Well, how many apps/songs/movies will 1 million people buy versus 500,000 people? Yeah, not much difference there.
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Apple 'Independently Evaluating' Foxconn's Response to Suicides at Manufacturing Plant
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Well, how many apps/songs/movies will 1 million people buy versus 500,000 people? Yeah, not much difference there.
I support your vote as long as that's your right under the laws of HK. My only advice, if I may, is not to do that out of blind hatred, because lots of things must not be judged if taken out of the historical context.
See the facts behind the FUD please...
Fact 1
China has one of the highest suicide rate in the world, 287000 people commit suicide in China per year. That translates to 8.8 suicides for the 400,000 workers at the Longhua plant. So 11 is higher than expected, but certainly not astronomical.
Fact 2
Foxconn jobs are in demand, period. Thousands wait in line at 2am to get an interview, and why? Foxconn workers have better pay and employment benefits than most other jobs available to the Chinese, and entry requirements are low i.e. you don't even need a diploma.
Fact 3
They were not forced into doing overtimes. They work 36 hour weeks, believe it or not. Tricky part is that one has to decide to sign up for overtime or not on a monthly basis. So if you choose to skip overtime, you will not be allowed to work overtime at all for that month, which translate into reduced pay. If you sign up for overtime, then you have to work overtime every day of that month, which is typically 3 hours and brings the total work hours to 11 hours per day. Kind of inflexible, but they do have the freedom of choice.
Foxconn has a policy of giving hiring priority to young people with less education from impoverished families. This may actually contribute to the increased suicide rate. These are one-child policy kids who were practically king in their own families, with doting parents, and grand parents from both sides. So many of them are actually rather ill-equipped to face the reality of competitive workplace.
So there you go. Things aren't always as simple as they seem...
PS: Just looked up wiki, USA has higher suicide rate than Foxconn (17 vs 2.75 per 100000). I don't understand...
Fact 1
China has one of the highest suicide rate in the world, 287000 people commit suicide in China per year. That translates to 8.8 suicides for the 400,000 workers at the Longhua plant. So 11 is higher than expected, but certainly not astronomical.
Fact 2
Foxconn jobs are in demand, period. Thousands wait in line at 2am to get an interview, and why? Foxconn workers have better pay and employment benefits than most other jobs available to the Chinese, and entry requirements are low i.e. you don't even need a diploma.
Fact 3
They were not forced into doing overtimes. They work 36 hour weeks, believe it or not. Tricky part is that one has to decide to sign up for overtime or not on a monthly basis. So if you choose to skip overtime, you will not be allowed to work overtime at all for that month, which translate into reduced pay. If you sign up for overtime, then you have to work overtime every day of that month, which is typically 3 hours and brings the total work hours to 11 hours per day. Kind of inflexible, but they do have the freedom of choice.
Foxconn has a policy of giving hiring priority to young people with less education from impoverished families. This may actually contribute to the increased suicide rate. These are one-child policy kids who were practically king in their own families, with doting parents, and grand parents from both sides. So many of them are actually rather ill-equipped to face the reality of competitive workplace.
So there you go. Things aren't always as simple as they seem...
PS: Just looked up wiki, USA has higher suicide rate than Foxconn (17 vs 2.75 per 100000). I don't understand...
Yes I did. Feel free to provide a more realistic estimate if you have one. All I know is that margins for the resellers are pretty low. For a $499 device, a wholesale cost of $479 seemed reasonable, but it could well be $489, or $459, or whatever. It's certainly not, say, $200, as it might be in some other industries.
Except you wouldn't be paying 'a bit' more, you'd be paying significantly more. These Foxconn employees earn about $1,500 USD a year. Even if an American factory paid minimum wage and the factory employees worked a cushy 40 hour work week with less output, the employees would cost ten times as much as a Chinese worker. Nevermind all the complexities of the American labor market which would make an American factory worker even more expensive. Suddenly, the iPad becomes an unfeasable purchase for the vast majority of Americans at a cost of thousands of dollars, Apple's business model is no longer sustainable, and these products never see the light of day (at least as consumer products) because they make no economic sense.
And it's also amusing that peoples' response to these stories, out of apparent concern for the Chinese worker, is to take away their job. A job that is far superior to most alternatives in their country. Lets not forget America's role as the most significant consumer goods market in the world, and how we fit within the global economy. Isolating ourselves from these countries won't suddenly improve their economic and social conditions. It will make them worse.
What's really sad is that most Americans can't seem to comprehend that they live lives of highly abnormal material excess and comfort. Even the poorest among us live more comfortably and safely than most humans that have ever lived and are alive today. One can either be depressed or grateful for this, because certainly none of us deserve it. We were just born here.
B
Black Macbook
Guest
There is a lot of fake sympathy in this thread.
I bet you that there would be massive complaining and protests here if the iPad retailed for $999 instead of $499 for the cheapest model. That's probably around what it would cost if it wasn't made in China, but in a more western country.
People want cheaper prices, they don't care about any suicides or products made in China, even if they claim that they do care. I call BS on that.
I bet you that there would be massive complaining and protests here if the iPad retailed for $999 instead of $499 for the cheapest model. That's probably around what it would cost if it wasn't made in China, but in a more western country.
People want cheaper prices, they don't care about any suicides or products made in China, even if they claim that they do care. I call BS on that.
Just going to point out that some of your numbers don't *quite* work the way you think they do.
With 12 suicides/100,000 people (overall), but where 3/4 (9) are rural and 1/4 (3) are urban, what is the suicide rate per 100,000 urban people? (You can't tell that based on the numbers above.) If you were to include the relative population sizes of the urban and rural groups, you could determine the urban suicide rate. As evidence of this (in your own post), Hong Kong is quite an urbanized area of China, and it has a *higher* suicide rate for males than the country-wide rate.
Basing the Foxconn rate on the Hong Kong rate (rather than 1/4 the rate of China at large) would lead you to 'expect' almost 67 suicides per year among the 400,000 workers, not the 13-15 you posted.
Easy math, huh? If it is 1000% probably nobody would buy it.
Apple made a mistake here? And where exactly?
Lol. Yes, it's because of the iPad only.
Exactly. I said basically the same thing earlier in the thread.
If iPad pricing started at $999, all you'd hear is whining about how overpriced Apple products are. I've never seen so much hair-pulling and gnashing of teeth over something that is basically not even statistically surprising. Of course, most of the posters complaining the loudest are Apple-haters who will jump at the slightest opportunity to bash the company.
Let's also not forget that people don't usually commit suicide simply from long work hours. That may very well be a contributing factor, but as many have pointed out, the working conditions at Foxconn are decent to great compared with the alternatives where many of these employees would otherwise find themselves. And they know this better than we do.
Suicide is a behavior of people who are generally dissatisfied with every aspect of their life. Maybe they had no families, no one to love, no one to love them. Maybe its not just the salary and long work hours, but that there is a dissatisfaction with a society where that's the best they can hope to achieve, given their circumstances. Maybe they suffered from clinical depression.
In short, I'm just suggesting that the psychology behind these Foxconn suicides is probably very similar to that of a suicidal American professional.
Suicide is a behavior of people who are generally dissatisfied with every aspect of their life. Maybe they had no families, no one to love, no one to love them. Maybe its not just the salary and long work hours, but that there is a dissatisfaction with a society where that's the best they can hope to achieve, given their circumstances. Maybe they suffered from clinical depression.
In short, I'm just suggesting that the psychology behind these Foxconn suicides is probably very similar to that of a suicidal American professional.
'Support human rights'? What does that nonsense even mean? Apparently it means being able to afford a pointless* consumer electronics device. If you're saddened by these Foxconn stories, you're ultimately saddened by the reality of most human and animal life. ****'s unfair and most of us endure a great deal of suffering before we die. If there is any real joy to be had in life, it certainly won't come from an iPad.
And what exactly do you expect Apple to do in the area of 'supporting human rights'? Benevolent global dictator Jobs is going to single handedly uppend the social and economic realities in China? Move assembly elsewhere and send one million people into unemployment? So much for human rights.
Few people or organizations or governments have the ability to affect real positive change in this world. And those who do are only successful when a larger trend supports their efforts. Ultimately, we're all at the mercy of a reality formed, unpredictably, by our collective choices and actions.
*Pointless in the scheme of things. I love the iPad, but I imagine a Chinese laboror has other priorities.
Uh, no, I'd expect him to make it harder for China to function as a communist government by not using factories there.
I was using the iPad as irony, as in they can't buy what they have to make every day. The chinese could probably give two ****s whether or not they had an iPad.
B
Black Macbook
Guest
So what?
I bet that the employees who work at Ferrari factories in Italy can't buy what they make every day either.
That's life. And nobody is forcing anybody to work at Chinese factories. I'll bet it's better than breaking their backs in a rice field all day.
So your idea to improve the lives of Foxconn employees is to put them out of a job? Nice.
China being a communist nation has very little to do with this particular situation.
Sorry but I really don't care about some worker in China. I know that's heartless and all that but I really don't give a crap. I have my own problems. I work 72 hours a week so my wife can go to school full time so she can graduate in 2015 and become a Pharmacist (which will totally be worth it when she's making 6 figures). I have a 7 year old son with autism that when he was diagnosed at age 2 1/2 needed about $2,000 a month in speech therapy, occupational therapy, integration therapy just to pull him out of his shell so he could go to Kindergarten when he turned 5 with the neuro typical kids. I have a 4 year old daughter that is very good at gymnastics and as long as she wants to I will continue to pay the $850 a month for training. I know I am a "spoiled" American but I would rather one of my fellow Americans build it and I will pay what that costs instead of giving it to the poor Chinese worker. I would rather help out my own country than China. I say F the guy in China as long as Americans could do the job. NOW, I don't have that option as of now so I will gladly take my Chinese made iPhone and use it with glee. I know that's a pretty egocentric of me but again, I don't give a crap. My priorities are my family, my country, then the rest of the world.
Hell I want to pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan, isn't that enough good will towards my fellow man?
On the other side of the story, tens of thousands of rich Chinese are finding ways to smuggle the made in china iPad back into china, for there is no planed sale schedule in the near future for them after the lucky 9 europen countries got distribution after us. Thus, no cash policy? No sale to Chinese accent buyers in NYC, or elsewhere?
You made this hyper-patriotic "I don't care" rant already in this thread. No need to repeat it ad nauseam.
Other people can care and that by no means is any of your business. Although you seem entirely intent on trying to undermine other people's motivations, interest and empathy in this case. You clearly are bent out of shape for some reason.
Which post are you referring to? Also, if you're so worried about it, why haven't I seen your post saying your going to boycott apple?
You keep running your mouth but not really saying anything. Your the one that keeps bringing this up, I simply stated where was all the outrage before apple was involved. YOU are making into what you want and not what I asked. Sounds like you need to just get over it and move on.
Well that's not what you did. It might seem to you that "you simply stated where was the outrage" but that is a lot different to what you typed.
This is not "simply stating" anything. It's long and contradictory tirades by someone trying weakly trying to justify their position and attempting to undermine anyone with a different opinion.
Poor living conditions in China is not America's blame. How much of each American consumer dollar goes to the Chinese workers and how much to the new Chinese billionaires? Foxconn is Taiwanese so those billionaire owners aren't even in PR China.
Raise the workers' wages and it's not the American consumer forcing the Chinese workers out of work, it's the Chinese billionaire owner passing that cost on to maintain his huge profit margin.
Ditto India, which has more individual millionaires than Australia's entire population. It's not Australians exploiting the Indian workers in call centres and profiting from their cheap labour, it's Indians.
Maybe I wasn't clear, I'm rarely a lucid thinker, but I wasn't trying to blame America - quite the opposite. I'm just saying that Americans outraged over conditions at Foxconn, who is apparently a desirable employer among the average Chinese person, seem to think everyone is entitled to an American-style livlihood and lifestyle. This is unrealistic. We are hugely, uniquely spoiled.