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Profile of Foxconn's Founder Addresses Relationship With Apple
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Thank you. Gosh, sometimes I want to slap people who say "OMG foxconn has a suicide crisis." It's just typical media sensationalizing, and the puppets fall for it every single time. Suicides aren't acceptable, period, however things need to be put into perspective before accusations are thrown around
I'm not sure where that $6 figure comes from, but let's do the math, shall we? I'm read that the average Foxconn worker makes $130/month. That's $1560 a year. If we figure an equivalent average US worker makes a near-poverty level salary of $23,400. That's 15 times more. $6 x 15 = $90. And that's at *cost*. By the time that figure hits retail, it's easily $300-$400+ more per iPhone.
That's got nothing to do with laziness, incompetence, yadda yadda. That's just math.
This is interesting to me - I didn't realize Foxconn was Taiwan-based. What's interesting is that, despite all the tension between the two countries' governments, a Taiwanese business can have such a substantial presence in mainland China.
I'm sorry but did the article state that factory workers live in a compound near the plant?? So now they are moving them to areas closer to entertainment and such? Um ok.
All this talk about US and labor. It isn't necessarily about the US as it is about big companies pushing smaller American based companies in the 90's to produce their goods cheaper in china. Google "walmart rubbermaid". In 1994 when resin increased in price, Rubbermaid had to raise their prices. Walmart countered with an ultimatum: either make your product cheaper in China or we will pull it off our shelves. Rubbermaid refused as they employed US labor. 60-65% of Rubbermaids business was with Walmart, almost pushing Rubbermaid into chapter 11. After Rubbermaid was joined with another company and acquiesced to Walmarts demands, Rubbermaid closed almost all of their US plants, Walmart moved into those abandoned Rubbermaid plants and employed all the ex rubbermaid workers.
This isn't just Walmart, it's Target, Sams Club, Bestbuy, etc. Now goods come from China costing engineering jobs, skilled labor and have played a crucial part in the decline of the middle class since the 1980's. Those consumed goods in the US are then disposed of in third world nations. Small businesses have folded tremendously in the US as they do not have the capital to buy large amounts of goods at the cheaper prices supplied by such companies as Walmat. This has negatively impacted the middle class and the "American Dream."
The next time you want to buy those pens or electronics at big businesses to save a few cents or dollars, think about where that money is going. Away from US employment, to China, while eliminating fair competition for small US businesses. Support your local businessman/woman/company before we become one big Chinese/Taiwanese compound.
All this talk about US and labor. It isn't necessarily about the US as it is about big companies pushing smaller American based companies in the 90's to produce their goods cheaper in china. Google "walmart rubbermaid". In 1994 when resin increased in price, Rubbermaid had to raise their prices. Walmart countered with an ultimatum: either make your product cheaper in China or we will pull it off our shelves. Rubbermaid refused as they employed US labor. 60-65% of Rubbermaids business was with Walmart, almost pushing Rubbermaid into chapter 11. After Rubbermaid was joined with another company and acquiesced to Walmarts demands, Rubbermaid closed almost all of their US plants, Walmart moved into those abandoned Rubbermaid plants and employed all the ex rubbermaid workers.
This isn't just Walmart, it's Target, Sams Club, Bestbuy, etc. Now goods come from China costing engineering jobs, skilled labor and have played a crucial part in the decline of the middle class since the 1980's. Those consumed goods in the US are then disposed of in third world nations. Small businesses have folded tremendously in the US as they do not have the capital to buy large amounts of goods at the cheaper prices supplied by such companies as Walmat. This has negatively impacted the middle class and the "American Dream."
The next time you want to buy those pens or electronics at big businesses to save a few cents or dollars, think about where that money is going. Away from US employment, to China, while eliminating fair competition for small US businesses. Support your local businessman/woman/company before we become one big Chinese/Taiwanese compound.
I'm not a fan of Walmart, but I don't think retail is a significant aspect of our economy. I buy organic food, but there is no equivalent for electronics or pens. I'd say rather then us becoming a compound, China will become like us. Besides there is a much larger trend to work from home (thanks to technology) in the USA now, so moving to "compounds" just doesn't make sense. I have many co-workers (including people I manage) that I have never seen in person before. The larger problem is bottom feeder companies that don't provide employees with opportunities here. I try my best not to support them, but it is hard to see the whole supply chain. There is GoodGuide for the iPhone that tracks some of this, but we can definitely use more sources of information.
"If I can automate in the U.S.A. and ship to China, cost-wise it can still be competitive," he says. "But I worry America has too many lawyers. I don't want to spend time having people sue me every day."
So true
So true
That "made in the USA" sticker is very valuable. It would make a lot of sense for a Taiwanese company to want to open a factory here, but I agree there are way too many frivolous law suits here. Maybe we should set up a special economic zone to attract foreign investment that protects companies from court summons in Marshall, Texas.
Seriously, the federal government needs to regulate this. The local jurors are requesting huge settlements to help stimulate their local economy with lawyers offices and out of state travelers. If the companies are from out of state, the jurors should be too. When there are millions of dollars at stake, the price of a few airplane tickets is nothing. There is an obvious conflict of interest here. This should definitely be illegal. Despite how horrible our patent system is, filling this hole will make it less lucrative to exploit it.
would be terrible if apple abandons the steel band in the next design... or hopefully they can adapt the machines if designs change.
Yeah. Just one little problem: if it wasn't for the fact that China need you for this kind of stuff, you guys would be totally screwed right now.
Are you kidding? The majority of my generation (I'm 25) didn't spend middle school wishing (or even thinking about) working in a manufacturing plant doing the same task 5000 times a day. America as a population gave up on those types of jobs a long time ago. America as a whole doesn't like manual labor. We'd rather be unemployed than clean bathroom floors. People that don't adhere to the American culture usually have a much easier time accepting this type of labor. Notice my wording does not use absolutes nor is it meant to cover 100% of the population.
If you opened a manufacturing plant with 900,000 open jobs, I'd best a large sum of money that people would not come flocking as fast as you may think. The majority of those 900,000 don't require an education. That is not to say they aren't skilled, or intelligent. But it doesn't take a bachelors of science to pull off that job, which is the direction that American jobs have been going for some time.
Besides, the promise of "Tech jobs" never covered manufacturing as far as I was ever taught. I went into Computer Science, and am quite happy with my job.
And to finalize what has become a bit of a rant (sorry everyone) I have pride in my country and ideals, but in no way do I think it's wrong for another human being to have a job. As far as I'm concerned we are a human race in a global economy. @#$% borders. Okay, I'm done
Spot on! So now I don´t have to write a comment to that...
Even my boss told me once (when he was having an odd honest moment) that wages don't factor in very much.
If you have a machine that's making a few $1000 work of items per hour (or even a few $100 worth per hour)
Whether you pay the guy running that machine $1 or $20 per hour for his labour, in REALITY it does not have that much bearing on the item
The wage costs (for the item) is only a tiny amount of the products costs.
A retailers mark up alone is normally a magnitude more towards the cost of an item to the customer than any wage related cost.
If you have a machine that's making a few $1000 work of items per hour (or even a few $100 worth per hour)
Whether you pay the guy running that machine $1 or $20 per hour for his labour, in REALITY it does not have that much bearing on the item
The wage costs (for the item) is only a tiny amount of the products costs.
A retailers mark up alone is normally a magnitude more towards the cost of an item to the customer than any wage related cost.
I've never posted in this forum before but as I read the statements in this article and common misconceptions about manufacturing and off-shoring work I've changed my mind, hopefully it does help to reconsider some of the thoughts about these issues:
I'm a mechanical engineer in Germany and I've been a trainee & employee in several companies, often dealing with manufacturing.
Many friends and relatives work in manufacturing, they didn't study but they went through special technical training and apprenticeships for several years in schools and companies which are common in Germany. They might not have the theoretical knowledge of an engineer but their training in practical work is often superior - they're true "craftsmen". Experienced specialists ("Meister" or "Techniker") are even considered as equally important as engineers - they're the "heart" of "Made in Germany".
Manufacturing doesn't have to be stupid, it should be high-tech!
As far as I understood it, similar apprenticeships are still offered in American military business and other high-end sectors.
Many large German companies (in the automotive industry for example) have their main production along with their headquarters in Germany. Complex or innovative products are manufactured there. The skilled workers with the aforementioned technical training don't glue plastic parts together in production - they maintain and service the machines that do that work - large-scale production in Germany is highly-automatized. When new production technologies are implemented they assist the engineers because they know production better than anyone else.
It doesn't offer the same quantity of jobs as hand-assembly but it offers higher quality jobs and the production itself is of higher quality and efficiency.
But in the last two decades (since shareholder-value thinking replaced long-term management) quite often the matured and simpler production tasks were off-shored to low-labour-countries, for example in eastern Europe or Asia. Instead of using complex machines, they use primitive assembly-line work, because they need robust processes that work even under sub-optimal conditions - nobody could maintain a complex machine. It's more expensive in unit costs and it hardly allows technical advancements but it doesn't need major investments (like automatized production with trained workers) and lowers labour costs (which are not the majority of costs). It's short-sighted thinking ruled by the finanicial business - no engineer would off-shore advanced automatized production to low-labour 19th century-style hand-assembly.
One practical example:
Some body parts of newer Apple products are machined from aluminum which is a great idea.
But since Foxconn has no trained CNC-technicians and doesn't want to invest in automatization and sophisticated machines/tools, they use the technical standard of the late 1970s/1980s:
- Lot's of coolant instead of HSC-machining with diamond tools
- manual loading of machines
- switching to various machines handling each production step seperately (instead of using 5-side machining and a loading robot)
This is just a simple example - because Foxconn/Apple tries to hide their standards quite well.
In Germany we would use modern HSC-machines (a German one costs >200000$) and robots to interlink the machines automatically. The production would be faster, more efficient, less waste (coolant is expensive to recycle - but I don't think they worry about that in China...) and maybe they could get rid of certain sharp edges on the bodies...
I'm sure Apple could establish a similiar standard in the US - where the jobs are propably needed even more (after all, an Apple is an American product, I expect it to be "Made in USA" - a well-paid American worker can buy German products as well, a Chinese-worker can not).
Everybody would have won, Apple would have better bodies for less money, hundreds of high-quality jobs were created and the environment would be less affected.
But that would require investments and responsibility - Apple doesn't care about that, just like everybody else who uses the service of OEMs like Foxconn... It's short-sighted: high-quality jobs are lost, technology is outsourced it's only good for the shareholders, at least till the next collapse caused by short-sighted thinking...
"Made in China" is the exact opposite, it's like early 20th century-large-scale production. The worker is worthless and replaceable - why invest into education? All the technology used by Foxconn was established in high-labour-countries - what we see right know, is the reproduction of this technology under low-labour-standards.
China could be a partner, they could slowly evolve technology, society and standards in environmental and social issues. But the regime is more busy keeping the majority of the Chinese as working-slaves - to allow a wealthy upper-class. Europeans tried that concept a while ago, it ended with the aristocracy having their heads chopped-off...
Mr. Gou is an ******* - sorry to say that - why doesn't he manufacture in Taiwan? There he would have to pay 500$/month for a worker - outrageous, these greedy bastards! Mr. Henry Ford was a racist, but certain things he got right: "cars don't buy cars" and Detroit evolved, cars evolved - I doubt a similiar thing will happen to Shenzen...
A Fanuc-machine for 20k$ !? What is it? Maybe he meant the chinese copy "Fanuk"...
Of course he didn't saw the suicides coming, he prefers to stay in Taiwan - who wants to see poor people in a dictatorship? Isn't China threatening Taiwan? And Mr. Gou continues to invest money and technology there, so the regime can buy new weapons.
After WWII we (Germans, French, Americans...) achieved so much, more wealth for society than ever before and now we're throwing it all away, trying to undermine standards all over the world, hoping for higher profits (paying +50$ labour for an 1000$ Ipod is clearly too much)!?
I'm seriously worried, when we don't invest into real economy soon, starting to make things we buy, instead of carrying our wages to Wal-Mart for some Foxconn-made-stuff, we will get into bigger trouble than we ever imagined...
I'm a mechanical engineer in Germany and I've been a trainee & employee in several companies, often dealing with manufacturing.
Many friends and relatives work in manufacturing, they didn't study but they went through special technical training and apprenticeships for several years in schools and companies which are common in Germany. They might not have the theoretical knowledge of an engineer but their training in practical work is often superior - they're true "craftsmen". Experienced specialists ("Meister" or "Techniker") are even considered as equally important as engineers - they're the "heart" of "Made in Germany".
Manufacturing doesn't have to be stupid, it should be high-tech!
As far as I understood it, similar apprenticeships are still offered in American military business and other high-end sectors.
Many large German companies (in the automotive industry for example) have their main production along with their headquarters in Germany. Complex or innovative products are manufactured there. The skilled workers with the aforementioned technical training don't glue plastic parts together in production - they maintain and service the machines that do that work - large-scale production in Germany is highly-automatized. When new production technologies are implemented they assist the engineers because they know production better than anyone else.
It doesn't offer the same quantity of jobs as hand-assembly but it offers higher quality jobs and the production itself is of higher quality and efficiency.
But in the last two decades (since shareholder-value thinking replaced long-term management) quite often the matured and simpler production tasks were off-shored to low-labour-countries, for example in eastern Europe or Asia. Instead of using complex machines, they use primitive assembly-line work, because they need robust processes that work even under sub-optimal conditions - nobody could maintain a complex machine. It's more expensive in unit costs and it hardly allows technical advancements but it doesn't need major investments (like automatized production with trained workers) and lowers labour costs (which are not the majority of costs). It's short-sighted thinking ruled by the finanicial business - no engineer would off-shore advanced automatized production to low-labour 19th century-style hand-assembly.
One practical example:
Some body parts of newer Apple products are machined from aluminum which is a great idea.
But since Foxconn has no trained CNC-technicians and doesn't want to invest in automatization and sophisticated machines/tools, they use the technical standard of the late 1970s/1980s:
- Lot's of coolant instead of HSC-machining with diamond tools
- manual loading of machines
- switching to various machines handling each production step seperately (instead of using 5-side machining and a loading robot)
This is just a simple example - because Foxconn/Apple tries to hide their standards quite well.
In Germany we would use modern HSC-machines (a German one costs >200000$) and robots to interlink the machines automatically. The production would be faster, more efficient, less waste (coolant is expensive to recycle - but I don't think they worry about that in China...) and maybe they could get rid of certain sharp edges on the bodies...
I'm sure Apple could establish a similiar standard in the US - where the jobs are propably needed even more (after all, an Apple is an American product, I expect it to be "Made in USA" - a well-paid American worker can buy German products as well, a Chinese-worker can not).
Everybody would have won, Apple would have better bodies for less money, hundreds of high-quality jobs were created and the environment would be less affected.
But that would require investments and responsibility - Apple doesn't care about that, just like everybody else who uses the service of OEMs like Foxconn... It's short-sighted: high-quality jobs are lost, technology is outsourced it's only good for the shareholders, at least till the next collapse caused by short-sighted thinking...
"Made in China" is the exact opposite, it's like early 20th century-large-scale production. The worker is worthless and replaceable - why invest into education? All the technology used by Foxconn was established in high-labour-countries - what we see right know, is the reproduction of this technology under low-labour-standards.
China could be a partner, they could slowly evolve technology, society and standards in environmental and social issues. But the regime is more busy keeping the majority of the Chinese as working-slaves - to allow a wealthy upper-class. Europeans tried that concept a while ago, it ended with the aristocracy having their heads chopped-off...
Mr. Gou is an ******* - sorry to say that - why doesn't he manufacture in Taiwan? There he would have to pay 500$/month for a worker - outrageous, these greedy bastards! Mr. Henry Ford was a racist, but certain things he got right: "cars don't buy cars" and Detroit evolved, cars evolved - I doubt a similiar thing will happen to Shenzen...
A Fanuc-machine for 20k$ !? What is it? Maybe he meant the chinese copy "Fanuk"...
Of course he didn't saw the suicides coming, he prefers to stay in Taiwan - who wants to see poor people in a dictatorship? Isn't China threatening Taiwan? And Mr. Gou continues to invest money and technology there, so the regime can buy new weapons.
After WWII we (Germans, French, Americans...) achieved so much, more wealth for society than ever before and now we're throwing it all away, trying to undermine standards all over the world, hoping for higher profits (paying +50$ labour for an 1000$ Ipod is clearly too much)!?
I'm seriously worried, when we don't invest into real economy soon, starting to make things we buy, instead of carrying our wages to Wal-Mart for some Foxconn-made-stuff, we will get into bigger trouble than we ever imagined...
Nope it would be built here. Just like it was prior to the big sucking sound to the other side of the world.
Great points Georgia. But I seriously doubt the new millenials will get it they assume manufacturing is work only worthy of peasants with no education and that no American should do this work. They have been trained well by the media and universities.
Oh what is it with the daily comments like this in various Mac forums? MacRumors and AppleInsider are my main source of facts, updates reviews, competitors and history. If they only printed rumors I'd stop visiting as I am sure most would. The name MacRumors has long been less than accurate but then many company names go that way over time as do web names. Lighten up
Your point is true if this were in China. Taiwan was an island last time I checked and not part of mainland China either physically (obviously) nor politically. I am not sure why so much of this thread is about China. It is like discussing Northern Ireland and Ireland as being one and the same. Or am I wrong and this company is in China not Taiwan? I am confused here.
What education? I wouldn't consider myself to have "slaved" at mine, and my 2 degrees have hardly proven worthless. Did you choose poorly, either for your abilities or for current industry trends?
Hmm, in my favorite hobby area, audio, the opposite is considered to be true. Handmade amplifiers and speakers are higher quality than the junk stamped out by machines in China and Malaysia. But, as you say, they can't be made in anything approaching the volume Sony spits out.
Your post has some valid points, but it still fails to address the real facts. 137,000 iPhones/day is not possible at the labor costs you want. (not to mention all the Droid phones, all the Sansa mp3s, all the Dell PC parts) Skip a couple steps to....technology would not be where it is today except for cheap labor. A Mac would still start at $5000, and smartphones wouldn't even exist.
Not totally screwed as in that the product couldn't be built, but screwed as in your out of money. Your broke. You're living of Chinas money right now. If they didn't need you..yes, you would be screwed.