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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."
we have to pay for coffee!
Horrible working conditions in China, film at 11.
Sad that this stuff is so common; let's see if it changes over time as the country develops
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Foreign companies that utilize this type of thing should be hit with heavy penalties. This would also encourage them to check working conditions before signing a contract with a manufacturer.
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.
The alternatives being what?
Substinence farming or starving?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
1) Government regulation (and enforcement) setting minimum working conditions.
2) Enthusiastic uptake of some kind of "no humans were exploited in the making of this product" sticker, in the free market.
I've found it heartwarming at work that the younger staff are all hugely in favour of "fair trade" products that purportedly don't exploit poor farmers and farm labourers, mostly as applied to coffee and sugar products. The aggressively seek them out and we have people coming from floors around to our "fair trade only" coffee station. We older folks are "for" this stuff as long as you stick it under our noses, shame us a bit, and it doesn't cost *much* more.
Which it doesn't, of course - that's the pathetic thing about these stories - the conditions in that factory, as opposed to conditions that might not pass muster here but at least wouldn't *disgust* you, are probably scraping $2 off the cost of the $60 "MS Egronomic 4000" keyboard that you could only pry from my cold, dead (non-RSI'd) fingers. I'd be happy to pay $65 if it came with such a sticker...the other $3 paying for the checking and enforcement of the rules from the sticker-issuing NGO.
It cost you $2.99. What the heck do you think?
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
No, you're seeing totalitarianism gone wild. All of the shitty labor in China is backstopped by the government and its willingness to create political prisoners.
What really sucked about the Olympics wasn't the smog or anything else, it was the media broadcasting the fake news that China is just another free country. And the west sucked it down.
Capitalism can only work because it thrives on and creates the poor.
Thank you for that marxist flashback, you ignorant twat.
Capitalism is the way out of poverty. Those countries that reject it inflict starvation on their people.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
"Capitalism can only work because it thrives on and creates the poor."
Capitalism works great most of the time, but can easily be abused to bring about situations like this. We hear about the fraction of a percent of abusive companies because it's news that sells. We don't hear so much about the greater than 99% of capitalist companies and individuals that provide good, sustainable products and services (for whatever reason).
Seriously, do you think that anybody gives even a tiny little rat's ass that I created a small company's data entry and reporting infrastructure for a reasonable price and included full source code so they wouldn't be locked into me as a sole service provider? Does that sound like news that people will care to spend time or money knowing?
The various news media have long since relied on sensationalism to make money. If you base your world view on what you hear/read from media outlets, it's almost impossible to view the world as anything other than corrupt and beyond redemption. There's a whole other world that doesn't get reported.
... 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
It did in the USA, the UK, and every other country that went through a transition from a mostly agricultural to an industrial economy.
And by then, as the cost of labor raises with the working condition, instead of building the same hardware in better conditions, the big companies will relocate their production facilities somewhere else where the cost of producing the parts is even cheaper than everywhere else. Probably in Africa.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
How incredibly naive you are.
The Austarlian banks have weathered the crisis without great trouble, no bailouts needed so far. Why? Because they were reregulated in the 90's, not allowed to make up silly investment viehicles that lead to disaster.
Hate to bring reality to your shiny libertarian ideals, but as you should well know reality has a liberal bias.
Good regulation would have prevented the problem as it did in Australia. No ammount of rationalization and false analogies you make will change that.
Honestly, I cannot believe you really think reducing regulation would magically fix the banking crisis. Like the bankers will suddenly become honest.
Jeezus!