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Foxconn Workers Reportedly Strike over iPhone 5 Quality Control Demands
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One, i wasn't talking to you.
Two, I never complained of incorrect data, I simply asked for a reference because I had no idea where he was getting the numbers from.
Third, my point was what other factory in the world has suicide nets around it.
My two cents
My iPhone5 was almost impossibly perfect when it came out of the box. I felt a little queasy when the cell phone company guy took it out of the box to set it up and got his fingerprints all over it.
It the Foxconn people aren't getting the support they need to reliably produce these things that needs to change.
The demand on these is insanely high - and the processes to produce it - therefore support for the people producing it should be likewise.
My iPhone5 was almost impossibly perfect when it came out of the box. I felt a little queasy when the cell phone company guy took it out of the box to set it up and got his fingerprints all over it.
It the Foxconn people aren't getting the support they need to reliably produce these things that needs to change.
The demand on these is insanely high - and the processes to produce it - therefore support for the people producing it should be likewise.
Who cares who you were "talking" to? And your implication was that he was making his numbers up when any jackass with the ability to type in google.com would be able to verify them. There's nothing worse than someone who makes bad arguments without the data to back them up except, perhaps, those who are smug about it. If you were just asking for references, you couldn't have come up with a more obnoxious way to do so.
Finally, the data doesn't support reading into the nets as you seem to be. For starters, what other manufacturers do is irrelevant. Second, dead workers are expensive: Foxconn has every right to take efforts to minimize suicides in order to protect itself from the additional costs such suicides (and the training of replacement workers) bring about. The PR benefit from being seen as "doing something" are simply an additional perk.
That's why you have the nets.
I suppose you are running Safari. Open a new page, type in "suicide rate usa", click on the Wikipedia link. Then type in "population USA". Now take the two numbers that you found, 12.0 suicides per 100,000, and a population of 314 million. Open the calculator, enter 12 * 3140, and you get the number of suicides per year.
The reason why there are suicide nets is that at Foxconn: Most of the workers also live at Foxconn, closely together with other people, so someone who is suicidal can't go home and swallow 50 sleeping tablets and not be found until they are dead. And they can't take their gun and shoot themselves (which is what suicidal male Americans tend to do, which is why the "successful" suicide rate among US males is almost four times higher than among females, while the number of attempted suicides isn't), because they don't have guns.
So anyone working at Foxconn who is suicidal will attempt suicide where they work, because that is where they live, and since there are always people nearby, they have to find a way that works very quick and can't be stopped. Cutting your wrists doesn't work if you are found a minute later. So someone found a method that worked, and that got copied, and Foxconn did something to stop it.
My company doesn't have suicide nets. Why? First, because the place where I work could statistically expect an employee suicide every fifty year. Second, because if anyone wanted to commit suicide, they'd do it at home or someplace else, not among their workmates. Third, because the building isn't high enough; you'd most likely survive jumping from the roof with some severely broken limbs. Fourth, you can't get on the roof anyway without a key.
Now, a quote from Wikipedia about the Golden Gate Bridge between San Francisco and Marin County: "On October 10, 2008, the Golden Gate Bridge Board of Directors voted 14 to 1 to install a plastic-covered stainless-steel net below the bridge as a suicide deterrent. The net will extend 20 feet (6 m) on either side of the bridge and is expected to cost $40–50 million to complete. However, lack of funding could delay the net's deployment." There are more suicides every year at the Golden Gate Bridge then at all of Foxconn. But nothing is done about it, for purely financial reasons.
Another statistics from Wikipedia: "In the United States, jumping is among the least common methods of committing suicide (less than 2% of all reported suicides in the United States for 2005). In Hong Kong, jumping is the most common method of committing suicide, accounting for 52.1% of all reported suicide cases in 2006 and similar rates for the years prior to that." Maybe that gives you a clue as well. Americans just don't jump from the roof of their company to commit suicide, they go home, take their gun and shoot themselves instead. Suicide nets wouldn't help (except at a focal point like the Golden Gate Bridge).
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Think a little harder befor asking for these iPhone assembly jobs to be move to the US. What you apply to work there?
Actually we should be very happy that the minimum wage here is highr then in China. Would you want that to be not true.
Using the standard 40 hour workweek you only work 24% of the week. Please don't try to add commute time to the work week as some people make a personal decision to live farther away from work. Even using a transit time of one hour a day to get to/from work only brings the work to 29%. How much more balance do you want? I didn't even add holidays or vacation time to the calculation. If you compare it to France where the work week is 35 hours that is only 21% of the work week.
Yes, anyone can swap it out for a non-defective one, although doing so is a bit difficult if so many are damaged out of the box. However, all these are beside the point. The real point is why do they or their QC supervisors think they can get away with shipping obviously damaged iPhones full of nicks and scuffs and expect Apple not to do something about it?
As part of the infrastructure requirements, this will include the power generation (power plants), water, and sewer. With the new environmental regulations, this will preclude coal and oil power generation and wind and solar are not fully reliable for manufacturing plants. So either we build more natural gas power generation plants or more nuclear power generation plants.
What jobs do you want to see returned to the US? Contrary to popular belief not everyone wants or can attain a college degree. If we are thinking that everyone in the US is going to hold some sort of professional job we are kidding ourselves. Service related jobs only go so far and unless it is a skilled trade such as a plumber or electrician pay is quite low.
A strong manufacturing sector is very important to our economy. The fact is we still build a lot of major items in the US from airplanes to automobiles to major appliances, but everything smaller has been outsourced. I'm not saying it is feasible to bring it all back, but more manufacturing jobs would help. It's pretty hard to raise a family on a Walmart paycheck.
Which would be great from the power perspective.
Even inculding decomissioning costs, nuclear tends to be cheaper than Coal or Oil in the long term, considering most US nuclear plants are going on 40 years old, and after a small overhaul, tend to get licensed for another 40 years of operation.
China labor revolt starting, watch out !
Time to pay them enough to buy themselves an iPhone.
That includes an overtime premium.
They know that others are making lots of money just talking about iPhones.
Time to pay them enough to buy themselves an iPhone.
That includes an overtime premium.
They know that others are making lots of money just talking about iPhones.
Cornell University (Ivy League) near my house has Suicide Prevention Fencing and Netting on a certain bridge on campus.
But, yes, its not a "Factory".
Seems like it'd be an American fanboy's dream to work at an Apple factory and know weeks ahead of time what each device really looks like
If it is so bad they could quit working for FOXCONN right?
I hate people that bitch about their job but keep going back.
I hate people that bitch about their job but keep going back.
So... you're being ironic, or...?
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And most of us dislike people who are such utter morons that their understanding of the world is eclipsed by most five-year-olds.
They don't have much choice, *******.
"The most recent government data provides statistics more inline with external estimations. According to the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, China's suicide rate is 22.23 people out of every 100,000.[3] This rate places the country among the countries with the highest suicide per capita in the world."
"Suicide in China is hard to accurately measure" Wiki
China = #7, USA = #33, total per 100K (Sort by total, count manually down the list)
You compared suicide rates at Foxconn with that of the entire United States, and deduced that "something they are doing must be quite excellent." I think you might have a case if you argue that the suicide rate at Foxconn is much lower than that of the rest of the entire nation of China, but I don't understand the comparison to the rate of the entire United States.
Now, the debate seemed to be about Foxconn having suicide nets up, and whether or not any other major companies have such nets. In that, I agree with the concept that Chinese people jump vs. Americans blow their brains out. That's pretty interesting to me. Given that Chinese seem to kill themselves about twice as much as Americans, and mostly via jumping as you say, it seems like there should be a lot more nets, or someone needs to do better at keeping roof access under control. (Why would the average employee need access to the roof, anyway?)
Anyway, I think there IS a problem somewhere along the line in Foxconn, or there would be no reports of riots, suicides and strikes. Improvements can and should be made there, in the interest of business as well as what is the right thing to do. I don't agree with dismissing the issue with arguments such as, "Compared to the rest of China, it's a sweet job." Riots and suicides, you say? Do something at the core to prevent the stress, not throw up nets to prevent the mess.
I think Apple should build a factory in the U.S., not to replace Foxconn, but to supplement it. They could release a "premium" version of the iPhone that's made in America. It could have a slightly different look and maybe come with all the Apple apps pre-installed to justify a higher price. If there's enough interest, they could further expand domestic production. There's not much to lose with this approach.
I happen to have a massive filter on my shower head. It removes all major contaminates, including chlorine, heavy metals, aluminum etc. I brush my teeth with distilled water using only organic baking soda. I do wash my hands with tap water though. Am I doomed?
For years big business has made the specious argument that these slaves are 'working their way out of poverty' and in a generation will be forming a fabulous new consumerist middle class in these countries.
Back in reality the only reason why the lives of the masses has improved is by workers sticking it to the ruling classes and the ruling classes yielding due to fear of outright revolution. In the UK post-1945 Churchill was quickly booted out as there was no way workers would be canon fodder or chewed up in factories.
Millions of new social homes were built to workers no longer had to be at the mercy of slumlords and even private rents and home prices were kept low by the cheap state option, benefitting everyone. Schools received massive investment and the newly educated workforce drove industrial production and in the 1960s British industry was at the crest of a wave and there was full employment. The NHS was founded giving everyone free healthcare.
By the 1970s reactionary forces were in the ascendancy provoking massive labour disputes. The America-loving Thatcher's love of lala land Chicago-school free-market fairy economics, which had been rolled out by fascist allies like Pinochet, were introduced.
Now we're in a fast lane to Dickensian times with slummy housing even middle class people struggle to afford, a NHS under threat of privatisation, dumbed-down schools deliberately set up to create dumb people fit for service sector McJobs.
Germany didn't go down this path and remains an economic powerhouse.
Back in reality the only reason why the lives of the masses has improved is by workers sticking it to the ruling classes and the ruling classes yielding due to fear of outright revolution. In the UK post-1945 Churchill was quickly booted out as there was no way workers would be canon fodder or chewed up in factories.
Millions of new social homes were built to workers no longer had to be at the mercy of slumlords and even private rents and home prices were kept low by the cheap state option, benefitting everyone. Schools received massive investment and the newly educated workforce drove industrial production and in the 1960s British industry was at the crest of a wave and there was full employment. The NHS was founded giving everyone free healthcare.
By the 1970s reactionary forces were in the ascendancy provoking massive labour disputes. The America-loving Thatcher's love of lala land Chicago-school free-market fairy economics, which had been rolled out by fascist allies like Pinochet, were introduced.
Now we're in a fast lane to Dickensian times with slummy housing even middle class people struggle to afford, a NHS under threat of privatisation, dumbed-down schools deliberately set up to create dumb people fit for service sector McJobs.
Germany didn't go down this path and remains an economic powerhouse.
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