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Apple Admits to Occasional Excessive Work Hours
rev_media writes "After Apple's release of a report on the labor conditions in their Chinese factories, many took issue with the deliberately vague wording used in the statement. The BBC is now reporting that Apple has admitted to 'excessive' working hours in some locations, and they would be ensuring that a 'normal' 60-hour work week will be adhered to from now on." From that article: "'We found no instances of forced overtime and employees confirmed in interviews that they could decline overtime requests without penalty,' said Apple in a statement. The firm said there were 'overtime limit exceptions in unusual circumstances' and that it supported a healthy work-life balance. But it did not specify what the triggers for 'unusual circumstances' were and what upper limit it set on working hours. Mr Kuczkiewicz said Apple had not asked workers what they preferred - a decent wage or minimum wage and overtime."
Sweatshops are evil. But... other cultures outside of the US may be so poor compared to the average US citizen that working 2/3 of their existence may be well worth it for the pay they recieve.
Is it worth it? Well, to them maybe.
Is it moral? No.
And even though Apple may be a part of the problem, they are certainly not the cause.
Holy crap. Apple consider 60 hours a week normal?
Companies are pushing the human rights back into the dark ages. Where will it end?
While it's true that there is a certain cultural bias to work harder in many Asian cultures, one has to question whether it's an inherent trait, or if it's the result of living in a part of the world that is often exploited for the good of wealthier nations.
Do Asian people work harder because they have a much higher work ethic than Westerners, or do they have a much higher work ethic because the only jobs available for them are ones in which they have to work insane amounts of hours with little pay in order to provide Americans with luxury items (such as iPods)?
If instead your number one concern is that your family doesn't starve, or making enough money to emmigrate from the oppressive regime in which you live, and the amount of money you make is proportionate to the number of hours you work, you would generally like to work as many hours as humanly possible. I knew at least one guy (in America) who used pull over a hundred hours a week working at an oil rig. It was quite dangerous to boot, but his reason for doing it was just the extra padding in his bank account, not because he had an emaciated wife and toddler back at home.
The last thing people in developing nations need is you telling them that they can't have a job except at 10 bucks an hour, or that they can't work for more than 40 hours a week, or that it's only legal for companies to come in and provide them with a way of obtaining food, medicine, and education (i.e. money) if they also provide full health care, dental, and college tuition for the kids.
I'm not saying to give companies free reign. Some things are clearly morally despicable. But frankly speaking, you are not helping these people by being indignant when they are not afforded the same accomodations that you are. That is the one asset they have that allows them to compete for jobs against Joe Westerner (whose parents could afford to get him quality education and is the preferable employee at comparable wages).
Don't let corporations get away with complete crap, but please don't have people starve for the sake of your armchair idealism either.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Considering that many other products that people purchase from china are made from labour which has not be placed under the same workers-rights rigor that apple outlays in their vendor contract, this is a good case of a global company doing what they can to ensure adequet working standards in a country that is rife with human exploitation. You can almost decide with certainty that something you own has been produced as a result of human labour exploitation, occurances often go by without the knowledge of the even the staff member; There is a lot of difficulty in ensuring proper work practices in these mega factories (many staff demand excessive overtime hours to get ahead of the rat race.) Take for example that this factory assembles iPods, there is no way of knowing, without investigation, if the screens being used in the assembly of the iPods are made in another factory where labour issues are more common.
So while others may pick at Apple's summary report for leaving areas grey, I still feel this is by far a more advanced effort in ensuring factory workers rights than what many other companies do. (Particularly the fashion and small parts industries.)
working hard != superior life
Most people intuitively know this. Working *too* much is a personality disorder. The fact that you see it in
Chinese-American culture does not necessarily mean it is inborn in the Chinese race.
What I am getting at is that you are racist (even if it's your own race) if you think this is OK due to the fact that they are Chinese. The fact that people work this hard should not be something to be proud of, and should not have to be justified.
Pointing out inherent cultural values != racism To you working your posh 9 to 5 job it might appear to be a lot of work, but many Chinese still remember the days when one woke at dawn and slept at midnight just to ensure they have enough food for the next day. 60 hour weeks are practically a blessing.
Anyone can "stand up for what they believe", but it takes a very brave individual to change what they believe. - Loundry
The norms in the U.S., Britain and other places DO NOT necessarily equal the norms elsewhere in the world. They always seem to leave out the fact that the cost of living is extremely low in these places because the consumers are not subject to getting gouged on everything that they buy the way we are here in the Western countries.
I think people expect Apple to have better ethics than most other companies - their CEO is kind of hippie and the company frequently utilizes save-the-earth public figures such as Bono in its propaganda. No-one expects Dells and Walmarts to behave, but for Apple this kind of publicity just puts it among other greedy multinationals, an image it has so far for some odd reason avoided.
I just want to point out that you're offering a misleading frame of two alternatives -- strong work ethic as innate character or third-world conditions. It's actually more like the asian culture, or the asian spirit that forges this sort of hard working mentality. However, it's probably true that the poverty, massive lower-class (farmer population) and the dire living conditions select for the dilligent. Then, that sort of mentality is drilled into descendants.
An example of cultural effect would be Japan: Japanese salary men don't live in conditions anywhere near third-world nations; nor are they exploited by first-world nations. Their working hours are legendary, just like their suicide rates. I've heard that it comes from their historical roots in the samurai, always chasing for perfection..
The hard-working stereotype of oriental asians in the West is also explainable by the fact that immigrants or visitors (like students) to the West are only a specific subset of the asian population. Immigrants are usually middle-class or higher, with well-educated parents who likely came through with solid work ethics in their earlier life. Foreign asian students who go over to Canadian/US universities are usually rather bright (or very rich). As a result, the stereotype conceived is probably not at all a close representative of the general asian population.
While I agree that this is an issue, I can only wonder about whether Dell, Gateway, and every other PC manufacturer is guilty of the same. I can't imagine the motherboard factories, hard drive factories, video card factories, RAM factories, case factories, and sound card factories don't use some kind of extraordinarily cheap and exploitive work force at at least one of their plants or offices. I'm against it anywhere, and against not staying competitive in the local labor market with healthy work environments as well. I'm all about philanthropy, but singling out one of probably thousands of manufacturies guilty of this seems wierd.
"I mean, how far the rabbit hole do you wanna go here?"*
rhY
*Quote stolen shamelessly from: http://www.myspace.com/wtc_7
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
How many of you have played an RTS game?
No one gets to start off with a modern industrial complex and a space program. You start out with a few poor villagers. Then, those villagers work at building up a Civilization, stopping at points which involve a fair amount of labor.
There was a time when the USA was also a dumping ground for cheap labor. Our grandparents through great-great-grandparents worked very hard at dirty jobs for long hours.
Then someone got the "Organized Labor", "Industrial Revolution", "Clean Air Act" upgrades. Those laid the groundwork for the "40-hr Work Week", "Military-Industrial Complex" and "Civic Green Space" upgrades. That, in turn, unlocked "Space Program", which allowed us to advance our Civilization to the Information Age.
The US has managed to do a pretty good job assembling a Rush strategy to catch up to civs that got a headstart on us.
China is turtling right now....give it time, it'll get its upgrades.
From my experience working in Korea, the workers often stay for mandatory unpaid overtime, and it is mostly due to reason c. Managers have no incentive to clean their shit up because the society says that everyone has to work overtime "for the good of the company." This is concept which didn't work out in America.
Put identity in the browser.
Any Chinese here except me?
... long working hours, bad working environment, salary below living standard, lack of proper training ... as I know the recent years some improvements were made, but far behind the western standard.
... etc. Which one have the right to stone Apple?
Everybody knows the China law "usually" doesn't mean anything, the Capitalist around the world build factories to torture the China workers
Someone want Apple in trouble so they magnified Apple, but not only Apple did this, why not stop all the factories but only picky at Apple? Just like bible story in John 8-7: Whichever one of you has committed no sin may throw the first stone at her.
Hypocritical is the word to describe the man releasing this, if he got so much free time, take a look at the Lenovo, Dell, Acer, Asus
Hong Kong - International Joke Center (after 1997-06-30)
I'm confused. Guy wants to work more and make more money, when he's currently dirt poor. Apple is (you allege) circumventing a tyrannical system that doesn't let the guy do it... but it's Apple that's being exploitative? What about the Chinese government? They're being humane by preventing the guy from working overtime? Gee, thanks.
Ok, perhaps a better example of what you're getting at:
I'm confused. Black guy has no education and can't find anybody willing to pay him even minimum wages. His poor family is starving, and he feels like he is no use to them at all. One day a white guy walks up to him and sees that he looks reasonably strong, and that with a little training he might pay off as a construction worker. However, he doesn't want to invest all kinds of money in training just to have the guy get a job somewhere else. So, he makes the black guy an offer written up on a contract - he will be paid $40,000 in cash in exchange for ownership of his body/mind/labor/etc. He explains that the black guy shouldn't worry about harsh working conditions - it is in the interest of his owner to protect his investment. And, the money would fix his family's problems - $40k is probably more money than the guy would bring home in his entire life the way things are currently going.
But then some oppressive federal agent comes in and says that the 13th amendment prevents this poor black entrepreneur from selling the one asset he has, and solving his family's problems...
Maybe the 13th amendment was passed because allowing people to enter into unrestricted labor contracts had been tried before, and it didn't work.
I read the entire thread slowly from the beginning. Thank you.
Not something to be proud of? Here's an example for you; a man owns a store about a block away from my house. He's Korean and since the store belongs to his family, the only employees are himself, his wife and his daughter. The store stays open 24 hours a day, meaning they each have to work an 8 hour shift every day of the week (or, more likely, someone has to work quite a bit more than that).
Since the discussion was in the context of being a worker (working that much at a factory is not healthy and shouldn't be required), I just explained that being a business owner is not comparable. Virtually every entrepeneur works those kinds of hours no matter what culture he or she lives in, because property is involved. I called out your example as irrelevant, that's all.
I personally think that a work ethic is great (and enjoy working 50-60 hour weeks), but that requiring that ethic by setting the standard work week to 60 hours, to which half earned local minimum wage, 35% worked overtime, and 25% worked seven days a week, doesn't count as a positive cultural aspect. The employees pay structure was found to be (most likely) intentionally confusing to the employee so that grievances were difficult to file, and overtime was set up in a system which was easily disputed by the employer after the fact, undoubtably to hold cost down if necessary. Three of the employees' dorms don't even meet the exeptionally low standards set by Apple here.
In the context of this article's discussion, these employees are obviously being employed by Apple's contractor in conditions which would be unacceptable if Apple were the direct employer. It appears that the original photos and report on the conditions at the site were correct, and Apple's beating in the media was earned. I intend to let Apple know how I feel about this.
Put identity in the browser.
Except for the factory part, it kind of reminds me of the Army.
His daughter is lucky, he's probably already lined up several hard-working men to marry her to.
I, on the other hand worked one job through highschool, two jobs through fulltime college, and all I got from it was a degree, a 50-hour-a-week job and two discoveries:
1) women look at you funny when your idea of a romantic date is a moonlit stroll through the park at 3AM since everything is closed when you get out of work.
2) now that I'm out of college, the only women I can find to date are the local drunks hanging out at the bar.
Leisure time is more than just world of warcraft, it's having a life.
What is wrong with an 80 hour work week? I do here in America. No one is forcing me to. I do it because I have goals that I want to achieve. Where in history did some omnipotent power declare a 40 hour work week? I got my work ethic because my grandfather worked from sunup to past sundown as a farmer and a barber. And from my father often worked double shifts while working on the Saturn engines for the Apollo program. Would I prefer to play all day...actually...no. I like to be productive. Do I like to play? Yes. And I reward my hard work and more importantly my productivity by doing just that.
My grandfather used to say (he heard it from others I am sure) he only worked half days. What he meant was 12 hours a day seven days a week. Yes, he did take time off to do non-work things.
**Note: this response is not targeted specifically at your posting. Rather your posting was just where my response to all the 80 hour work weeks are immoral comments. So please don't take it personally or even feel a need to personally respond since it was not directed at you.
Well to a degree, that's the only way to succeede in life. It is impossible for everyone to win. If you make everyone perfectly equal you will make everyone equaly miserable. There will alway be poor and there will always be downtrodden, but the poor and down trodden of today are like kings to the poor and downtroden of yesteryear preciesely because the rich fat cats always want and desire new toys and so the old toys become comodities. Computers used to be the play things of the very rich and the very high and mighty, now we have a movement to provide free laptops to third world countries. If that isn't progress I don't know what is.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
America, a first-world country where many of us realize that slaving your life away at a menial job is not the end all and be all of existence.
Or conversely, America, a first-world country where many of us don't believe that any job is worth putting serious effort and time into and no one has any pride in the work they do any more because their material toys have become the end all and be all of existance.
Did it ever occur to you that 8 hours of work per day might be affecting her performance at school? That they might be tranding off her long-term success and happiness for a short term financial gain?
Without knowing any more of the situation, but knowing similar people I would lay very good odds that no only is she at the top of her class but she will be far more wildly succesful by the time she graduates college (assuming she goes) than 85% of her class mates.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
You can only get ripped off by companies so much before you start doing the minimum necessary to keep the job.
The 13th amendment also bans indentured servitude - which was entered into on a contract basis. The effects were similar to slavery even if there was technically a difference.