Last edited:
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
An Inside Look at How iPads Are Assembled and Tested
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Agreed, however, the US number is irrelevant. My point being that the US workforce will always find a way to muck it up and hang themselves, if they're given enough rope.
----------
14.00 per day compared to probably 30.00 per hour (you can not deny that the manufacturing employees would be demanding a wage like that). ...you do the math.
Indeed, I alluded elsewhere that Apple's profit margins are more than enough to absorb the full cost of employing US workers, and one of the articles I referenced pointed says that it would create 67,000 US jobs. Apple could do much to improve the quality of life of its workers and contractors wherever they are if only they were willing to dip in to their enormous cash hoard to do it.
Did you not read my post or understand it?
If Apple really cares about providing the workers more monetary funds, they could ask FC to implement a profit sharing or bonus scheme, then if they implement it, Apple agrees to pay FC a bonus when certain criteria is met on a quarterly basis.
But we know Apple will not suggest such things because Apple likes deep pockets for their share holders and only care about the bottom line no matter how workers are paid or treated. They are the top slave labor enablers of the electronic industry.
.
I did misread your post, but I believe my basic response is correct. Apple paying more to FC will not result in much higher wages for the FC workers. Even if Apple insists on a profit sharing enterprise or bonus scheme for the workers, FC will change some other provision or cost somewhere else to get that money back from the workers. It might that housing costs will go up or the cafeteria subsidy will be decreased, who knows. Apple cannot shift the power dynamic between the multitudes of semi-desperate Chinese workers and FC management. That dynamic only allows those workers to command a $14 per day wage. The worker who asks for more is easily replaced by the thousands (in China, actually it is millions) who want to take their place. Apple just isn't nearly a large enough economic player to change that dynamic.
Furthermore, do you really think U.S. citizens who already don't like that manufacturing jobs are increasingly outsourced to Asia are going to like to hear that Apple is trying really hard to give away extra money to those Asian workers who have the manufacturing jobs? You are acting like Apple has some responsibility to be an economic safety net for Chinese citizens. Exploitation is one thing, but I think it has been firmly debunked that this is some sort of exploitative job. If you think Apple should become a philanthropic institution, then there are much more needy people in the world than middle-class Chinese manufacture workers.
----------
Other articles have stated that it just is impossible to do the manufacturing in the U.S. now. Cost isn't the issue, there just isn't the manufacturing infrastructure in the U.S. to do technological manufacturing like this on the scale or size that Apple does it. The synergies of China where each piece is manufactured in a plant just down the road is too great to overcome at any reasonable cost. It isn't the wage difference between $14 per day and $200 per day. Yes, Apple's profit margin allows covering that cost. The problem is that you just can't make the stuff here in the U.S. without all the various pieces being made here. And those manufacturing plants just don't exist in U.S. in the size and scale necessary.
No it wasn't. There were basically 3-4 countries that colonized/fought their way across the Americas. The natives here got along very well with my ancestors. Those 3-4 countries did not get along with either the northerners or the native Americans.
Nature of factory work
That's one thing that has bothered me with this recent discussion of Apple and Foxconn. I used to work for a few years (2005-2009) at Nokia cell phone assembly factory here in Finland and the work there got more and more machine like every year. And sometimes workers were fainting and so on. That was probably due to low blood sugar and having to stand on your feet over seven hours a day. Of course we have much better labor rights laws in Finland than they have in China but the work is pretty much the same. That's just the nature of factory work. But I guess that most people commenting on these kinds of forums have never worked in a factory. And when manufacturing jobs are leaving the developed nations at increasing speed that experience is getting ever more rare here.
And like 'erann' said, compared to the cost of living my salary was probably very close to Foxconn China and many factories here pay even less than Nokia. At least from my narrow factory floor perspective the productivity seemed to multiply there during that time. But of course in the end even that couldn't save the jobs there.
And regarding the suicides (which to my knowledge we didn't have at Nokia
) I think it's more to do with vast and rapid changes in Chinese society (migration from the countryside to the cities etc.) than with working conditions. I'm not saying that we should be quiet about these things when they occur but just reminding that there are probably wider issues behind these problems. And of course we're talking about very authoritarian country here: lack of some basic human and civil rights (including the right to form unions) is in my view really the root cause of most of these problems and we probably should be talking more about that than Foxconn.
That's one thing that has bothered me with this recent discussion of Apple and Foxconn. I used to work for a few years (2005-2009) at Nokia cell phone assembly factory here in Finland and the work there got more and more machine like every year. And sometimes workers were fainting and so on. That was probably due to low blood sugar and having to stand on your feet over seven hours a day. Of course we have much better labor rights laws in Finland than they have in China but the work is pretty much the same. That's just the nature of factory work. But I guess that most people commenting on these kinds of forums have never worked in a factory. And when manufacturing jobs are leaving the developed nations at increasing speed that experience is getting ever more rare here.
And like 'erann' said, compared to the cost of living my salary was probably very close to Foxconn China and many factories here pay even less than Nokia. At least from my narrow factory floor perspective the productivity seemed to multiply there during that time. But of course in the end even that couldn't save the jobs there.
And regarding the suicides (which to my knowledge we didn't have at Nokia
) I think it's more to do with vast and rapid changes in Chinese society (migration from the countryside to the cities etc.) than with working conditions. I'm not saying that we should be quiet about these things when they occur but just reminding that there are probably wider issues behind these problems. And of course we're talking about very authoritarian country here: lack of some basic human and civil rights (including the right to form unions) is in my view really the root cause of most of these problems and we probably should be talking more about that than Foxconn.Just checking, it sounds to me as you're suggesting that Chinese would consider the Western diet superior because they choose to adopt it as they become more wealthy? Or did I read that wrong?
I haven't got a clue about China as to income. However, I did (and do) travel quite a bit. Enough to know that comparing dollar amounts is silly..
One experience comes to mind. About ten years ago I was in South Africa. One member of our team ignored the copious warnings and went at night to an ATM in the harbour-area of Durban, and was promptly robbed of cash and cellphone.
Police came, and we had to specify the amount of cash stolen, and estimate the value of the stolen telephone. After some calls we came up with a listed value of 699 dollar or about 7500 rand. When I told the inspector the value of the phone I saw him cringe a bit. Later, when all was done, and we were smoking a cigaret out on the steps of the hotel and chatting, I asked him why. He told me his salary was something in the order of 8000 rand a month and he couldn't understand why we all were walking around with such expensive phones instead of locking them safely away in the safe of the hotel.
Look at your iPhone. $749, contract-free. You can rent a house on a hill overlooking the sea in Durban, with a maid and a gardener, in a gated community, for about half that.
That's right, but use my definition of western diet. The one I posted earlier. Don't presume this means eating hamburgers and french fries.
And even 18 isn't a big deal. I wonder why American zournalists and media arn't worried about true child labor, like slave children in cocoa production (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_in_cocoa_production).
more than 1.8 million children in West Africa (only) are involved in growing cocoa
up to 12,000 of the 200,000 children working in Ivory Coast (only) may be victims of trafficking or slavery
USA's leading source of cocoa beans is the Ivory Coast - they deliver 47% of the total amount used
If we can't cure the whole world at once, I'd rather start from Ivory Coast than China.
Can anyone in the US have their own apartment ?because here in the UK particularly in London unless you earn a healthy salary you can forget having your own apartment . And I don't mean just owning , you can't even rent on your own
Yes you can live comfortably with as low as 17k a year. I did as a grad student in a major US city and had my own apartment.
It is not just how much money you make but also how much you spend as a cost of living. Unlike labor here in the states, many factory workers in Asia live in factory paid housing and regularly eat in factory cafeterias. That is an enormous cost savings! How much would you need to spend if your housing and meals were taken care of by your job?
Also look at the ages they quoted, 18 to 25. These are college kids looking to make good money between semesters. I'd love to see more of this in the USA so college students don't live in a four year, state subsidized illusion of what the real work is like. Those that break up their education with work are a lot more focused and goal oriented.
There is a flip side to this. You get laid off, you are thrown on the street with no housing nor meals. In the USA and most of the west, individual workers from entry level positions to CEOs have their own housing, meals and usually transportation.
Luckily your advisor paid you decently, or at least allowed you to work outside of the lab.
Mine expressly forbade me to work outside (by requiring 60h/wk in the lab) and simultaneously refused to raise my 10K/yr stipend. Of course I couldn't expect to live without a skyrocketing debt, even buying the strict necessary.
Because I'm not alone, for that very reason, we're currently fighting for freezing the tuition fees and asking for decent financing at the grad level.
Hmm, can you link me to that specifically? From the posts I've read it, I only seem to find that you state the western diet is typically out-of-season foods.
The reason your claim strikes me as odd is because as an asian person living in the US with asian friends living in the US (who actually have discussed food preferences in the past), we do eat a predominantly western diet. However, we pretty much do so because of cultural and pragmatic reasons as opposed to any criteria which a person can infer quality-of-food from.
Ah I see, okay. Yeah, many groups of Asians tend to eat a western diet if given the option. It's a cultural thing: it's showing off how wealthy you are.