Regardless of whatever you think of Apple's factory/production processes, I've always found the "can't afford one of the products he's making" thing kind of a misleading/lazy shorthand for "underpaid." Can every person in a, say, BMW factory afford to buy a BMW?
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NYU Student Goes Undercover at Pegatron Factory, Offers Inside Look at iPhone Production
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USD$450 is not such a bad wage in China. It translates to around CNY3100/m. When I was working there I saw textile workers paid CNY1100/m who were able to sustain a living.
The important factor is not what the exchange rate is but what the local purchasing power of the currency is. Food is extremely cheap as is housing so the wages are more than enough to buy food, clothes, shelter etc and at Pegatron's level have some left over. It's not a high wage but entry level positions never are.
The important factor is not what the exchange rate is but what the local purchasing power of the currency is. Food is extremely cheap as is housing so the wages are more than enough to buy food, clothes, shelter etc and at Pegatron's level have some left over. It's not a high wage but entry level positions never are.
All this kid did was tell manufacturer and investor... INVEST IN ROBOTS! Welders, painters and their Unions complained and complained to auto manufacturers, guess what... the welding and painting is now done EXCLUSIVELY by robots and has been for years now. Further to this, this proved to large industries that Robots work! More and more companies are simply going to move to Robots as they become more and more affordable (as the patents run out!) and then these workers won't have a job at all!
My experience in the early seventies before I entered university weren't much different than the article except for the security part.
I worked in a packing plant on the kill floor which was an assembly line of killing and then taking apart the cattle. Standing in one spot all day with a production line whizzing by me almost faster than I could move to keep up was the norm. If I wanted to take a pee break or get a drink of water I would have to wait until the chain stopped or I was replaced by someone. It was hot, over 100 F and humid. It stunk to high heaven.
I left for university a year later and onto better things.
Jobs like the one I worked exist all over North America today and the pay is relatively worse now than when I did it in the seventies. There are horrible and underpaid jobs all over the world not just in China.
How can we change it? I don't have a clue but I applaud the young man for making that his mission in life.
I worked in a packing plant on the kill floor which was an assembly line of killing and then taking apart the cattle. Standing in one spot all day with a production line whizzing by me almost faster than I could move to keep up was the norm. If I wanted to take a pee break or get a drink of water I would have to wait until the chain stopped or I was replaced by someone. It was hot, over 100 F and humid. It stunk to high heaven.
I left for university a year later and onto better things.
Jobs like the one I worked exist all over North America today and the pay is relatively worse now than when I did it in the seventies. There are horrible and underpaid jobs all over the world not just in China.
How can we change it? I don't have a clue but I applaud the young man for making that his mission in life.
Anybody here ever do a factory job? I have. Worked my way through school at Armstrong Cork (yuck) and Coca-Cola (better, because it paid better and it wasn't steaming hot with the air full of dust.) Everybody praises factory work these days, and it's an important thing in any economy. But I never once punched the time card with anything else but dread of the long day to come. At Coke, I was on the line, lifting boxes, and the noise was so loud that I practiced singing at the top of my longs and could sing an entire album, and remember all the lyrics, by the end. Factory work is where they put your body in a prison. A good one doesn't kill you, and you get enough money to pay tuition. If you live with your parents. Apple sounds about like here. Also: if they bring that production here, it's with robots. It's a competitive world market.
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It was not so great until human rights were focused on.
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It was not so great until human rights were focused on.
One thing I think gets missed in these kinds of article is that we are effectively looking at a country not far along in their industrial revolution from the lens of a country that has turned that corner. If we looked at this from an early 1900's perspective I think we would find the conditions in these chinese factories much better.
That's not to say that China doesn't have a long way to go here, just that they are on that road.
That's not to say that China doesn't have a long way to go here, just that they are on that road.
In my other life, before I learned to fix computers, I was a college student studying 20th century China.
What we pale Westerners fail to understand is the systemic trauma inflicted on generations of people in China. You had the fall of a great society, revolution, invasion and decimation, more revolution, more decimation, more revolution, etc.
People in China are proud to have jobs Americans would find boring. They live with generations of elders who do not speak openly of horrors and depredations, but everyone understands very well that there was a time when people were desperate to get enough to eat, clothes, sanitation, etc.
This is even the case in Taipei where the country escaped some of the insanity of 20th century China proper, but much of the population were also refugees from the mainland for the above reasons.
A person who is from China is more suited to speak to these perspectives than me, anyway. Just my perspective.
Oh, and my degree was worthless. So I learned to fix computers so I wouldn't have to do construction work forever.
What we pale Westerners fail to understand is the systemic trauma inflicted on generations of people in China. You had the fall of a great society, revolution, invasion and decimation, more revolution, more decimation, more revolution, etc.
People in China are proud to have jobs Americans would find boring. They live with generations of elders who do not speak openly of horrors and depredations, but everyone understands very well that there was a time when people were desperate to get enough to eat, clothes, sanitation, etc.
This is even the case in Taipei where the country escaped some of the insanity of 20th century China proper, but much of the population were also refugees from the mainland for the above reasons.
A person who is from China is more suited to speak to these perspectives than me, anyway. Just my perspective.
Oh, and my degree was worthless. So I learned to fix computers so I wouldn't have to do construction work forever.
Because the reality is they are better off actually working these jobs then not! I manufacture in China and can personally say that while boring, mundane and uneventful many are VERY happy to have a job at all! Also you have to take into consideration, $450 in China is equivalent to making $1,200 here in the states. However, in the states you do NOT get FREE housing! Meals in China are $0.50-$1 and are fresh cooked. This "KID" thinks he know what is best for others but isn't taking into consideration the entire picture! This is like me saying, vehicles are bad(!), bad for the environment, for the people, bad for earth... if I'm talking about the Bucket-wheel excavators, yeah it is bad for everyone BUT for the mining industry... they are GREAT for that entire industry that helps make our lives better and cheaper. You have to take into consideration the ENTIRE situation and he did NOT.
LOL, just like all of us, we go to work to work and work to make $ to support our families, hmmm... not much different. I wonder how many Ferrari workers can buy the product they make, most likely none. You dont like this job, get another, you're not forced to work.
And what exactly is unethical about the manufacture of iPhones?
The workers described in this article are not slaves, and are free to work wherever they want. $450 a month may seem paltry by US standards, but compare on a purchasing power basis, they make more money than the average fast food employee in the US. It is also high compared to occupations that require far more skill and education (doctors in China make around $500 a month).
They also get free housing, and by all accounts safety is paramount. There is simply nothing described here that would support that the treatment of these works is less than "ethical"
FYI, the labor laws in Italy are far, far, far, far, far more worker friendly than in China. Better than in the US too, in many respects.
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Again, though, just FYI, the labor laws in Germany are exponentially better than in China (and, again, in many respects better than the US).
I'm not normally one to complain about an article, but this really is such a non-story that it should never have been published, by anyone, anywhere.
Welcome to life, for goodness sake. Bloody students dreaming of utopia.
Welcome to life, for goodness sake. Bloody students dreaming of utopia.
The joke is on anybody who ever thought that was on the table.
Actually, if I had to make a prediction, I certainly think iPhone production will come back to the USA very soon…
…aaaand it will be done by 3-D printing and robots. So you're better off studying how to fix robots.
Unskilled labor doesn't have much of a future. You have to learn some kind of skill. Or, dunno, figure out how to scam disability or get paid to be ballast for ice-breakers.
I am not criticising anything or anybody here but just as a possibly interesting aside, workers on Mercedes assembly lines in Germany can afford Mercedes cars, not the high-end but a basic E-class is definitely within reach. Part of the reason is a system called 'Jahreswagen' (year-car). Almost all German manufacturers allow their employees (frequently including pensioners that worked long enough at the company) to buy one of their cars at a pretty steep discount every 12 months. The discount is large enough that if they sell the car after 12 months on the used market, at times their net cost even approached zero.
Lol! Yes, from the summary it sounds like the headline is that factory work is boring and they don't make a lot. I could've written that story about traveling to China.
Still, it's nice to see some evidence that Apple is fulfilling its pledge to support safety and wage increases, although there's not much you can do about the Chinese working class standard of living.
So many people are freaking out by this because they think the problem is just about Apple not paying enough and can't buy an iPhone or boycott Apple (he even knows it's not feasible). He's not saying that these poor people are doing boring work and that it sucks. That's not the narrative of the story. It's about the fact that he experienced human right violations that Apple claims to not infringe (involuntary overtime, health discrimination, etc.).There's a responsibility for Apple to uphold the things they claim.
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What does he want to give them, Moon Bounces? I think there's a need for an internal shift in culture to push things like job fulfillment and higher standards of living, but let's be honest - these factories are far from slave labor given the context. Human rights violations must be addressed, but based on his story, it just seems like a cultural scoped problem, not so much of an evil company greedily expensing people.
The issues about overtime are a great example of how interlaced systematic cultural issues are: Pay not enough so need to work overtime, but the pay is well above average rate for type of work. If overtime is being forced upon employees that needs to be addressed, but if they are having to take it to make ends meet even though this is the best job available... then how do we address that?
What does he want to give them, Moon Bounces? I think there's a need for an internal shift in culture to push things like job fulfillment and higher standards of living, but let's be honest - these factories are far from slave labor given the context. Human rights violations must be addressed, but based on his story, it just seems like a cultural scoped problem, not so much of an evil company greedily expensing people.
The issues about overtime are a great example of how interlaced systematic cultural issues are: Pay not enough so need to work overtime, but the pay is well above average rate for type of work. If overtime is being forced upon employees that needs to be addressed, but if they are having to take it to make ends meet even though this is the best job available... then how do we address that?
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You seriously think that a kid from NYU doesn't grasp this concept?? I'm sorry to have you believe that kids these day don't understand economics.
Underpaid?
OK, I'll bite... How much lower is the pay relative to other work in the area requiring a similar level of education? Or is the pay higher?
I assume you have some numbers, so please post them.