iPod 6 months earnings to buy an 60GB iPod

[x86]

And this is different from the US or UK how?

China has basically an unlimited supply of poor workers that are willing to work for next to nothing. This means that the economic situation in China in unlikely to get any better as if one person wants better working conditions, he can easily be replaced. Also, having one's own government censoring speech doesn't make their situation any easier...

 

[jaysmith]

reality is, this happens with any successful big company in the world. it'd be great if the world was sugarcoated and everyone made good wages, but its not how the world works. if the workers complain, there are many others jobs out there.

 

[j83com]

-

Well I just bought a 60 gig 5g yesterday...then I see this.
Looks bad at first but what do you expect? That's the way she goes.
Be glad you live here, and have choices in life.

The sad truth is a company is in business to make money, nothing else. It just sucks that Apple and others pretend to "think different".

Designed in Cali...yeah. Made in China.

I also thought the "don't steal music" sticker on the screen was a nice touch. "F" you Apple, who are you to tell me what's moral...hypocrites!

I'm just bitter because I have to update to 10.4...why doesn't this ipod work on 10.2.8 d*mn it!

 

[ChrisA]

You have to think of wadges in therir context. In China $50 per week job can cause some women to leave the family farm in the country and move to the city. In interviews I've read many prefer to work in the factory where they think the work is "easy".
There is no way to earn that kind of money by staying home. It's like those people who come up to California from Mexico and while we think $7.00 per hour is not much they were willing to risk their life to come here and get it and then what? They mail a good chunk of that 7.00 per hour back home and the family is able to live on it.

A related question. If Apple offered you a "made in USA" IPod and told you that every employee had a good wadge and helth care with paid vacations how much would you pay for the Made In USA iPod. Would you pay $500 for a Nano? $300? $700?

 

[Peterkro]

China has basically an unlimited supply of poor workers that are willing to work for next to nothing. This means that the economic situation in China in unlikely to get any better as if one person wants better working conditions, he can easily be replaced. Also, having one's own government censoring speech doesn't make their situation any easier...

As I said in the last post this is different from the US and UK how?

The US and UK both have large work forces that are obliged to work for next to nothing and the working conditions (including pay) haven't improved or have got worse in the last twenty odd years or so.The same very small % of the population as China holds the vast majority of the wealth.Comparing wages in $ or £ terms means nothing,the US has been industrialised coming up for 200 years the UK longer,China started industrialising 57 years ago it's now exploiting it's workers and destroying the environment as those two countries have in the past.As for censoring free speech the US/UK are just better at it(more years to refine).It always amuses me when westerners go on about Chinese polluting the world, so the west did it and got wealthy(again in a very small number of hands) and China can't,don't see the logic in that.Pay China not to pollute sure but don't expect them to do it voluntarily.It's always easier to see the fault in others whilst ignoring it in yourself.

 

[x86]

A related question. If Apple offered you a "made in USA" IPod and told you that every employee had a good wadge and helth care with paid vacations how much would you pay for the Made In USA iPod. Would you pay $500 for a Nano? $300? $700?

I have heard this many times, but I have to wonder if it would somehow be possible to manufacture something like this in the U.S. at a reasonable cost. If properly automated with robotics etc, I wonder if we could out-produce a Chinese plant...

 

[mkrishnan]

I have heard this many times, but I have to wonder if it would somehow be possible to manufacture something like this in the U.S. at a reasonable cost. If properly automated with robotics etc, I wonder if we could out-produce a Chinese plant...

If you heavily automate a plant in the US so that you hire almost no American laborers... (and incidentally, where were those robots manufactured? I guess they could be Adept from the US, but they're probably just as likely to be foreign ABB or Motoman or etc....), and you have a pristine American plant with a handful of managers and techs maintaining the machines...

How exactly is this better than using laborers in China?

 

[idkfa]

Actually, the article said "as little as $50 per week". 50x52 = uh, gimme a second...



$2600-ish per year. And I take $50 as the usual minimum.

I guess that supports what I was saying moreso...

 

[Sun Baked]

If you think about it, we buy cheap items made in our own countries all the time. Sure, most of them are food or bathroom products, but they are not outrageously expensive at all.

Yep, fast food is a cheap item made in the US at slave wages.

An most people would not want to pay Starbucks prices for the value menu items, or that Pizza they are waiting to be delivered.

 

[Felldownthewell]

Oh here we go again. We had this same argument when Nike hooked up with Apple. (Of course, I was one of the few Nike defenders, however Apple gets dozens )


All the good arguments about local living rate comparisons have been made, but I would also like to point out that these people are not forced to work at gunpoint. It is a job which they do to feed their families, which is something they want to do. They could always leave and go back to the countryside and starve on a tiny farm, but instead they stay. They stay to make enough money for their children to go to school, so that they can get a better job and so on and so forth. Sounds a lot like America a couple of generations ago...

When the people want better rights, they will fight for them, and it has to be their fight, not ours. We should pressure US companies to pressure their factory partners to give better wages, but we cannot go around trying to dictate morality to the developing world. They have to do it on their own. People in China DO stand up to the government when they want to ( Example A ) and when factory jobs are no longer at a premium (when they don't have workers lined up to get a job) and the workers look around and decide they want more, they will get more, but not until then.

 

[ezekielrage_99]

1. paying employees the going local wage rate is NOT exploitation.
2. a ratio of pay vs product produced cost is irrelevant.
3. consumption of something produced elsewhere is a very new idea. like 5,000 years old.

if you want runaway inflation that leads to stagflation, by all means run a scenario in which all US purchased products are produced by US or equivilant worker wages.

That is a great point, as unethical as many international conglomorants seem the reality is consumer wont pay anymore for a product than they believe it is worth.

Good luck people.... fight the power

 

[feelthefire]

I have heard this many times, but I have to wonder if it would somehow be possible to manufacture something like this in the U.S. at a reasonable cost. If properly automated with robotics etc, I wonder if we could out-produce a Chinese plant...

The short answer to your question is no. I work in manufacturing and besides the prohibitive cost of building an automated facility, electronics and robotics simply do not yet have the capability that a human does to make decisions critical to a manufacturing process. A human can learn through experience and training the best ways to make a manufacturing process as productive and efficient as it can be in a way that artificial intelligence cannot replicate.

There is a trend today in "vertically integrated manufacturing" that is used to produce textiles and similar products in this country. However, you do pay a premium for the end product due to many factors.

Automated manufacturing is a great idea but these still require a human element- machines break, and they cannot fix themselves. Someone must program them, monitor them, and continually evaluate the process.

Our greatest feature as human workers is our ability to learn. It seems highly unlikely to me that an automated factory on american soil could succeed in outproducing a chinese plant at this time.

Additionally, what looks to you on film to be a "sweatshop" may be nothing of the sort. Many Americans and "first world" residents have a vision of what a factory should look like from movies and file photographs from journalists- but just because a factory doesn't look like that does not make it a sweatshop or define poor working conditions.

 

[Steven1621]

how terrifed would the 200k workers at the ipod factory be if they heard american consumers talk about a boycott of the product that gives them their job....

 

[ictiosapiens]

As I said in the last post this is different from the US and UK how?

The US and UK both have large work forces that are obliged to work for next to nothing and the working conditions (including pay) haven't improved or have got worse in the last twenty odd years or so.The same very small % of the population as China holds the vast majority of the wealth.Comparing wages in $ or £ terms means nothing,the US has been industrialised coming up for 200 years the UK longer,China started industrialising 57 years ago it's now exploiting it's workers and destroying the environment as those two countries have in the past.As for censoring free speech the US/UK are just better at it(more years to refine).It always amuses me when westerners go on about Chinese polluting the world, so the west did it and got wealthy(again in a very small number of hands) and China can't,don't see the logic in that.Pay China not to pollute sure but don't expect them to do it voluntarily.It's always easier to see the fault in others whilst ignoring it in yourself.

I refuse to believe that you think that the working force's aquisition power in the UK is anywhere near comparable to the chinese's. Also, when you say that china has only been industrialised since the 2nd WW you are not even considering that they've been trading since before the west even learned the concept. They've been producers and exporters since the begining, maybe not at an industrial scale, but large enough for development.

Also, the world has changed considerably from when the west begun to industrialise to now, the timescales are completely different, this is a globalised world, and china has grown in the last 15 years nearly as much as the UK has for a far larger number of years, yet the spending power of the general population hasn't grown much. And it won't, for it to do so, the economical growth would have to be exponential as the population is just to large.

 

[Peterkro]

I refuse to believe that you think that the working force's aquisition power in the UK is anywhere near comparable to the chinese's. Also, when you say that china has only been industrialised since the 2nd WW you are not even considering that they've been trading since before the west even learned the concept. They've been producers and exporters since the begining, maybe not at an industrial scale, but large enough for development.

Also, the world has changed considerably from when the west begun to industrialise to now, the timescales are completely different, this is a globalised world, and china has grown in the last 15 years nearly as much as the UK has for a far larger number of years, yet the spending power of the general population hasn't grown much. And it won't, for it to do so, the economical growth would have to be exponential as the population is just to large.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree,about the Globalisation it is only capital that's globalised otherwise you'd have Chinese workers doing everyone's jobs in the west better and cheaper.I'm obviously not talking about the money values being similar but human needs e.g. food, housing, warmth,security,health etc it's my view that conditions in the west are similar' having a few gadgets doesn't make for a happier workforce.40 million US citizens without health cover,a similar number alcohol dependant,a similar number functionally illiterate.The gap between the top 5% and the rest similar to China.By having other countries as whipping boys it diverts attention from how crap life is for people in our own countries.Hence globalisation of capital but the positive pushing of the nation state as the ideal set-up.

 

[AlBDamned]

right, 'cause NGOs and "research institutes" don't have agendas to push... they seek nothing but truth as pure as the driven snow. (I'm interning for an NGO now, and believe me, they have an agenda, and it's not the unvarnished truth.)

Obviously it depends on the calibre of who you're working for (this is where you say it's OXFAM or something).

The truth is, in many of these factories there are tens of thousands of people working in sh*thole conditions pumping out goods for Western economies, getting paid appallingly and people try to justify it. You can't justify it.

The point is, Apple, Dell and so on do not treat these factories as their own because they are not their own, so "the buck stops with the factory owner."

However, if Apple (or Dell) turned round and said, we're going to move our business to a factory that we know treats its workers fairly (knows because we take a responsibility with it), pays them the going rate and allows them to breathe in their working atmosphere without edging closer each day towards Emphysema, then the factories in question would clean up their act.

But the Apple's and Dells will not do this because they don't need to, there's no legislation that tells them they must take an interest in supplier factories and it would cost them money if they did it off their own back.

Again, until the fact that their products are made in semi-legal, sub-contractor owned sweatshops begins to impact at all on the bottom line, workers in iPod factories and so on will continue to work 6 months for $300 (or less, usually) and sleep in an area they also use as a toilet.

 

[Felldownthewell]

how terrifed would the 200k workers at the ipod factory be if they heard american consumers talk about a boycott of the product that gives them their job....

Yah...I love boycotts of products in the name of workers rights. It hurts the workers who get laid off far more than it hurts the execs. What hurts the execs is worker strikes, which will happen all in good time...

 

[psycho bob]

Comparing east to west is impossible. Conditions in China are essentially state sanctioned, while I'm not defending big US conglomerates the majority of these factores are owned by companies Apple and others simply contract to produce goods for them. Other then quality control there are absolutely no ties to the companies one example of this could be the length of time it took to correct the issues of excess heat conductive compound on the macbook pros.

China is going to become the new economic power of the world, what it lacks in outright capital it makes up for in workforce. If you have a job in a growing market area in China you are lucky. The overall cost of living compared to that of the west is completely different and that's before you consider tax, healthcare etc. China is starting to centralise, outlying areas of the country are being almost abondoned or isolated. Anyone who saw Michael Palin's fantastic Full Circle will have seen the effects all the change is having. Small and very large river communites are being completely lost under schemes such as dam building to generate power, they are receiving no compensation and are already very poor to begin with. They would be glad of the money discussed in the article. Fights take place in these areas other the smallest jobs. Small amounts of western money goes a long way.

Whilst conditions should be improved we are once again comparing them to the standards we supposedly set ourselves although a look at recent world events should maybe make us question our own morals closer to home. If the west pulled out of China its growth would essentially stop, whilst this would force us to address job issues in our respective countries it would have a devastating effect on the PRC as well as having a huge knock on effect on our way of living.

India is perhaps one of the most westernised countries in the east, in no small part due its colonial rule. Wages and jobs are once again very different, you have a few very well off people thanks in no small part to events around the turn of the century, some pepole who have been able to move in to newly created jobs but then a lot of people having to work in traditional areas probably not earning much more then in China. The country is set up to be self sufficient and to export, its tax and import system is designed to heavily penalise items brought in to the country to promote growth. In the mid ninties for example a BMW 316i had it been made for sale in India would have cost going on £70,000+ if memory serves (Jeremy Clarkson's Motoworld had a great episode on the country). A result is if people want a car they buy one made in India.

China had a simple and very similar economic model but is now tying to mobilise itself to be more like Japan and the west. This unfortunately is very resource intensive and can come at a huge price.

The article singles out one particular company but this situation is repeated in often far worse conditions in Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Africa and no doubt parts of South America as well. It is sad but it is no different to how things have been for centuries we now just have journalism that likes to place biased and digging reports without putting it all in context. I mean is anyone really shocked by this, surely only if you've had a blinkered view of the world?

At one factory they are paid $99 paying half for housing and food. In a country where people are starving to have a roof over your head, to be fed and still have money left over is surely a good thing. There are homeless and sick people in the west who would be happy with such schemes but here it would never work.