Truth is, unions barely represent the intentions of the workers and are often political machines. They often act in contradiction of the wishes of the members and undermine the workers chances of success by destroying said industry through unrealistic demands.
Sadly true these days, but it wasn't *always* true. (Unless you consider less than 80-hour work weeks in safe conditions for a living wage 'unrealistic demands'.)
Currently school teachers are shooting themselves in the foot -- there's been local demands for higher wages amid one of the tightest fiscal budgets yet for school districts. Sounds perfectly logical.
Over the past 20 years, teaching wages have *fallen* in comparison to inflation and other cost-of-living increases. Asking for higher wages now is simply asking to be put back on the same (already underpaid) footing they were on 20 years ago.
Hell, they could simply stop buying necessary school supplies for poor students out of their own money and require that the *school* do it. That would go a long way toward fixing things, but the schools don't have the budgets to do it, so you'd just end up with students who cant afford school supplies trying to make do without.
Going through high school, my next door neighbor was a teacher. She spent, on average, $4000 of her own money each semester to make sure all her students had the supplies they needed, even if their parents couldn't afford them. (And I went to school in a reasonably well-off school district.)
You don't need unions to do that.
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You need not look any further than the US steel industry, which collapsed long before China started dumping. If the company you work for can't compete, you're out of a job. Which would you rather have?
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Minor labor issues can be fixed by passing labor laws. Minimum wage. Mandatory food/bathroom breaks. Restricted work hours for minors, overtime regulations for adults. It's not rocket science. You don't some quasi political organization "acting in your best interests".
Let me ask you. Who do you think pushed for all those labor laws we have? I'll give you a hint. It wasn't the businesses back in the day. It was the Unions. That's how they started becoming big political machines. Because it was *necessary* back then in order to get the protections the workers needed and deserved.
Unfortunately, almost nobody willingly gives up power once it's been obtained (especially when they know/believe they were in the right when they claimed that power, which unions were). Unions are *largely* outdated in the modern world, but not completely. If they were to disappear today, you'd find bills in Congress to roll back the protections they fought for tomorrow.
Then again, these Chinese workers *already* have at least one protection workers in the US don't. They have a legally mandated maximum work week. We only have a legally mandated point at which we must be paid time-and-a-half for extra work (if you're not 'exempt'). Mind you, statistically both sets of laws are followed about as rigorously as one another. (Not very.)
Also for the $2/hr comment -- keep in mind that the cost of living over there is quite varied by region and is nothing like here. Foxconn workers do far better wage wise than some other workers in China.
Yep. After cost-of-living expenses are deducted from pay, these workers are making roughly the equivalent (comparing cost of goods and services) to factory workers in the US making $15+/hour.
That said, striking to get needed training that they should have been given originally is a *good* idea.
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You know something is really wrong when you have to put suicide nets up. What other manufacturer has suicide nets up?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1_XAuJ8qCc
Yep. So we should be seeing more pressure on the *other* companies which use Foxconn to produce their products. (After all, most of the suicides, attempts or threats have been by workers *not* producing Apple products.)
Then again, the suicide rates at Foxconn are lower than the rates in China as a whole, lower than the rates in similar areas of China, and lower than the rates in the US. You don't see US companies putting up suicide nets, so maybe they don't care as much about their workers?
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So you really think such place exists in China? 2$ per hour payment is quite normal in China, but $17-per-month is insanely lower than the average, almost twenty-times less if you live in a small city
True, but that's apparently what the on-campus dorms go for. There nothing special (about on par with some college dorms I've seen), but they're damned cheap for a worker who doesn't have a family (as many don't).
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Contracting out the manufacturing of their product will be Apple's undoing. I know that almost all other PC vendors do the same thing, but when you put all of your eggs in a couple of baskets (Quanta, Foxconn, etc.), a strike can have devastating effects on your bottom line, stock price, and market position.
Apple should accept a lower profit and move manufacturing back to the US. That would be an excellent use of its $100B cash pile.
I'd love to see Apple (and other US companies) bring manufacturing jobs back to the US. Unfortunately, it would cost Apple *several* hundred billion and still take about 7-10 years to do it at this point. We've been shipping jobs overseas for so long that we simply don't have the facilities, infrastructure, or skilled labor pool necessary to do it quickly.
