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ABC Previews 'Nightline' Visit to Foxconn's Chinese Factories
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You shall be the next president of the US! I cannot agree with you more~ We shall give every Foxconn worker the US citizenship~ It will also successfully reduce the unemployment rate in the US~
wait... isn't something wrong here...
You left out the two biggest categories by far: Mindless droids who hate anything that has to do with Apple, and those who actually use their brains and try to understand what is going on in the world.
What is the basis for your assertion that Foxconn doesn't adhere to standards all the time (with the proviso that **** happens, and a lot of **** happens at US companies as well)? What makes you think Foxconn would _want_ to employ underage workers? They can't pay them less, because _someone_ would know, and eventually _someone_ would talk, and then the company would be in big ****. The kind of **** that can cost someone high up their head. Literally.
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Someone talking sense
There are headlines here, most obviously the pay rate which has been entirely taken out of context. As people have already said $1.50/hour is a reasonable salary with the extras added on. As someone who is married to a Chinese mainlander, spent a lot of time in China, and been to almost all of provinces, the Foxconn workforce do earn a decent wage compared to other manufacturing posts and much more than when Apple first entered. As Apple has prospered, so have Foxconn staff. Another 25% rise in the offing? There's a reason openings are always oversubscribed and rural workers, used to taking in a few hundred RMB per month, will gladly work at Foxconn or other manufacturing warehouses for 2,000-2,500 RMB per month with many expenses paid. It's simply a better proposition, long or short term, in which they use to save money and send back to families or extended families.
That's not to say I agree with any of the rates or policies but there needs to be context here. Foxconn provides accommodation, medical care, and so on. For comparison to other Chinese professions taken by young workers or rural people migrating to cities, a security guard in Beijing will be looking to take home around 3,000 RMB per month. Other cities less so. I've seen that job in action and whether it's in the Wangfujing branch of Bank of China or outside an office in Jishuitan, they do pretty much nothing but stand around all day. Those outside guarding the underground car parks get the -20C bite of winter for good measure or sweltering 40C summers with 100% humidity.
A waiter in a standard Chinese restaurant will work similar hours and perhaps not even make 2,000 RMB a month. And that's Beijing, where single bedroom apartments rent for 3,000 upwards depending on which loop line you're prepared to venture in from. For measure, the subway is still 2 RMB per journey to most places. That could be 2 stops or 20. Most workers in this bracket tend to house/apartment share with dorm-style rooms. 1,000 RMB accommodation for a bed in a shared room and the rest on food and travel. My wife's friend lives in Beijing, is qualified in accounting but only takes home 5,500-6,000 RMB per month. That's also the salary of many local teachers in state schools. 2,500 RMB in a lower cost city like Chengdu isn't too bad.
These audits, while seemingly good are open to abuse. GAP is a typical example of audits being 'prepared' for and subcontractors doing what they need to. However, if I was a Foxconn worker, I'd welcome them. At least they know the wide world is watching - much more than most other places in Shenzen or China get.
It looks like an absolute hell hole! Look at those filthy conditions! Listen to all those wails of malnourished slaves! The walls and floors covered with blood stains almost made me throw up.
This is absolutely atrocious. I'm never buying an Apple product again.
This is absolutely atrocious. I'm never buying an Apple product again.
Not at all. Note the ABC reporter stated they were invited by AAPL to visit Foxconn's factory in China.
AAPL will be presented as, "well, at least we're giving jobs to those poor souls who would otherwise be slaving away in farm labor." And AAPL will then have philanthropic spin on them.
Yea, they kinda had to be - otherwise Foxconn would have to initiate it and I don't think they would be willing to do this.
Someone talking sense
Thanks and glad someone else is using their brain and thinking about all the facts and glad you could put some other context in there so people understand this is like comparing Apples and Orange (more like Apples and Lychee).
I have seen many electronics assembly houses in China.
The SMT places are nice and tidy. This preview ABC special thing is not showing you anything bad, and I don't think anything bad is going on with Apple in China.
It might be a bit of a reality pill for Walmart loving Americans who constantly want the lowest prices on everything they buy, while at the same time lamenting the loss of manufacturing jobs in the USA. But this is not a big expose or anything. Any electronics hardware is made in a similar way in a similar factory.
The facts are that there is a seemingly endless supply of workers coming to Shenzhen to make $400.00 per month. They live in cheap accommodations, and send money back to the countryside to mom and dad who use the cash to buy things like oil and meat, while they might be growing a lot of their own food. The jobs are in the city, so there is a migration of people who want to work.
Apple had to compete with DELL and all the other companies out there, so China was the way to go.
I really doubt that Apple would intentionally run a sweat shop in China! They are subcontracting to this huge Foxconn company, and from the brief glance I had at the video, it all looks the same as any other factory I have seen - although this one looks like quite a monster in size! The one's I have experience with are much much smaller, but I never saw anything really bad at the SMT houses. Probably the smell of solvents and burnt plastic is in the air, and that could be improved. Probably the jobs could be quite boring, but I'll betcha Foxconn has better employee benefits than the factories I use, although as a smaller maker, the contract manufacturers I patronize might actually pay higher wages.
Foxconn looks well organized - it's a machine. That makes for good work conditions. Morally, I think we will see on the ABC show that while how the rest of the world lives might not be like the good ol USA, people in China still have their dignity.
I think there is a lot of fuss about nothing here.
For those who are crying for human rights or whatever their beef is, you can easily go and see for yourself how industry in China runs.
BTW - if you eat on the street, you can get a big bottle of beer for $0.15, and some street food to match up for about a buck. So you do have to get your head around what it means to earn $200 - $400 per month in China. A dollar goes a long way for some things in China.
The SMT places are nice and tidy. This preview ABC special thing is not showing you anything bad, and I don't think anything bad is going on with Apple in China.
It might be a bit of a reality pill for Walmart loving Americans who constantly want the lowest prices on everything they buy, while at the same time lamenting the loss of manufacturing jobs in the USA. But this is not a big expose or anything. Any electronics hardware is made in a similar way in a similar factory.
The facts are that there is a seemingly endless supply of workers coming to Shenzhen to make $400.00 per month. They live in cheap accommodations, and send money back to the countryside to mom and dad who use the cash to buy things like oil and meat, while they might be growing a lot of their own food. The jobs are in the city, so there is a migration of people who want to work.
Apple had to compete with DELL and all the other companies out there, so China was the way to go.
I really doubt that Apple would intentionally run a sweat shop in China! They are subcontracting to this huge Foxconn company, and from the brief glance I had at the video, it all looks the same as any other factory I have seen - although this one looks like quite a monster in size! The one's I have experience with are much much smaller, but I never saw anything really bad at the SMT houses. Probably the smell of solvents and burnt plastic is in the air, and that could be improved. Probably the jobs could be quite boring, but I'll betcha Foxconn has better employee benefits than the factories I use, although as a smaller maker, the contract manufacturers I patronize might actually pay higher wages.
Foxconn looks well organized - it's a machine. That makes for good work conditions. Morally, I think we will see on the ABC show that while how the rest of the world lives might not be like the good ol USA, people in China still have their dignity.
I think there is a lot of fuss about nothing here.
For those who are crying for human rights or whatever their beef is, you can easily go and see for yourself how industry in China runs.
BTW - if you eat on the street, you can get a big bottle of beer for $0.15, and some street food to match up for about a buck. So you do have to get your head around what it means to earn $200 - $400 per month in China. A dollar goes a long way for some things in China.
So the implication is once you start working at Foxconn, your stuck, no place to go. No other options? If this is the case, then your right.
Course, if they are stuck, whose fault is it? Is it Apple's? Or Is it a communist government? Or is there some other potential reason?
-----------------
Finally, on the suicide issue, while its always sad that someone feels despondent enough to take their own life, but do we really know enough about each case to determine whether they did it because of where they worked? Where they lived? Or could it be some other reason entirely?
Agree.
There are so many people in this thread that are completely clueless about what relative wages.
I mean my lord, my parents grew up as kids in the 1940s where salaries of $1400 was average and the minimum Wage $.43 per hour. It doesn't matter what your salary is if goods and services are relative to it.
People really need to wrap their head around the term 'RELATIVE' and learn what it means and how it applies to things.
I don't know for sure but:
Possibly to contrast items that are dropped on the floor. It's a bitch to find an IC that's dropped on grey concrete.
It's sorta like the default green PCB colour too. Or hospital greens.
Maybe someone else knows for sure
Yes, it's amazing to see so much concern -- suddenly and uniquely -- for the world's working class, when we've completely forgotten about it under normal conditions. I remember an unforgettable portrait of a Hygrade plant in the Midwest somewhere, which once had union wages and made your hotdogs while the workers had health insurance, seniority, and all the other decent things that make the difficult work in a slaughter and packing house bearable. Well, now agents from the plant just open a truck door near the Mexican border and get themselves a poor and desperate group of workers with near-starvation wages, no medical plan (thus, the surrounding city, which desperate to keep the plant going, offered no taxes for a generation, and got the pleasure of now having to care for workers sliced up in the slaughterhouse who can't pay for their care.)
This is the every-day portrait of factory work in the United States today. And although I welcome any change in the laws and economic policies that made us this way, I suspect that some people just want to point fingers at Apple because they don't like the front runner.
I agree with you.
How about North Americans who get a job at Safeway, or the Navy, or some overpaid custodial job at a hospital. They might be pulling in $28.00/hr and thinking they have the world by the tail. They do not dare quit because they feel that even though they hate their job, they are being so much overpaid that they just "know" they won't find another sweet deal that pays as much.
So they work 10years and then 15 years, and then they start dreaming about what they should have done.
They are "trapped" just as much as anyone. The cage is in your mind.
It's called being a wage slave.
If you know someone who should be in school but is being hooked on earning the "big bucks" doing a simple job that they hate, you should warn them of the consequences in the long term. This kind of thing happens everywhere.
Exactly.
You see all these politicians saying they want to keep illegal mexicans out of the USA, they build the berlin wall in Texas to keep em out. But they all have mexican maids and know very well that all the vegetables are picked by mexican migrant workers. It's all a farce.
Could SOMEONE please record and share this show?
We don't get ABC on my side of the planet.
Please.
We don't get ABC on my side of the planet.
Please.
You shall be the next president of the US! I cannot agree with you more~ We shall give every Foxconn worker the US citizenship~ It will also successfully reduce the unemployment rate in the US~
I'm not sure. I know that the original Macintosh was built in these '80s-style robot factories, with clean conditions and good salary and benefits, per the Steve Jobs biography. I think it was one of the "foolish" things that post- and pre-Jobs Apple cut. Such business "geniuses," of course.
But look, if you pass free trade up the wazoo, and give China a "most favored nation" status -- and that's one of the rare bipartisan policies over the last 30 years -- then this is what you get. Apple's not unique. If all your competitors are getting their low, low prices at least partially because of cheap labor, and the big knock against your stuff is that it's too expensive, what do you expect Apple to do?
I think it is incredibly disingenuous to lay Foxconns problems solely at Apples feet. I know they are the top dog but many major brands have been doing work there for many years longer than Apple has.
Of course none of the other brands listed here will pipe up when Apple can bare the brunt of all the negative PR.
Acer
Amazon
Apple
Cisco
Dell
Gateway
HP
Intel
Microsoft
Motorola
Nintendo
Nokia
Samsung
Sony
Toshiba
Vizio
All these brands use this company.
Of course none of the other brands listed here will pipe up when Apple can bare the brunt of all the negative PR.
Acer
Amazon
Apple
Cisco
Dell
Gateway
HP
Intel
Microsoft
Motorola
Nintendo
Nokia
Samsung
Sony
Toshiba
Vizio
All these brands use this company.
Typical ABC propaganda.
The per 100,000 suicide rate at FoxConn is lower than that of the United States but its easier to say that "so many people" jumping fits into their political agenda.
What are people expecting? That video looks like any other manufacturing. Sadly the 'pussification' of America has made it so that anyone working on a traditional assembly line is working a sub human job.
The per 100,000 suicide rate at FoxConn is lower than that of the United States but its easier to say that "so many people" jumping fits into their political agenda.
What are people expecting? That video looks like any other manufacturing. Sadly the 'pussification' of America has made it so that anyone working on a traditional assembly line is working a sub human job.
Yes, you get a win-win situation. Apple benefits, consumers benefit, Chinese workers benefit.
NY Times latest entry
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/t...lectronics-giant-foxconn.html?ref=global-home
Although the basic story has been around for a while, the recent interest was generated by a NY Times series a few weeks ago. This is the Times latest article out today (2/20). ABC is just a journalistic follower.
The last paragraph is interesting. Your iPad6 could be made by robots.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/t...lectronics-giant-foxconn.html?ref=global-home
Although the basic story has been around for a while, the recent interest was generated by a NY Times series a few weeks ago. This is the Times latest article out today (2/20). ABC is just a journalistic follower.
The last paragraph is interesting. Your iPad6 could be made by robots.
Im actually really impressed even from the short preview. Hardly a sweat shop operation, everything is neat, clean, and professional in it's appearance.
The NYT article was a hit piece and was a not a fair report since it purposefully left out every single name of every other company that builds devices at Foxconn.
Furthermore -- the whole "who owns the ipad name" deal being trotted out as a supposed torpedo ain't gonna stop this train, it's years out of the station. A wall street backed extortion plot, clearly. Funny how the stock pulled back $30 just as this "news" broke, when really it's been going on for MONTHS.
The NYT article was a hit piece and was a not a fair report since it purposefully left out every single name of every other company that builds devices at Foxconn.
Furthermore -- the whole "who owns the ipad name" deal being trotted out as a supposed torpedo ain't gonna stop this train, it's years out of the station. A wall street backed extortion plot, clearly. Funny how the stock pulled back $30 just as this "news" broke, when really it's been going on for MONTHS.