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Foxconn Workers Express Concern Over Reduced Overtime
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You're arguing terms, and it's not relevant to the topic at hand. Here's a quote from the original article that seems to invalidate everyone's hissy fit over less OT hours:
"More importantly, while employees will work fewer hours, Foxconn has agreed to develop a compensation package that protects workers from losing income due to reduced overtime. In order to maintain capacity while reducing workers' hours, Foxconn committed to increase its workforce significantly as it builds additional housing and canteen capacity."
Had to throw in the the 'liberals' stab didn't you. Speaks volumes about your selfish uneducated position.
Because the same country of those hard workers also have guys who'd run over a little girl with his van and keep driving, and on lookers who just let the little girl lie on the street dying for 15 minutes.
It's the concerned goodmenschen in the west that are taking work away from those people. An old saying comes to mind: The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The Chinese want to work. The western elite tells them they shouldn't - "hey why don't they take the week off? I hear the Bermudas are nice this time of the year..."
I don't know why we in the west are unable to see past our own prejudices. That China's success is built on slave labor is one of the most persistent memes in western society - I think it's a form of racism where we just can't believe they'd maybe, just maybe, simply work more, or better. The meme is "It can't be that China succeeds fair and square, something fishy must be going on". It's racist. And deluded.
Another story comes to mind - when there were protests about child labor in Bangladesh's textile industry, the factories in Bangladesh listened. And fired all the children. Leaving the children unemployed and begging. I mean what were they thinking?
It just goes to show that even in places where child labor exists, the reason isn't that bad people make children work. The reason is that people there are dirt poor and it's either that or starvation. Solve the poverty issue and child labor goes away all on its own, without any protests...
Anyway let the Foxconn workers work. One look at the job application line (see that recent picture with thousands waiting) should be enough to conclude that things there can't be all that bad...
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???
Aren't these the same workers that are threatening suicide and saying the working conditions are bad? I have a feeling Apple did this to quell these concerns, and now they still aren't happy!
Aren't these the same workers that are threatening suicide and saying the working conditions are bad? I have a feeling Apple did this to quell these concerns, and now they still aren't happy!
I agree, I routinely work 80-98 hr/week when working on the road (these are billable actual working hours). I wouldn't have it any other way. If its not on a job site, it would be in a hotel (or bar) wasting time!
What's wrong with being down-voted? If you let a silly little thing like that affect the way you speak your mind, then you're as oppressed as the Chinese.
That, or you're just new to the 'net.
Don't worry about down votes. There are people here who hail from the likes of YouTube, and you know what sort those are. A vote won't kill you, unless you're intentionally trying to be a nudnik.
You need to re-read the article. It is 60 hours of overtime a "month" which is about 15 hours a week. So based on a 40 hour work week, they would be working 55 hours a week which is about 11 hours a day. When I worked at Texas Instruments, it was 12 hour shifts for 3 days on then 4 days off and then 4 days on and then 3 days offs. We were allowed to work overtime and exceed the 55 hours a week period. Nurses are on a similar schedule.
As for how many hours is healthy, a lot of European countries think the US's 40 hours a week is unhealthy.
I know they travel there just for that - work and earn money, but 60 hours of overtime? Assume you have one day off and overtime is on top of a 40 hour that's 100 hours/6 days = 16 hours 40 minutes each day of work!
Take extra hour and half for breakfast, lunch, dinner, toilet, it adds up to 18 hours 10 minutes...
20 minutes each way to walk from the dorm to the factory so you got 18 hour 50 minutes.
Okay, give them 1 minute each day for lovemaking and 9 minutes for raving to your family and friends about how happy you are to be working for Foxconn.... so we end up with 19 hours of work and necessary daily routine.
With just 5 hours for sleep I would probably decide to jump off a roof or something!
it's 60 Hours of Overtime Per Month!! Not per week. At 6 days per week with one day off they're working 10.6 hours a day. They're quoted at working a full week at 49 hours so the math would look something like this: 49hr * 4weeks + 60hr OT / 24 working days = 10.6hr a day
That's how much I end up working most days anyways. The financial compensation isn't a direct exchange. Foxconn isn't going to say "Work less and we'll pay you the same" Benefits in this scenario might be the "Compensation". Someone can say Benefits are just benefits but to my people (I'm Chinese) these are also considered Compensation.
Ideally, they should be able to volunteer for more hours willingly and instead of cut their hours, work on better health conditions, maybe add a few swimming pools and a gym so they can keep a strong mind and body. Don't mingle with their source of income.
How would the Americans like it if the people tried to control how much they earned in a month by saying, "You can only work 1 job, not 2 or 3 part time jobs" most families would be devastated.
Don't mess with peoples income, just improve the surroundings and health care provided in the factory towns.
Already done
Next will be unions. Then overpriced, crappy products by entitled and never satisfied workers. Soon they'll have to farm the work out to foreign countries so they can control their product, salaries and pricing. Maybe they'll outsource to the U.S.
Next will be unions. Then overpriced, crappy products by entitled and never satisfied workers. Soon they'll have to farm the work out to foreign countries so they can control their product, salaries and pricing. Maybe they'll outsource to the U.S.
Don't reflect from that one scene on the whole country. There are many reasons not to live in China but one should be better informed than this.
To me, I'd maybe start with personal freedom. Although I have to say that that has taken a huge hit in the USA too. So what's the USA still good for? Talked about this recently with another expat (we live in SEA by the way) and concluded that something like the #occupy movement can only happen in the USA. And it's the way forward for the world.
There's still merit to American society, however hidden it is now with the crazies hogging the spotlight and the corporations ruling the people.
What makes america is this willingness to work together for a greater good. Like #occupy, like they do after every / any natural disaster, the old "roll up the sleeves and let's all pull together" spirit, and freedom of speech.
There was probably peoples here in America who expressed the exact same critic when law reduced the number of hours.
The problem is, we have to think about a whole system and not specific individual wishes. We have to think about the fact that the working class legitimately need to be able to have some free times for activities and have some free time to raise a family. If we don't have these kinds of restrictions, honest peoples that really want to "live their lives" are really just disadvantaged by the workaholic.
Actually, we all know peoples who just work way too much and end up in Burnout, and never stopped even when there was clear warning sing. If we don't have these kind of laws, company will start to expect that kind of behavior from every of their workers, and that is a very very huge problem, way more than some individual complains.
The problem is, we have to think about a whole system and not specific individual wishes. We have to think about the fact that the working class legitimately need to be able to have some free times for activities and have some free time to raise a family. If we don't have these kinds of restrictions, honest peoples that really want to "live their lives" are really just disadvantaged by the workaholic.
Actually, we all know peoples who just work way too much and end up in Burnout, and never stopped even when there was clear warning sing. If we don't have these kind of laws, company will start to expect that kind of behavior from every of their workers, and that is a very very huge problem, way more than some individual complains.
Direct quote from the First article on this report:
"More importantly, while employees will work fewer hours, Foxconn has agreed to develop a compensation package that protects workers from losing income due to reduced overtime. In order to maintain capacity while reducing workers' hours, Foxconn committed to increase its workforce significantly as it builds additional housing and canteen capacity."
If people want to work let them work.
Does anyone remember Greece and their 30 hour work week? How about their 25 days of paid vacation time? The massive amount of government employees or their extravagant retirement packages after just a few years on the job? They got lazy and failed as a nation, now the rest of the world is bailing them out.
Not every nation can be like us, if the whole world were brought down to the same and equal income level we all would be like China. Do you really want that?
Does anyone remember Greece and their 30 hour work week? How about their 25 days of paid vacation time? The massive amount of government employees or their extravagant retirement packages after just a few years on the job? They got lazy and failed as a nation, now the rest of the world is bailing them out.
Not every nation can be like us, if the whole world were brought down to the same and equal income level we all would be like China. Do you really want that?
Damned by the socialists that want government to control everyone to their own way of thinking, and damned by the people being controlled that want to make their own choices. I guess this is what's at the heart of our all this year's elections. Government control or freedom of choice.
Wow, so they make $634 a month when working 60 hours of OT a month. If their normal work hours are 40 hours a week. That equals 220 hours a month of actual time worked. So they make less than $3 an hour?
Surely by this point you grasp that economic scales are relative in different countries around the world. They can also get a meal for 10 cents from a street vendor.
No, the ones that threatened suicide were employees working on Microsoft products, who were at risk losing their jobs.
That, and the first reported suicide was a young man who lost his job after a week, but they let him stay in a dorm until he could get back home instead of throwing him out on the street as most US companies would have done. He then killed himself. Most definitely not because of the working conditions.
They want 55 hours per week and the limit is 60 in a single week, but now they are imposing a 36-hour monthly cap on overtime. Oddly the story I read from Joanna Stern (ABC News) is that there was a promise that their pay levels would not decrease. I thought this meant that they would get paid more per hour to compensate because ABC's report said that we could expect higher prices on electronics. Instead it sounds like workers are being promised that they won't get docked in hourly wage for working less overtime but they will miss out on some hours that they would have liked to work.
Foxconn has no problem drawing more employees to fill the gap, but this will hurt the individual employees. Actually it may hurt Foxconn's ability to hire if competitors are offering more overtime.
I'm sure glad so many folks signed that Change.org petition against Apple because of Mike Daisy. Now they can go to sleep at night knowing that their iPhone or iPad didn't cause somebody to earn their starter-stash faster and get home to their family sooner.
I just realised that I work 45 hours a week as a teacher.
O M G
Don't work too hard or we'll have to call the FLA to protest and negotiate new contracts with less working hours!!!