Slashdot Mirror
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."
It's interesting how I keep getting reports of factory workers being constantly over-worked in China. It's a good idea to make sure laborers have enough rest, but as a [former] Chinese national and one of full Chinese ethnicity, I should say that the work ethic there is so strong relative to many North American and European countries that this is more of a non-issue. I don't know, but have Slashdotters heard much about "Asian parents"? As a high-schooler, that concept is one of the most frequently repeated ones in my [predominantly Asian] high school. One last point is that this article is ridiculously late, but that's to be expected.
Cogito, ergo sum, fosho!
I've noticed in the factory here you are expected to work overtime not by your boss but by your peers. It is common to see most people work 1 or 2 hours overtime, sometimes until 9pm. I end up feeling guilty if I leave at the offical time (5pm) because I am normally the only one to do so.
But you've got to take into account the population density and lack of social security, the wages here aren't the best, and if you don't perform well enough you can easily get replaced, so you've got to make the most of what you get, due to this it's become the cultural behaviour.
Though wide differences between wages is common here, the IT supervisor can earn more than 10 times than the IT staff even though his work isn't that much difficult.
\(^o^)/
No it doesn't. Yeah, life was tough, but not as bad as you say. I can't give you sources, this is stuff I read years ago, so doubt if you want; but many hunter gatherer societies had a pretty easy time, few diseases because of low population density, healthy diet, and while infant mortality was higher than ours, once past infancy they could expect to live to their 50s. (Better than Russians these days...) But how easy their life was wasn't my major point, it was your assertion than the number of hours worked has always been as high as it is now. That is quite untrue. Even agricutural societies usually had times of heavy work, like harvest or planting, balanced by weeks or months of comparative leisure (unless of course they were drafted by the aristocracy to join an army, build a pyramid, etc).
But as has been pointed out earlier in this discussion, and as I've heard elsewhere, the hunter-gatherers "worked" something around 20 hours per week.
You've never lived as a hunter-gatherer. I have. Yes, it's true that they actually have much more leisure time than people in industrial nations. What you may not realize is that their leisure time is typically spent productively. Idle hands are the devil's plaything.
We spin and weave for a hobby. They spin and weave because if they don't they go naked. It is not uncommon to see women spinning while walking over to a neighbor's house.
The best living I've ever had though was in a semihunter gatherer society, but with just enough independent money that I didn't have to go out in the fishing boats. Wealth is having more people working for you than you have to work for; and that's the way it is. "Western" wealth is built entirely on large groups of people working for it while providing comparitively little back.
Of course the fishermen, while going out and laboring, not to mention risking their lives, thought about what they were doing as mainly a social event, getting together with the guys and doing "guy things." Not "work."
But if you wish to lift them up to you, I'm afraid you'll have to lower yourself to reachability.
It seems to me that we may only really be "wired" to work, say, 20 hours per week on a sustained basis.
Sounds like a bit of an overworked hell to me really, if by "work" you mean "job." If by "work" you mean something like "directed activity" I'd go out of my fucking skull with bordom. I "work" more than that for entertainment.
KFG