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High Tech Misery In China
theodp writes "Think you've got a bad job? Think again. You could be making keyboards for IBM, Microsoft, Dell, Lenovo and HP at Meitai Plastic and Electronics, a Chinese hardware factory. Prompted by the release of High Tech Misery in China by a human-rights group, a self-regulating body set up by tech companies will conduct an audit of working conditions at the factory. In return for take-home pay of 41 cents per hour, workers reportedly sit on hard wooden stools for 12-hour shifts, seven days a week. Overtime is mandatory, with workers being given on average two days off per month. While on the production line, workers are not allowed to raise their hands or heads, are given 1.1 seconds to snap each key into place, and are encouraged to 'actively monitor each other' to see if any company rules are being transgressed. They are also monitored by guards. Workers are fined if they break the rules, locked in the factory for four days per week, and sleep in crowded dormitories. Okay, it's not all bad news — they're hiring."
Do you really want the average consumer to answer honestly? And what would you honestly buy? The $10 from china or the $90 one from "honest labor".
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
... We no longer expected a free keyboard with our new PCs? The companies on the list are all major PC manufacturers, so a large number of those keyboards are probably the cheap ones that are provided with new computers. But do we really need a new keyboard with every new PC?
After all, a large fraction of all the new PCs purchased today are purchased to replace existing systems; which themselves had keyboards before. And being as keyboards themselves have not changed dramatically in the past 10 years (or more), there is a good chance that the consumer could have just used the keyboard from their old system on their new one.
The throw-away mentality towards consumer electronics is likely a major culprit in the development of these sweatshops.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I would love to call bullshit on this, but sadly I can't. Don't get me wrong I love the idea of capitalism and the relative plenty I have lived with because of it, but it only works if the working class is doing well enough to buy some goods.
perhaps I am rambling already, but this hits close to home for me. When I was a guitar playing, electronics geeking, jr. high student I found out that one of the worlds biggest audio electronics manufacturers had its headquarters about 10 miles away. As soon as I turned 18 and qualified to work there I started to chase it a little bit. Soon I was testing digital audio electronics and making more money than I had thought possible (for my age and experience I mean). My job was exciting (at least to me) and I could afford to live in a small apartment with one of my best friends from the factory. Everything was going great.
Well the company went after some major buyouts and a few of the new products flopped. 9/11 happened and people stopped purchasing entertainment related items like the recording equipment we were making. The company was de-listed from the nasdaq and things started to go downhill. There had been several competitors with production facilities nearby. Soon we were the only one. They had all moved to contract manufacturing in china. Our company faced the decision to either do the same or collapse completely. To the stockholders it was a no-brainer. They moved the production to china putting us all out of work.
I had been making about 150 dollars a day, for the first four ten hour shifts of the week, and if I worked friday and or saturday it was $225. I was told the man who gets my job in china will make the equivalent of 150 dollars a month, for working 14+ hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week, living in some shitty dorms. I remember my hands aching from the job, and people were always needing surgery on their wrists, and that was with 40 to 60 hour weeks, I can't imagine the schedule in china. If they can't do the job though, there are people lined up around the block to take their place.
well some years have passed now, and it has been wild. I figured I had a career in electronics manufacturing, but there are really no factories in this area anymore. There used to be hundreds. I had to move back with my parents or be homeless, and I had to come up with a new career path. It has taken years to get qualified in some other type of work that is actually stable, its not nearly as much fun, but my bills are finally paid again.
As for the company, the quality of the product went to shit, people quit buying, they are a very small company now. Very few of the original people still survive there. Even the china production is very small now.
The dilemma for me is when I am out buying tools for my latest job, or when I am buying electronics, I picture whats going on in china and it makes me sick. But I go to the store and look around, and I no longer have the choice to buy from a country that respects the workers a little bit. Even if there were lots of American, Canadian, British, etc, keyboards around, I doubt I could afford them with my paycheck from the new career... so the house of cards continues to crumble.
Obama is a twitter sock puppet
If you give me a choice between working a rice paddy or being effectively chained to a hard stool with guards and spies, I'd choose the former 10 times out of 10.
You seem to believe that a peasant is free to walk away from his rice paddies whenever he wants. To me it is quite obvious that 12 hours of hard labor in the sun, bent over and knee deep in water, are less pleasant than same 12 hours spent sitting on a stool in a room and pushing key caps onto switches, otherwise the workers would not be working at the keyboard shop.
Well... i say they should ask the workers. Im not in favor of almost-slave-labor like it happens in China, but when one thinks of a billion-people country, images of true missery come to mind.
I think it might be the case that the workers would be far worse if they didnt have a job at that sweat shop.
NO SIG
You could easily pay the same workers $7 per hour and the labor cost per keyboard would only go up by about 20.4 cents a unit.
That's fine, if you're only giving a raise to the assembler. But there's the guy who makes the keys, the guy who makes the frame, the guy who runs the machine printing the letters on the keys, the guy who attaches the cord, the guy who attaches the USB connector to the cord, the guy who puts the keyboard into the box, the guy who takes the box and puts in on a pallet, the guy who runs the forklift to move the pallet, the guy who drives the truck, the crane operator who loads the ship, and the thousands of others farther up the supply chain who manufacture the raw materials to make the keyboard.
When you pay all of them at least $7 per hour, that's where the order of magnitude price increases will come from. Look at the big picture and see how unrealistic that is.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
Actually, there are about 2 million American workers who work for less than $0.41/hr. Of course, they're all in prison - but why nitpick?
All we have to do to compete in the global economy is imprison the entire country. That way American companies don't have to abide by such provincial concepts as safety regulations, labor laws, retirement and health benefits; and American workers never have to worry about a lack of employment.
Win-Win!
Power does not corrupt - power attracts the corrupt.