The whole Foxconn world reminds me of history lessons at primary school where we learned about the industrial revolution in the UK. Back then whole families lived and worked at a factory, the children too, before the onset of child labor laws.
Then one after the other factories became more machine centric and less labor intensive before they started moving east and the west became richer and less dependent on creating physical products.
Now we have become acclimatized to cheap production in the east at a time of great segregation between the rich and the poor. And protests and riots will have to continue until we realize that our luxury lives are still dependent on 10, 100, maybe 1000 other people who have to live in poverty.
Well the circumstances have remarkable similarities. Much of China's economic growth has been attributed to underpaid agricultural labor becoming better paid factory labor. (still underpaid but less so perhaps). That raises the amount of disposable income people have which raises their standard of living.
The next chapter in this book are unions (well that was the chapter that followed urban migration in many other countries) where the workers, demanding a fair wage for their work strike and stop production. This chapter can't start until there aren't enough underpaid agri-workers to fill the positions, but once there are, look out.
How all of that plays out in a totalitarian regime is not well understood at all. In the US and elsewhere the folks to took union organizers out behind a shed and shot them were eventually brought to justice and punished, enough so that the practice became too risky for the factories. It has been suggested that in highly corrupt or complicit governments that correcting force (justice for organizers against being shot) may prevent the formation of effective unions. And how that plays out on the world scene is even less well known since Europe and the US went through the union chapter when there wasn't instantaneous communication around the world.
Polish Solidarity in the 1980s operated in a similar situation, and their work was too economically vital, and political authority was just shy of being strong enough.
The Chinese leadership is aware that the basis of its continued legitimacy the miracle of well over 600 million people being lifted out of poverty since 1980. (A humanitarian achievement that arguably rivals any other in history)
Whether it is violent crackdowns on dissent or widespread work stoppages, the economic fallout would threaten that narrative.
Though cheap labor is an advantage over other manufacturing centers, it is the incredible size that creates the flexibility to immediately scale up production on short notice that might make these super factories stand out even more to clients. If that is the case, until factories of the same magnitude are built in countries with even cheaper labor, there may be room for significant wage growth among the workers.
How are they underpaid? Are you suggesting they would be making more money fulfilling a local economic need with similar skills and risks? China's economic growth is due to an oversupply of unskilled labour that are able to be trained at a cheaper cost than western automation.
Read up how BYD started up. It is very enlightening. The west had modern battery factories yet couldn't compete with BYD on the price of it's hand made batteries.
Well, underpaid by what metric? If each Chinese laborer produces $100/day in profit but only gets paid $10/day, morally they're being underpaid. And the fact that so many companies are still moving operations to China is itself evidence that on average more profit is allocated to capital holders when they use Chinese labor over, say, Californian.
But even if you take liberal/market ideology at face value, they're still being underpaid. To have a free market you've got to have free people. If you agitate for more workplace protections or (god forbid) try to start an independent labor union, getting shot or sent to a prison camp in the far western provinces of China isn't out of the question. This decreases labor's bargaining power relative to what it would be in a free market, which decreases wages.
Ok, I accept your second point. Regarding the first... If there was an unskilled labour that, by itself could produce $100/day profit for a majority of people, then you wouldn't have any $10/day labourers. This $100/day profit is only possible with the value added by the skilled labour. It is like this everywhere. For example, the artist who made the facebook logo only got paid in the hundreds of dollars yet the facebook logo produces much more than 10x that in profit. Yet, without the value that the facebook product adds to the logo, it would have been worthless. You wouldn't argue that the artist is underpaid.
They don't produce that much profit in China. Companies compete all the profits away, and the big profits in many profits are overseas. Which is not to say they are not necessarily underpaid but it is not a simple calculation.
Underpaid by the worker's definition of what they feel they should be paid. Granted we don't see a lot of the stories in the western media that might otherwise be told, however there is a consistent narrative of workers taking extreme actions to make this point. [1] [2]
Note: I'm using the term skill from a manufacturer's POV as being something that can not be simply done by a machine. Whether that is R&D or creativity as part of a manufacturing process.
It is obvious they feel underpaid. It is their interest to get the most pay for their labour as they can get. Doesn't mean that the economy can afford to pay them more. Nor does it mean they would be paid more with a different unskilled job. China's struggle is that it has a massive surplus of unskilled labourers. The only way they can keep these people employed is by producing unskilled jobs for a low cost.
What is an example of an unskilled job? Sticking stickers on products. How much does it cost to get a machine to do it? $X. Then if a human wants to do it they must be to do at a comparable cost, otherwise market forces will eliminate his job. China is leaving low value manufacturing in coastal regions (where most of the manufacturing is done due to lower logistic costs). The unskilled migrant workers who haven't made their saving yet, and don't soon, are going to be far worse off in the future as they will have less earning opportunity and will be competing additional against logistic costs.
Many people fail to understand that things won't start costing more if unskilled Chinese labour would cost more. What would happen is we would start using simple machines to do the work and there would be less unskilled Chinese jobs available (leading to a slowdown of the Chinese economy). Dish washer machines are rare in restaurants in China due to the cost of labour being comparable or less than a machine.
Ok, so you raise an excellent doctrinal question, its one of philosophy. What is the role of the state in employment?
A libertarian view would have the state remove any barriers (short of money) that would prevent an individual from improving their own skills.
A traditional capitalist view would have the state provide enough educational opportunity to become 'minimally skilled' and achieve a living wage.
A socialist view would add to the capitalist view with a support network for folks with additional disadvantages such as learning disabilities or other impairments.
A communist view would provide jobs regardless of skill even if the product produced nothing of economic value.
A despotic or corrupt view would empower people to enslave others to increase their economic output as long as it didn't make the state 'look bad' to the international press.
Its a spectrum (more like a 3D surface) with folks all over the map. So far there have been few long term successes when the laborers were not able to improve their own skill sets, and some pretty spectacular failures when the labor pool was artificially prevented from improving itself.
You're misrepresenting the socialist and communist positions here. They aim to provide all education (up to university level) on a meritocratic basis. Since they're committed to providing for everybody, their idea is to get everyone to do something useful (the "from everybody according to their ability" part).
If someone can't become skilled through training and education, they should be given work that doesn't
require education (say, a janitor). Makes that person feel more useful vs just giving them unemployment checks for staying home.
Fair point, it is part of the socialist and communist doctrine.
There is an interesting 'post period benefit capture' issue that comes up. Lets say you're a young rebel and fritter away your youth rebelling rather than learning. Sadly in the US a lot of these folks end up either in the criminal justice system or on the marginalized edge of society. There are some great programs run by ex-gang members in LA [1] that tries to give people the skills they need, after they realize they need them, which may be much later than when the 'system' would normally provide. Adults going back for a GED and then on to college for additional skills.
Chinese factory labour is a very different demographic to what the west had. A majority of Chinese factories workers come from China's 50% rural population where the children are raised by the grandparents in exchange for ~30% of the parents salaries. As in, the first generation raises the third generation in the villages, while the second works in the cities. Chinese life is very different to what most westerns are familiar with.
AFAIK, the mentality of quite a few mainlanders is long-term. In other words, one generation is willing to put in the downpayment for the next or the one after that such that one generation is willing to put up with sacrifice if there is evidence for prosperity for the next. (This was exaggeratedly exemplified by Mao's "we don't care if we lose 300 million, our women will make it up in one generation".)
For example, moms and dads riding rickety bikes to and fro work, etc. rather than buying a car on credit or taking hand-me-downs without second thoughts from relatives and so on and using the saved money instead to put their children thru school or pay for after school cram schools. Not to say that doesn't happen in North America, but here it's more exceptional than in China, as far as I could tell.
Maybe now that's very different from what Westerners are familiar with, but during the West's Industrial Revolution the demographic story of factory labor was also about the rural-to-urban migration of that "second generation".
It's amazing the news about this riot has spread the way it has. It's common practice in China to limit the number of workers from each village in order to differ congregations of people and suppress acts like rioting. I have heard of protests when the factories are closed and no one is listening, but ultimately news about protests is usually limited. This must be a big one.
Also when we outsource jobs to other countries, presumably given that the point of doing so is that they have a lower cost of living, therefore the company saves money. So presumably they could be paid and treated really well and would still be a lot cheaper.
It is one thing to move production to save money from wage differences, and quite another to then turn a blind eye to the working conditions of your new employees under the guise of it being the suppliers problem.
Also, it is worth remembering that although Apple is a major customer of Foxconn's and has some of the most leverage with them (which is why it is really is worth annoying Apple about this), they are hardly the only people who make use of Foxconn and that there are also a lot worse places than Foxconn that do not have such a strong light shone upon them, and that are usually forgotten quickly even when they make the news.
The Chinese have a mob mentality. They themselves don't even know what they are rioting about, most the time. The internet is learning that it is about an accident in between a guard and a worker at 10pm. Trust me, the internet is learning this fact before a majority of the rioters are. If you can really call them rioters, as it is more like a 2000 man parade with about 5 people actually rioting (see the video). No one is in uniform so it is safe to assume these are off shift workers.
The last riot at Foxconn started with a dispute in between a worker and a local restaurant owner. Ended with a 1000 man riot. Nothing to do with Foxconn worker rights.
Such riots can't be equivocated with workers flighting for greater rights. They aren't. They want more money. Most the disputes are about broken promises of overtime work, as the workers make their best money from overtime. The workers don't live anywhere near the factories. They just work there for a few years to take money back to the villages where their families and friends live. They want money to improve families living conditions, not the factory that they don't give a damn about. They would trade factory conditions for more money almost any time, as the factory conditions are just temporary for them. They want to reach their goal of saving $X, go home, and enjoy their lives with their family and friends.
What I am saying is not universal in China. The Chinese government controls migration and in some locations factories can only employ local people. In such factories labour costs are much higher and workers do receive much better working conditions. This story is not about such a factory.
"The Chinese have a mob mentality." Uhm, racist flag anyone? Are you really seriously accusing the Chinese of being any different than us? Would you say that someone could look at our behavior in the past decade, and say that we don't also exhibit the same jingoistic behavior?
The Chinese citizens are certainly socially notably different from Western nations; it has nothing to do with race and everything to do with culture, and to assume that they are just the same as us just because biologically they are no different is silly. People are a largely a product of their upbringing; Americans 50 years ago certainly are different than Americans today.
Several of my friends have spent years working in China and they all comment about how almost no one believes in individualism in the same way that the average American does; that they don't care about civil rights or liberties (or give lip service to such ideals). That really does sound "different than us" to me.
"The Chinese citizens are certainly socially notably different from Western nations; it has nothing to do with race and everything to do with culture..."
Probably not. Why would it be 100% cultural and 0% biological? Because it makes you uncomfortable to admit any other possibility? I'm sorry, but reality doesn't care about your comfort level. It could be 100% cultural and 0% biological, or 90/10, or 50/50, or 20/80. I don't believe that the 100/0 scenario is very likely, because--despite your baseless assertion to the contrary--there are in fact real biological differences between East Asians and Europeans (or East Asians and South Asians, or any other racial group).
Obviously I can't say for sure, all I can speak to is anecdotal evidence that racially Chinese in America observably seem the same as Caucasian Americans in my experience. Even if there is some genetic difference, it seems clear that the vast majority of the difference is cultural and not genetic.
"Even if there is some genetic difference, it seems clear that the vast majority of the difference is cultural and not genetic."
This is just a rephrasing of the original baseless assertion. The relative contribution of genetic and cultural factors to group differences is not at all clear.
You appear to be arguing that local cultural factors when growing up are not responsible for the vast majority of differences in individual cultural behaviour when compared to genetic differences. From this it would seem safe to assume that you believe that a lot of cultural behaviour is not learned, but is encoded within the genome as some form of cultural predestination, which is then presumably expressed at the neuronal level while growing up. This would seem to fly in the face of pretty much all studies into brain plasticity and childhood development, and also makes no sense given the range of genetic diversity of the population we are discussing, which is one that contains well over a billion people.
What is your position then? As you seem to be just criticising other people's positions without putting forward what you actually think the situation is. If your position is just that we just don't completely know the situation, then that is fair enough, but that doesn't mean that all possibilities are equally likely.
My position is that a 100% culture, 0% biology explanation for group differences is highly unlikely given the fact that statistically significant biological differences do exist between "races" (groups that were geographically isolated from one another until several thousand years ago). Yes, I'm just criticizing, but it's a criticism that needs to be heard. We've allowed ourselves the comfort of believing that there are no inherent differences between groups of people for too long, and, basically, science says otherwise.
Except my response that you flamed me for I specifically said that it could be true that it is not 100% cultural 0% biological. If you are purposefully trolling, it's really lame. If you aren't purposefully trolling then you are trying so hard to push your political point that it is indistinguishable from trolling and isn't going to convince or enlighten anyone.
Watch the video of this riot ( http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDUzOTYzMzQ0.html ) and tell me that it isn't clear signs of mob mentality. The pictures of the damage look bad but when you see the video it looks like a social gathering with people laughing (e.g. ~0:35) and nothing really going on, other than a handful of hooligans causing damage.
No. How exactly are the videos of the Chinese and Canadian riots comparable? The most the Canadians rioters are destroying stuff. The Chinese are barely seen damaging anything.
It sounds like, instead of what is commonly referred to as "mob mentality" (which has a strongly negative connotation), you are suggesting that Chinese people are drawn to large crowds.
So, you are saying the Chinese have a mob mentality, and that these people don't know what they are rioting about, are not actually rioting at all and are not all acting the same.
I am trying to work out whether you are more of a bigot than an imbecile or vice-versa. At the moment I wouldn't be willing to bet either way.
Having lived in China for two years, I think it's accurate to say that some, maybe even most, Chinese people have a mob mentality. I can't support this claim with the kind of evidence you want; there are only countless anecdotes and videos and personal experiences.
For example, a foreigner in Zhengzhou in Henan was thought to have slapped a girl on a scooter. When an angry mob formed, he locked himself in his car. Video shows hundreds of angry Chinese people yelling staring at him though the car windows. When they saw a Walmart badge on his chest, they decided that he was American and started calling him "American devil". He had to be escorted to safety by local police to avoid being dragged out of the car and beaten.
But only the smallest fraction of people there had actually seen the alleged incident. The "badge" on his chest was actually a Walmart brochure sticking out of his chest pocket. I contacted Walmart media relations and they were aware of the incident, but the man had no affiliation with them.
That, I find, is the way it typically happens. Chinese people are already angry and resentful about something, and then something sets them off. It doesn't matter if the "something" has little to nothing to do with whatever they were angry about.
Chinese people are already angry and resentful about something, and then something sets them off.
I could reply by pointing out similar behaviour in countries all over the world, it is a common human trait, not something that is somehow peculiar to China.
Out of interest, have you ever read "Orientalism" by Edward Said? As this discussion could almost be an example from it.
"I could reply by pointing out similar behaviour in countries all over the world, it is a common human trait, not something that is somehow peculiar to China."
Maybe, maybe not. I see no reason to give the privileged position of "default" to the belief that all large populations of human beings are, on average, the same as all other large populations of human beings. Women and men are inherently different. Asians and Arabs are inherently different. All groups of people are very similar to one another, yes, but there's no reason to believe that they're the same, or that they'd be the same if not for environmental factors. Why would you believe such a thing?
For one thing I never said same, I said similar. I think that the evidence strongly supports the notion that the differences between large populations is generally miniscule when compared to the differences within those populations and that if you compare individuals across populations you can find people who are far more similar to each other than they are to the average of their respective populations.
As for my specific claim that the behaviour of attacking as a mob without good information is a common human trait rather than being something peculiar to Chinese culture, I am not saying that it is a universal human trait as there certainly seem to be individuals who do not tend to do this, but I know of no large culture in which this does not happen.
[edit] Also, your example of women and men being inherently different is not as good a one as you may suspect. Hermaphrodites exist and somewhat confuse any attempt at a clear delineation.
"I think that the evidence strongly supports the notion that the differences between large populations is generally miniscule when compared to the differences within those populations and that if you compare individuals across populations you can find people who are far more similar to each other than they are to the average of their respective populations."
This is called Lewontin's Fallacy. Take height, for example. You can find a man and a woman who are both 5'2", while the average height for women is somewhere around 5'7" and for men somewhere around 5'10". Indeed, the "difference between large populations"--in this case, three inches' difference in average height between men and women--pales in comparison to the "difference within those populations": the height of a healthy adult male can be anywhere from 5' to 7'.
In other words, there can be great variation within either or both of two large populations, and yet statistically significant inherent differences can exist between the averages of those populations.
You should look at the anti-Japan riots videos from the past month. My not so clear point was that the Chinese riots have a lot less hooligans. When one talks of Chinese riots one should not imagine they are behaving like football hooligans.
My feeling is that without a dedicated world body with the force of law behind it like a "Bern Convention" but for labor, what you are proposing is fantastic.
It's as if one might expect people who buy a burger from McDonald's to go ahead and give the half way difference between what a burger costs at McDonald's and a Gourment burger joint (assuming McD pays its employees around minimum wage and the Gourment joint pays more) to McD's workers "to be fair".
If China feels it's in its interest not to bolster its labor laws and not to vigorously enforce those it has, then leaving it up to individual companies to unilaterally take up the good cause is not an effective policy. The central government could fix all these issues, but it feels they are subservient to other issues. Mandating higher wages risks making automation more attractive which would dispossess these marginal workers. Foxconn as it is, is exploring this alternative as they witness wage inflation.
Why would Volkswagen, Toyota, Dell, Hitachi, Samsung, even Huawei, etc., unilaterally require that their OEMs pay their (OEMs's not actually the foreign firms's) employees any more than they do when doing so would put them at a disadvantage vis a vis other OEMs and those customers who do not pay higher wages? Let's say Acer picked up the good cause but no one else did, Acer would eventually lose to the others due to higher costs. It's not as though the OEMs and their customers need to compete for labor.
Extremely interesting, especially if you enjoy reading left perspectives on global labor issues. The tldr of it is that Chinese workers aren't simply exploited, culturally-destined to obedience, and at the mercies of Western oligarchs and do-gooders: they're actively molding and negotiating their own rights and fates, though they still face their own unique challenges.
"Minimum wages are going up by double digits in cities around the country and many workers are receiving social insurance payments for the first time." - from linked article
The article linked to by parent is interesting, although the vocabulary is leftist.
You know how Western economies generate around 70 to 80% of gdp from activity within their borders (exceptions being Canada and NZ because of extraction industries). When China gets near that percentage, will they need this cheap assembly and fabrication work?
As always, it is necessary to point out that Foxconn has 1.2 million employees, most of whom live in company-owned accommodation. Foxconn's HR issues are in many ways better understood by regarding them as a small country rather than a company. With a population of 1.2 million, all sorts of very unusual things become statistical inevitabilities. By any reasonable measure, Foxconn is in fact exceptionally safe and peaceful.
On the topic of whether Foxconn workers are underpaid, they are clearly not - they perform work of exceptionally low value, most of which is performed by hand for no reason other than that Chinese peasants are cheaper than machines. Foxconn operates on very low margins and earns only a tiny fraction of the retail price of the devices they manufacture. The value in consumer electronics is primarily R&D; Without the investment of hundreds of billions of dollars in microelectronics research, these workers would still be peasants and their American and European counterparts would be working 10-hour shifts manufacturing vacuum tubes and phonograph needles.
No. If any affect was caused it would be made up with overtime in the next shift. If they need to they would pay bonuses. The few dollars extra verses a loss in sales due to no stock in stores...
According to the latest reports surfacing it started with a fight in between 10 workers from different production lines involving a guard somehow. It is already mid day in China and no one know what the exact story is.
Maybe more accurate to call this a group fight with a few thousand spectators. Like I said earlier comments earlier most people seemed to be pretty calm.
How easy it would be to fly in, secretly meet with dozens of these employees, tell them to spread the word that if they riot they will each get a sum of money, and watch the bad publicity grow.
Then one after the other factories became more machine centric and less labor intensive before they started moving east and the west became richer and less dependent on creating physical products.
Now we have become acclimatized to cheap production in the east at a time of great segregation between the rich and the poor. And protests and riots will have to continue until we realize that our luxury lives are still dependent on 10, 100, maybe 1000 other people who have to live in poverty.