all the political, economic, social, and technological trends that contribute to the problem. IMO, those who criticize the problem, but can't offer any viable solutions, should at least put their money where their mouth is and not contribute to the problem. This means they shouldn't buy any electronics or in fact, shouldn't buy many things. Most stuff is made in China these days, or other countries with similar lax issues.
It's a complicated issue, and I see too much straw man applied to this issue too many times.
Living here, I realize most people have no idea how poor the vast majority of people are in China. I had no idea until I came here. I'm not saying the situation is acceptable. I am saying the situation is too complicated for the commentary we see over and over again.
Rural migrant workers in China (who make up the bulk of factory labour) have less rights than people who are residents of the area they are working in. For one, it is very hard (near impossible) for migrant workers to send their children to schools near their workplace. As for free will, you will find many who move to the cities for these jobs are doing so under intense family pressure.
I'm not trying to draw a comparison to slavery, there is actual slavery in Southern China's brick making industry that is truly appalling.
Your railing on this article undermines your whole point. You say that you lack perspective as to what the living conditions are in different Chinese factories -- but you fail to recognize that this article gives you one more data point than you previously had. You gain perspective by having more articles bringing these issues to light a little at a time.
It is also worth noting that the article in question was originally written by a news agency from Shanghai -- it is not an American, outsider-perspective that's painting a scathing picture, it's the Chinese themselves with their own experiences.
> Injustice means one thing for me and another for someone living in China.
Why? That standards of living are higher in some places than others is no reason to be negative about attempts to change the status quo. Drawing attention to this has resulted in improvements, even if there's a long way to go. People always want things to be someone else's problem. The good news is that, looking at history, these things usually get better over time.
> There's no need to crucify Apple or Foxconn over this.
These are their own workers. They are directly responsible for the conditions in their own factories. The notion that it's China, so it's reasonable to expect them to be treated like crap doesn't sit well with me. That may be how things are in much of China, but it says nothing about how things ought to be in China. You could complain that if so, they ought to improve things, but that's exactly what they are doing here: bringing the issues to light so they can be dealt with.
I think he is trying to say that what this journalist is getting paid could be better or worse than other factories, but there's no way to tell reading this article. The author expects the reader to compare it to dollars as stated with the $4 wage. How many Yuan is that, and how many Yuan is a good living over there? I have a friend living in Shenzhen and he gets by on like $0.25 a day, living like a westerner.
And of course you are going to get reprimanded if you don't do your job correctly, e.g. too much oil or inaccurate placement. And of course a new employee won't be good at it at first.
Personally, the most atrocious thing I've read in the whole article is that dirty sheets is commonplace. And frankly, that is common in China.
Right, and Vivtek's point was that it doesn't matter if Foxconn has better working conditions than other factories in China. Lesser of two evils is still an evil.
deelowe seems to have the "if someone's gonna do it, it might as well be us" mentality; as if it was morally ok to exploit labour in China just because China does that to itself.
What we should be looking at is the Purchasing Power Parity. If the Chinese factory workers can afford much less than American factory workers, we should try to make it more fair.
I was in China for a month, there's no way you can get away "living like a westerner" on $0.25 USD/day maybe living like a poor Chinese peasant. But just taking a bus somewhere costs around 15 cents.
If you're referring to the fact without the connotation then it's more accurate to see it's the basis of all human trade dating to prehistoric times and indeed the basis of all entity relationships in the natural world.
The person writing the article is trying to change the working conditions in that factory (also in other factories). They are doing this by finding out the conditions and pointing them out at an opportune moment in time. They are trying to get Apple to put pressure on Foxconn.
It's irrelevant if Foxconn is twice as good as other companies. Sounds like they could be 3 times as good and still need improvement.
HN is full of stories about how to get your startup into the media and about startups wanting to change the world. This person is trying to use media coverage of the iPhone 5 to help people directly. Good on them.
> This person is trying to use media coverage of the iPhone 5 to help people directly. Good on them.
Is it really helping them, though?
Improving working conditions and the wellbeing of employees costs money. Put pressure on Apple/Foxconn to spend more on labor in China and there'll come a point where they just move production elsewhere, leaving these Chinese people without any jobs.
Let's not forget these people are working in these factories voluntarily. The working conditions might be a bit crap, but the employees are choosing to endure them at their current wage.
>Let's not forget these people are working in these factories voluntarily. The working conditions might be a bit crap, but the employees are choosing to endure them at their current wage.
Because they have no choice. The alternative is starving.
You have to understand that spreading awareness is the first step in actually solving this problem. That's how working conditions improved in the west, and that is how they'll improve in China.
>This "journalist" puts 1 single Chinese company under a microscope and incites people of first world nations to pick up their pitch forks and torches in protest. Sure the conditions at Foxconn are terrible in comparison to my world view, but I'm not Chinese and my world view is irrelevant here.
Did you actually read the article? A Chinese journalist reporting in Chinese media would indicate that Foxconn's conditions are a concern to the Chinese "world view". Apple is the most profitable company in the world, yet they continue to choose a manufacturing partner that treats workers poorly.
I did and I didn't see anything that provided comparison with conditions in other Chinese factories. I have no way to know what's typical and what's not.
> However, the Chinese new agency Shanghai Evening Post has posted a pretty scathing review of the working conditions at Foxconn, and in particular the iPhone 5 production line.
It doesn't make a lot of sense for Chinese media to do a hit piece for Chinese readers if the working conditions are the norm.
It does make sense when Apple is involved and is a foreign company that makes oodles of cash. It then becomes a very political thing. Plus, normal factories are nowhere near Foxconn's scale, so they're usually not worth reporting on, unless you're doing an industry-wide report. Foxconn has captured the world's attention. The industry has not. What is flashy is what sells, always has.
just want to point out that merely "being Chinese" does not make the journalist as qualified as you may think.
Think it like some journalist in NYC working for a major media company goes to some manufacturing plant in the Midwest, finding people are doing hard work under not good enough conditions. And that'll give some perspectives.
The OP made a big deal about how it's different in China so we can't compare directly. My point is that this is a Chinese national who lives in China and has actually worked at the plant. Regardless of journalistic pedigree, the writer is vastly more capable of writing an honest story from the Chinese perspective than a Western journalist or the OP.
A NY Times reporter covering poor working conditions in a meat packing plant in the Midwest is also a story worth reading. It happens, sometimes it changes when it's exposed, but almost never changes without exposure. An American reporting on bad American working conditions is more impactful than a Chinese reporter reporting on poor American conditions and the reverse is also true.
Upton Sinclair was able to change things with his work on The Jungle. I don't see this as being a lot different.
>> My point is that this is a Chinese national who lives in China and has actually worked at the plant. Regardless of journalistic pedigree, the writer is vastly more capable of writing an honest story from the Chinese perspective than a Western journalist or the OP.
I actually agree. What I wanted to point out is for the reader of the story to keep in mind that the writer is a white collar Shanghai journalist, and would inevitably come with his frame of references because of it. For a NYT journalist living in NY, I believe most Western readers will assume a liberal bias, and view the reporting through some lenses, but the sophistication towards China probably stops at the reporter being a "Chinese Journalist".
Sure, the writer is more qualified than you and me, but he didn't answer some critical questions - is this factory above or below average in Chinese manufacturing plants? Is Foxconn raising or lowering labor standards in the area? Is Foxconn providing better alternatives to local labor, who may have to make a living by going down a tunnel in a coal mine or planting rice under the sun? Is having the plant there better or worth than not having the plant there?
So wait: because these workers are Chinese, and their working conditions are better than other Chinese factories, they shouldn't be demanding better conditions?
Got it. So because people lost the genetic lottery and were born in China, they're lesser than you, and don't deserve the same rights and privileges that you do.
I'd like to see you try and work in these conditions and then try to have the same opinion. This Western attitude of shitting on "3rd-world" countries just appals me. As the child of immigrant parents in Canada, I'm absolutely grateful that I was able to escape this world. But I'm sure you'd love to send us back.
It's interesting how middle-class people in the first world elevate their own decadence to the level of a human right. For most of human history, people have had to work very very hard and endure massive absolute poverty. Even today, somebody has to go pick fruit all day and even unemployed Americans aren't willing to: http://seattletimes.com/html/dannywestneat/2016582976_danny2...
Whoa now, ad hominem much? Let's keep the mudslinging to a minimum, please.
The point he's (admittedly somewhat poorly) attempting to make is that the article doesn't have enough context to draw conclusions about the greater state of factory workers across the entire Chinese industrial base. He never states that the workers shouldn't demand better working conditions, and never says that Foxconn offers a better work environment than other factories.
Apple is the market leader. Therefore they're a lightning rod for this sort of criticism. Stated without proof but I'd be surprised if conditions building any other device over there anywhere else are any better...
As others have said, if you truly don't approve of these practices, then stop buying the end products of them...
Unfortunately, I believe the OP misrepresents the original article quite a bit. The Chinese article is three pages long but their summary only covers details from the first page. The second page features personal stories from several employees and their families, which the journalist said made a much deeper impression than the tasks he went through as an undercover employee. The third is a commentary along the lines of "is this the best China can do?" (i.e. forever be implementing other countries' creativity, instead of being the inventors), and a final reflection saying that working conditions at Foxconn have improved greatly over the last two years (apparently working undercover at Foxconn is something that's been done several times before), but the hostile attitude toward employees has not improved.
Aside the editorial content at the end, I think the article was quite fair in that the journalist simply reporte what he saw (if the windows really have screens installed for suicide prevention, merely describing this fact does not make an article "trash"). I also don't think the author has any intent of making the Western world go up in arms about anything. The point is more about checking how much things have changed since the famous chain of suicides was made public.
Your statement is like looking at steel mill conditions in the early 1900's in Pittsburgh and the people on wall street saying... "Well, why are they pissed? Its not like its slavery."
Just because other Chinese working conditions suck doesn't mean that its right. Yeah, so maybe the pay isn't as high because the cost of living is lower, but that doesn't mean you treat people like crap when they are making you filthy rich just because "everbody does it".
No, it's like looking at a steel mill in the 1900's and pointing the finger at our government to do something about it. Which we did and it got fixed. Resolution didn't come from journalists going around bashing all the companies that purchased US steel. Resolution came from the government enacting better labor laws.
Also, it wasn't just steel. It was steel, oil, coal and many other industries. Which, I'd argue is the same issue in China.
Unfortunately, the Chinese govt. is not the same as the US govt., w.r.t how it treats its own people. So appealing to their govt. will not work. Appealing to Apple might?
> . There's no reason to expect Foxconn to act any differently than any other Chinese company. The issue here is the Chinese government and their lack of concern for fair and equal treatment of workers.
I would say you are wrong partially wrong here, at least in the long term. We did not have good condition 50 or 100 years ago, the conditions in china are better then they where 30 years ago too.
The richers a society the better there places of work will become.
and what is/was wrong with slavery, after all every one was doing it and probably slaves on plantations had better living conditions than the people they came from living in the bush...
Don't blame the poor plantation owners, they are just doing the same thing as all the others....
Sheesh, until now I never realized it was possible to have your head so far up your ass it ended up buried in the sand...
The fix for slavery was to ban it across the country. Individual plantation owners couldn't voluntarily give it up if it made them uncompetitive against those who didn't.
Wow, some people REALLY don't get irony. My whole post was aimed at the parent post by emphasizing the ridiculousness of his argument by use of irony/sarcasm.
From the wikipedia definition of irony: "Ironic statements (verbal irony)[2] are statements that imply a meaning in opposition to their literal meaning."
Unfortunately, the world is still in such a sad state that your above comment could absolutely be construed as your own personal beliefs which is why I asked if you were serious lest I overreact and turn what would be an otherwise lively debate into uncouth name calling.
But thank you for the definition of the word irony. I wish you a good day.
Sorry about my somewhat harsh reply. I come from the UK where irony/sarcasm use is far more common than it appears to be by our cousins in USA. I sometimes forget this and really should use more neutral arguments!
No worries my friend. I know it's often difficult to convey tone over the web so big up to you for apologizing. Honestly, it's standup people like you that keep me coming back to HN for news and good debate rather than some of the other sites out there. Cheers SeanDav.
Anyone who has significant issues with this needs to stop buying anything marked made in China.
There are some interesting bits in there from the perspective of understanding the manufacturing process, but in terms of the worker conditions and so on, it's nothing new and anyone for whom this is news has presumably been hiding under a rock for the last couple of years and making a concious effort not to think about how certain countries can make things this cheaply.
That's not to make light of the conditions, just to say that we're all somewhat complicit and any outrage needs to be matched with action, not just against Apple but against anyone using Foxconn or their peers.
>Anyone who has significant issues with this needs to stop buying anything marked made in China. ... That's not to make light of the conditions, just to say that we're all somewhat complicit and any outrage needs to be matched with action, not just against Apple but against anyone using Foxconn or their peers.
Not buying Chinese is very difficult and the amount of people with the dedication to do this is miniscule and won't make an impact. Shaming the most profitable company in the world into either switching to a more ethical manufacturing partner or pressuring its manufacturing partner to improve working conditions is more likely to succeed. Success with this will increase the odds of success with other Western companies indirectly profiting from bad treatment of workers.
I agree with what you say. The problem is not limited to one manufacturer, and it is annoying and frustrating that it's framed in that way.
Why do people like to jump at one manufacturer while ignoring almost all of the others who have devices built in unsavoury conditions?
> not to think about how certain countries can make things this cheaply.
Some products - a t-shirt from a budget shop - cost a few dollars. We kind of expect those products to be made in a sweat shop. We hope there's at least some kind of legal regulation. And then there are expensive designer t-shirts - a $150 billionaire boys club t-shirt - and we really hope that these garments are not made in the same sweat shops. We really hope that some of that $150 trickles down to the factory in the form of much better regulation and conditions and pay.
Fairtrade-like schemes could work here, if they're done properly.
Bob produces widgets. He gets paid $0.20 per widget. I as the end consumer buy a widget for $1.00
If I pay $1.02, that's a 2% increase for me, and if that whole $0.02 goes to Bob he gets $0.22, a 10% increase.
Unfortunately, it feels like I pay $1.10, and Bob gets $0.02.
Boycotting Chinese produced goods in an effort to make Chinese workers better off seems a little misguided. The workers at Foxconn evidently find that job better than the next best job, or having no job at all.
There's no doubt that working conditions in China can and should improve, and there's nothing wrong with trying to accelerate the process. But taking money out of the country probably isn't the answer. They are transitioning from a developing country to a developed one, and it is a process that will take time. Coercing the entire country (with boycotts) into improving conditions seems unlikely, and just focusing on one factory will only hurt the workers at that one factory.
Boycotts are a fantasy. You would love to think that you can just ethically spend your money and the world will be fine but it is a complete myth. So what if you never buy something marked "Made in China" then I guess Haiti, Vietnam and India must be bastions of freedom and ethical work?
In today's modern, integrated economy it is near impossible to buy anything that isn't at least partially made in China. Defence suppliers try to avoid foreign parts for political reasons and even they cannot prevent some components, metals, plastics or raw materials being sourced from China.
It is you who are living under a rock if you believe you can truly vote with your wallet. You don't have that choice any more. Even if you go out of your way to avoid all electronics (I guarantee you at least some of those components came from China) and only buy locally sourced, fair-trade hemp clothing you will still be giving money to someone else who is buying almost everything from China.
This doesn't just apply to China, it applies to every nation (except, maybe, North Korea, you really need to try hard to find something that they have exported recently). Economies are interconnected and boycotts are feelgood nonsense.
And then what? Foxconn lays off all their workers and they go back to whatever conditions it was (subsistence farming, maybe?) that led them to decide that working at Foxconn was a better choice for them?
The last few decades has seen the largest and fastest movement of people from absolute poverty to relative middle class. The last few years has seen factories along the coastal cities of China beginning to compete for labour by raising wages, because many migrant workers are choosing to move back to their inland cities, where the economy is beginning to flourish.
No, it's not pretty, and it's going to stay not pretty for a while. But buying goods from China, and buying a lot, is the best foreign aid money can buy.
Korea is a developed country and does provide good working conditions. I think Samsung phones are Made in Korea? Not sure though... they might be "assembled in Korea"
So your philosophy is to ignore the things you don't like? That may help you sleep better at night, but the world doesn't stop turning when you close your eyes. IMHO a better philosophy is accept the hypocrisy of willful indifference or try to make a difference. I don't find willful indifference to be 'action'.
I have no need for such mental gymnastics to sleep at night - I have small children, I could commit murder and I'm tired enough that it wouldn't be a problem at least as far as sleep was concerned.
I'm not indifferent, I'm just pointing out that viewing this as an Apple / Foxconn problem misses the point, and that most action based on that view will be ineffective and possibly even counter productive.
Journalists piggy back these stories on Apple because that shifts papers or gets clicks. That's fine as it raises the issue and puts pressure on companies to improve things (which seems to be happening).
As a result of this Apple are probably the most scrutinised company in China and are likely at the better end of things when it comes to how workers are treated. What does boycotting them and giving your business to a less scrutinised company really achieve?
The point is if you're going to use this as part of your buying decision, then assess it properly and apply the same standards to all the products and companies you are considering.
As for my position, I'm not sure what this wilful indifference really is.
My position is that other than monitoring the situation and revising my views as things change (for the better or worse), any significant action I might take would inconvenience me in a manner disproportionate to the impact it might have and that effort would be better invested elsewhere.
Big words. The Internet is full of windbags asserting we need to make a difference. Notice how none of these people ever seem to attempt to do so? They usually limit themselves to vacuous back-of-a-cornflake-packet, trendy posturing like this.
...Which is why the first option in my philosophy is accepting the hypocrisy. I actually am totally fine with slave labor because it's much easier than the latter option: doing something about it.
Doing nothing as an action is hypocritical because it's not really an action. You're declaring you are trying to do something [to rectify that which you object to], but in fact are not doing anything. It's like a politician saying "i'm going on a fact-finding mission to resolve this issue of pollution of the watershed", when in fact they have no intent of finding any facts or solving any issues. But it sounds nice.
I guess my point is I find embracing consumerism at the expense of cheap labor to be more honest than refusing to admit my role in not being a solution.
Doing nothing is an action if it's a concious decision rather than just idleness.
You need to distinguish "I believe there are things I can do but I'm not doing them" (which is hypocrisy) with "I've thought about it and I don't think there is any meaningful action I can take" (which isn't).
I think I'm in the second camp. I may be wrong in my assessment of the situation and what I can do, but if that's true it's misguided rather than hypocrisy.
>That's not to make light of the conditions, just to say that we're all somewhat complicit and any outrage needs to be matched with action, not just against Apple but against anyone using Foxconn or their peers.
I presume Apple has the largest clout with Foxconn and can essentially demand better worker conditions from them. Other companies may not have as much leverage, though I agree there needs to be more awareness about things like laptops, XBox, and PS3.
Apple may be Foxconn's biggest customer but this isn't just Foxconn and it isn't just China.
Put this in the perspective it really needs - what percentage of Asia's comparable manufacturing output do you think Apple accounts for?
And now consider that it's not just Asia, it's countries all over South and Central America and Eastern Europe.
A friend of mine used to be a town planner and part of his job was getting planning permission for new McDonald's sites. When you're pitching to the relevant authorities in the UK, you're under no obligation to reveal who your customer is, just the basic nature of the business (in this case fast food restaurant). But, he said, they would often hint (in a deniable manner obviously) that they were representing Burger King because McDonald's had such a bad reputation.
That reputation while largely deserved, distinguished them only from what we'd want them to be like, not from their competitors. Any fast food chain on that scale at a corporate level is largely indistinguishable from McDonald's - it's how they remain competitive.
But McDonalds' rep meant that they got the kicking so people would rather have a (morally identical) Burger King in their town. Cosmetically a win perhaps, in reality nothing got any better anywhere.
What I'm saying in a very roundabout way, if you boycott Apple, if all you do is move your custom to another organisation who are no better, you've made close to no difference at all. If this really bothers you, then you probably need to look further afield for your next smartphone or PC or tablet than the next big player.
After the mess that was the last Apple Foxconn story, and with all the economic pressure that affects newspapers & news media, it becomes increasingly difficult for me to believe stories like these.
It's not that I don't suppose that there're bad working conditions at Foxconn - there probably are. No, it's that even if the journalist in this story managed to sneak in, and work there, he probably added tons of hyperbole and wrong encounters into his story, just to make it all the more dramatic. Otherwise, nobody would be interested in it, nobody would read it, and there'd be no money.
I really think it's hard to believe journalists these days, especially if the stories are unheard of and outrageous. The decline of advertising money and newspaper subscriptions has lead to a decline of journalistic integrity and objectivism, I think.
Addendum, I studied journalism & communication, most of my friends are journalists, and I'd say they try hard, but the economic pressure sounds untenable sometimes. Some of them earn so little money, that I wonder how they even manage to pay rent.
>"I really think it's hard to believe journalists these days, especially if the stories are unheard of and outrageous."
You really think piss-poor working conditions in Second-World factories are "unheard of and outrageous"? It's been going on for centuries. Sure, this story was impeccably timed, and I'm sure there are liberties taken here and there, but that's because running a magazine/newspaper is a business. That doesn't provide carte blanche to deny that there is truth behind the writing. I think it's a dangerous precedent when the populace begins to say, "you can't believe the media". In fact, I'm sure that there are terrible governments around the world that would love the population to think that way.
I'm a big believer in capitalism and globalization, so I think that, net, having these factories in China is beneficial. But I also don't disclaim that they are probably horrible, unhealthy places to work. How much responsibility is Apple's, and how much is China's is the important question.
I also think that it's dangerous to not trust media anymore. I was expressing my fear that that might happen. I don't think the working conditions are outrageous, I also don't think that they're piss-poor though. Relative to the environment (china) they may be not so bad. I was saying that media is trying to market it as outrageous to generate higher sales.
This may be a cultural thing, but while I do believe in free markets and capitalism, I think that there're certain parts of society which need to be handled separately as the optimization for economic success (the cheaper the better) doesn't fare well (imho) with health and media. I like the approach of the UK, where the BBC is state paid but not state controlled. But this is a huge separate discussion and I can understand different viewpoints here and I'm afraid it's often about cultural differences which viewpoint we chose.
It is hard to know who to believe. The journalist who has something to gain by exaggerating the suffering of the workers, or the company which has much more to gain by hiding the suffering. The truth is somewhere in between. Based on the Foxconn on-the-job-site suicide rate being significantly higher than other on-the-job-site suicide rates (important to compare apples-with-apples, no pun intended), the truth probably lies closer to the journalist version.
What evidence suggests the suicide rate for Foxconn workers is "significantly higher" than would otherwise be expected?
Near as I can tell, the only complaint is that there was a large raw number of suicides a while ago...in a company so huge it has more workers than the population of Wyoming. Last time I looked it up, the suicide rate there seemed to be lower than the rate among chinese people, lower than the rate among chinese college students, lower than the rate among US factory workers and so on. And that problem was largely in the past, not an ongoing issue.
"lower than the rate among US factory workers". This is a common comparison fallacy. The baserates you appear to be comparing with are all general population baserate. The baserate that I was thinking about was how many factory workers committed suicide on-site. That is the Apples-to-Apples comparison. Eg: How many Apple employees committed suicide on campus vs how many Foxconn employees committed suicide at their factory camp/dorm.
That is NOT a relevant comparison. Foxconn employees live in dormitories on-site while US factory workers don't, so you'd essentially be trying to compare ALL the suicides of Foxconn employees to SOME of the suicides of other workers. (Though I'm not sure they'd fail even THAT comparison.)
If I recall correctly, even the rate at which Americans are murdered on the job is higher than the rate at which Foxconn employees commit suicide there. So if you want to keep claiming there's something uniquely bad about Foxcon in this regard, let's hear some actual numbers from you. What specific numbers are you looking at that lead you to believe Foxconn is unusually bad?
If you are comparing apples-to-apples, then surely you should weight your statement on who to believe by how easy it is for each person to exaggerate/hide.
It's super easy for a journalist to exaggerate something like this, with relatively little risk for a massive gain. On the other hand, a "Company" hiding things involves many, many more people involved in the conspiracy, and the penalty for failure isn't really that much (how many decades of big-companies-with-bad-working-conditions stories have we had?).
It also doesn't give any sense of context - how reliable the newspaper is, what the average working conditions are for that class of facility, etc etc.
Also, again it doesn't seem (or at least the writeup doesn't) to include the information about foxconn being more than just apple, that seems to get forgotten every time there is a Foxconn story.
You raise a seemingly valid point. But, your data seems to be different than mine. Many companies, especially large multi-national ones have an excellent track record of media manipulation and the ability to successfully hide massive problems. Think about how rare whistle blowers are. Easy example that I was personally affected by: Vioxx from Merck where Merck knew about the problems with the drug but pushed it through anyway and got away with it for years. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6192603/ns/health-arthritis/t/re... . Think about big tobacco, think about Chiquita and its activities in Columbia, think about Dow Chemical/Union Carbide...
>Also, again it doesn't seem (or at least the writeup doesn't) to include the information about foxconn being more than just apple, that seems to get forgotten every time there is a Foxconn story.
As we're constantly reminded by the Apple blogs and on here, Apple takes 75% of the profits in the phone industry and have huge margins which their competitors can't come close to, so isn't it logical that Apple gets more of the bad press for bad working conditions since they are in the best position to improve the workers' pathetic work and living environment?
It's probably true and there's nothing Apple or anyone can do about it apart from stop selling things.
I dealt with several Chinese manufacturers in the late 1990's who were doing custom PCB runs for one of our products. They treated their staff like shit then and hid it all under the rug when you went to see them. They wheeled out the turd polish in double-quick time.
I don't think it's changed and I don't think it will change unless people on the production lines just say "no". This has happened in the textile industry over there (according to my cousin who is an importer of textiles) and staff are earning great rates now. The cheaper staff are in Mexico and India now.
Regarding the money - the cost of living is pretty damn cheap over there by their standards.
Note: I don't like buying products myself which are responsible for this sort of thing, but I'm not that sympathetic.
As for the journalists - they are as full of crap as the factory bosses are.
Its probably not in the same league in terms of numbers, but its impressive that the Raspberry Pi foundation just announced recently that they are now manufacturing their computers at home, in the UK, and maintaining the same retail price. So with advanced technologies and automation, plus some determination, there is something they can do. Its also revealing that the RPi foundation is non-profit so they aren't trying to maintain a bottom line.
he probably added tons of hyperbole and wrong encounters into his story, just to make it all the more dramatic.
Are you basing this accusation on something or just pulling it out of thin air? You probably cheat on tests, steal other people's ideas, and slack off at work so everyone else has to work harder to accommodate you. Baseless accusations don't feel good, do they?
No, I based it on a general feeling based on several other stories like the 'This American Life' Foxconn report. I'm also not saying that he is lying, just that he is distorting reality.
Finally, I wasn't trying to write about this author in particular, but more about general journalism.
I may well be wrong there, but I tried to express an opinion based on a theory (explained in the post) that economic pressure can lead to a lower quality of journalistic output. My examples of hyperbole & more were, then, just examples of typical traits of said process. It's well known, that journalistic outlets of less quality (Sun in the UK, Fox News in the US, BILD in Germany, etc) do just what I explained above: They add unnecessary hyperbole, shift facts & more - as long as the story sells. I was just expressing that less money may lead to less quality.
tl;dr You don't anything about this (I don't either) but you doubt it because there is "economic pressure". Right. The same comment can apply to every single item posted to this website, yoohoo.
I'm not talking about the rest of this site, I'm talking about journalism in particular, and how it changed compared to 1-2 decades ago. There's a huge difference between startup blog posts (which are for example other items posted here) and journalism, as a fourth constitutional force: Responsible for educating the people in an objective and truthful way, so they can form their own opinions, express their ideas, and thus participate in politics (by that I do't mean working in Washington. Lookup Habermas). In short, journalism should rinse democracy.
I fear that this function (actually the only relevant function that journalism enjoys, imho) is less and less fulfilled. I just took the doubts I have about this article as an example of that.
A working journalistic system shouldn't have to fear really hard economic pressure, otherwise it can't work correctly anymore. This relates to all other contents on this site as well, as long as they're journalistic and not public relations.
A few things to note:
- The job was taken voluntarily
- The employee can resign at any time
- The pay is not horrible. $2/hr for overtime is very high for China, and much higher than could be made at most jobs outside of professional occupations in major cities.
Working in a factory in China is not a glorious undertaking, but it is not (in this case) slave labor nor is it unethical.
The author suggests robots could do this, but instead they use humans - as if it were a horrible thing to voluntarily employ humans. Do you think those earning a living there would prefer to be fired and replaced by robots?
There are horrible situations in China - like the gulag prison labor system. There are certainly factories where children are put to work unethically and illegally (as there are in the US). This article however exposes nothing alarming.
And besides, isn't Apple something like 0.001% of Chinese manufacturing output? Apple isn't the problem; if anything Apple may well be the strongest force for positive change at Foxconn.
The interesting part here is that they have 48 low paid workers with some good QA instead of setting up a robot to do a particular task.
Setting up automation will become quicker and cheaper, forcing the labour alternative to become even cheaper and more demanding to compete with that. This is what is happening.
As this progresses, fewer people will be willing to work for that pay or under those conditions. Then these jobs will go away.
This is a good thing, but bad if you are used to slower technological progress where you can always make ends meet by taking up some low paid low skill jobs.
That was his pay for overtime. I don't think they were paying him time-and-a-half, in fact I think they probably paid him less for the overtime. So I'm guessing he made more than $2/hr for most of that 10 days.
and if that's for 7 days a week 10 hours a day as the reporter said, that's 300 hours.. so 1.33 dollars per hour.
BTW, the typical salary range for a junior Ruby dev in a second or third tier city in China is about 800 - 1600 USD per month. Just to put things in perspectives
The article mentions it takes 48 people to make oil markings on back plate. That means 19200$/month for wages. I could make a robot that's 10x more productive for half the price.
I'm not sure that gives any perspective. It's pretty obvious that any kind of "skilled labor" like programming will pay better than "unskilled labor" like making oil dots on a piece of aluminum.
And to put the "working hours" thing in perspective, it is typical in cities like Shenzhen to work their programmers 10 hours a day, five and a half days a week. So what sounds like horrible from a Western perspective may not be "too horrible" in the local sense. Remember, all those workers volunteered to work there and they can leave as they want. Sure, it's unbearable for some white collared journalist from Shanghai, but what about someone otherwise would have to plant rice in the field under the sun, or go down a tunnel to mine coal?
> The work is clearly very stressful and the pay is terrible. The example the journalist gave was two hours of overtime earning him just $4.
Can anyone give any context of how bad this actually is? Obviously it's not as terrible as if somebody got paid $4 for two hours of overtime here in the UK, in terms of average wage and typical cost of living, but no idea how much less bad it is..
It's not too bad. That works out at about 12.5 RMB / hour, more than someone would make working a night shift at KFC here in Guizhou (I expect in Shen Zhen it would be a little higher). I work at a coffee shop owned by my friend here; 6 - 10 RMB / hour is quite typical for unskilled labour. Also, chances are that these factory workers have free accomodation and subsidised food which makes a significant difference.
The journalist also notes that "there aren’t enough workers to fill the positions at the factory as they keep resigning". This doesn't neccessarily mean its a bad place to work. I hardly have any friends that haven't quit at least one job in the last year or two. Modern Chinese culture -- particularly among young people -- accepts quitting your job, messing around for a few months ("playing" in Chinese) and then finding another as quite normal.
How many people do you think are migrant workers? People who come from an area where that pay is a lot more than they get back home, work for a certain period of time before resigning. Then they either go back home or find a better paying job in the new area.
Having been a migrant worker myself, I think this is a great way for the mobility of young people, especially when the jobs offer accommodation too.
In May, Foxconn’s base salary was $350 per month [1]
So, $350 / 22 working days (per month aprox, assuming 2 days of weekend, I don't know if they have 1 or 2)
=> $15.9 per day. / 10 hours per day
=> $1.59 per hour
Earning $2 for every extra hour... is like earning 1/3 extra per hour. Just to compare, here in Argentina, every extra hour is paid double by law. But I don't know if this is regulated in China...
Anyway, given the kind of job, I wouldn't try to stimulate working extra hours, as attention would decrease too much for this kind of monotonous and precision work. So, it makes sense that they pay little for overtime work.
What you're referring to is called cultural relativism [1], and is willfully ignored in most media reports of working conditions in foreign countries.
By not providing any context to the local norms, we tend to compare conditions to our norms and see it in stark terms, while the reality is more nuanced. FoxConn's compensation and work conditions may be imperfect, but are good enough relative to local alternatives they have sufficient supply of willing workers. The "exploitation by US consumers" is an effect of globalization.
Most criticism and remediation efforts should not be directed at the various firms, but at the country that allows it to occur.
This sounds horrible. I would hate to do it. But it actually sounds much less bad than working in an order fulfillment warehouse in the United States (at least you can go home to sleep, I guess).
Amazon is a market leader too, and there's almost no coverage of how it treats its workers. Likewise Google and Samsung (the latter is considered unusually bad, having engaged in coverups).
America's 40 hour work week, overtime rules, break requirements, chemical handling safety rules and a bunch of other OSHA regulations make the worst American job infinitely better.
If that is true, why don't they have robots already? I know they are planning[1], however that kind of work seems to be very easily replaced by a robot (who will have a far higher accuracy and less failure rate than humans especially for the task the journalist describes).
But for this PARTICULAR example, is it cheaper? I know a bit about robot hacking, not industrial mind you, but this would be a rather trivial machine which could probably replace that entire production line? You might know more than me about it though :)
I know a bit on automation, work R&D in a factory. There's no doubt that it's cheaper in the long run, even with costs related to programming, testing, maintenance, and tweaking. But rushing untested robotics into production will almost certainly increase the costs above manual labor. It's better to maintain the current line while you test out the automation, gradually train workers to monitor systems, and switch over one line at a time. This particular story (painting dots) seems like a great case for automation, so I'd suspect they're working on it.
Also keep in mind that sometimes, manual labor trumps robotics. Let's say there will be 70 million of these backplates shipped, and then no more will be needed. That's a lot of automation investment in a solution for a temporary product. Workers can move from one task to the next with ease, while robotics require a lot of development, logistics, and testing. For a company like Foxconn that will always be manufacturing different things, the investment in human labor might allow for more "pivoting" than robotics. Comes down to what makes the most business sense for them.
I don't understand why so many people are trying to defend the working conditions. Fine, the conditions may be considered fine in the context of China. That does not make them acceptable; it just means that the working conditions in China as a whole are bad.
If I'm honest, I had not ever considered the plight of the Chinese factory worker. I use things everyday that are manufactured in China under conditions that might be worse than those at Foxconn. That being said, this article was useful in that it opened my eyes a bit. This isn't to say that I thought the working conditions were probably great. I just had never considered them at all. It's quite easy to live in a bubble and sometimes articles like this help break out of it.
None of the above. They want work. And this is work that is much better than flipping burgers at McDonalds.
Remember that some of these people might end up designing and producing the products of the future as well. I know if I was 18 I would jump at the chance to take a job like this.
Injustice is injustice no matter where it happens.
The reality is that masses of people in third world countries are exploited and they don't have very many options to do otherwise. The governments and multinational companies are very interested in maintaining this status quo -- that is how you can earn billion (get cheap labor for low costs and sell at high prices).
Apple doesn't sell their products at 1/5th the price in the US to reflect the local rates (for that matter most things like a Mercedes would sell for the same international price). The point is that a large section of world population is denied many benefits simply because where they are (think about the quality of medical treatment in the US vs a place like China or India or Uganda).
It is in one's interest to ensure access to all such services/products at low cost (subsidized by someone else) while ensuring comparatively high compensation due to residence in a first world nation.
Hopefully the inequity will grow smaller over time.
It'd be so amazing if Apple decided to move all their manufacturing to the US. It seems impossible, but it's Apple, they have the money and ability to do it. It might take 10 years and lower their margins in the short-term, but I bet through automation they could eventually achieve parity with outsourcing. Not to mention that federal/state/local governments would be willing to grant massive incentives to make it happen. Hell, they could even add an optional $50 Made In America fee to every device for a while and a huge number of people would pay it.
Like every other technology hardware company they're addicted to cheap labor. Super automated factories are obviously where things are headed. Apple could lead the way in yet another way. In fact it's one thing Tim Cook could probably get done even better than Steve Jobs could have.
I like how how they try to point those things back at Apple, but the fact is, everything built on China is the same. Foxconn is rich because they do that, and China is rich because all factories do that.
China is a regime, and it's convenient for the west that it stays that way. It's a source of inexpensive labour force and a place you can pollute building your gadgets. If they were to follow the most strict rules from EU/US, there's no way in hell that you would have access to cheap electronics.
Now I ask: would you exchange first world conditions for those workers for more expensive products? The majority of us consumers don't have a clue, we just go for what has a good cost/benefit. Ethics often isn't a factor on where we spend our money.
People who are in disgust in Foxconn incident should also look into the factories where cloths they were wearing are made http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/episodes/may-18-20.... It is standard rule in capitalization. Businesses have to get goods/materials from the cheapest source available. No questions asked about how the supplier achieves it as long as it doesn't get worse. And yes, this article is pure propaganda stunt.
"In the ongoing debate about globalization, what's been missing is the voices of workers -- the millions of people who migrate to factories in China and other emerging countries to make goods sold all over the world. Reporter Leslie T. Chang sought out women who work in one of China's booming megacities, and tells their stories."
I'm appalled by the comments here. The consensus seems to be that the terrible working condition of the people making our favorite gadgets doesn't matter and shouldn't get coverage because you can find even poorer conditions in the same country.
Fucking hippies lamenting over the lot of a few Chinese working 10 h/day in a toxic prison factory while they are not even totally enslaved.
There should be a site: foxconnsponsors.com - something akin to sponsoring a child (World Vision). Maybe Apple can setup the site - iWorkers.com and you get to see pictures through your iPhone of how these iWorkers' lives have been transformed through iWorkers.com. Heck, make it accept bitcoins.
What's amazing to me is that they can actually manually make a device that, at least on the outside has almost perfect fit-and-finish. You'd think the inaccuracies would accumulate and produce the typical cheap knock-off look.
I don't think they make the backplate manually ... they're just putting some sort of pen mark on it ... probably in preparation for some other process down the line.
China is not totalitarian. It's a prime example of an authoritarian regime.
Of course, in the end it's all just a spectrum. Totalitarian regimes are just very extreme authoritarian regimes. Modern China, however, is far from being comparable to historic or current totalitarian regimes.
it is a underpaid sweat shop worker in a developing country or a robotic manufacturing in a developed nation, one thing for sure manufacturing jobs are not coming back to America.
there is empirical evidence to suggest very successful companies get more bad press, Apple(for foxconn working conditions), Amazon(for temp warehouse jobs) being leading example.
I think we need conscious consumerism in the electronics industry just like we have now in food, clothing, etc. I think a lot of people would consider electronics made with first-world labor practices and livable wages. It would be a bit more expensive and niche at first, but it would make an impression.
This is an area where Google and/or an Android vendor could make a splash. "Fair trade" gadgets?
I quite literally get sick reading this. In Poland, which is in the middle of Europe,and which is a part of European Union and all, there are people who don't earn as much per hour as guys at Foxconn do. It's not uncommon for people to earn 5PLN/hour,which is actually less than 2 USD/hour. And these guys get 4 dollars per hour, have a place to stay,a place to do sports and food to eat, and you call it inhumane and horrible? I think you need to take a long hard look at yourself,not everybody lives in highly developed countries like UK and US, not earning 20 dollars/hour is not the end of the world, like seriously.
Let's be real here. What matters is how Foxconn compares to other Chinese factories. For all I know, Foxconn could be providing better pay, better living conditions, and better benefits than every other Chinese company. However, since there's nothing in this article to give me a better perspective, I have no way of knowing. There's no reason to expect Foxconn to act any differently than any other Chinese company. The issue here is the Chinese government and their lack of concern for fair and equal treatment of workers. Don't blame Foxconn simply because they make Apple products when they are doing the same thing as every other Chinese company.
Also, what's with this fixation on Foxconn and Apple? Foxconn does a whole hell of a lot more than just assembling ipads and iphones. I'm sure Apple accounts for but a small fraction of their total revenue.