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Microsoft Mice Made in Chinese Youth Sweatshops?
An anonymous reader writes "The National Labor Committee offers an in-depth look into working conditions in Chinese sweatshops producing hardware (mice, etc.) for Microsoft, complete with pictures. Apparently, so called 'work study students,' 16 and 17 years of age, work 15-hour shifts, six and seven days a week, for around 65 cents per hour. Microsoft said it is taking the claims seriously and has 'commenced an investigation.'"
MS is probably the most catchy one, but the factory produces and packages hardware for a lot more USA companies too:
KYE factory in China, which manufactures computer mice and webcams for Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, Samsung, Best Buy, Foxconn, Acer, Logitech, ASUS and other US companies.
Earlier also Apple products were done by child labor at many factories.
These companies should move their factories to US or EU. But it's cheaper there and this is one of the reasons why. As long as it's cheaper, they don't care about ethics.
While it sucks that working conditions like these exist, how else can we buy mice for $20?
In my opinion saying they "only" make 66 cent an hour means nothing without a reference. How much can you buy with 66 cent in China?
Take away their pay and call them 'interns'.
It would be really helpful to put this in perspective. In some parts of India, $1 will pay for cheap accommodation and food for a day. In other parts, it will just about get you a cup of tea. This works out to just under $10/day, which seems a pitiful amount compared to prices where I live, but how does it compare to prices there? Are they able to save enough to go to university after a couple of years, are they barely able to afford food, or is it somewhere in the middle?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I'm not here to pro-Microsoft, but....
65 cents x 15 hours x 24 days (people work 6 days a week there) = US$234 ~= RMB1,614.00
The wage is much more than the average of the workers there. The starting salary of a factory worker is no more than US$100/mth, an experienced worker (>2 yrs exp) might not be able to ask for more than US$200/mth.
Also, from what I've seen in the article, the working environment is MUCH better than any other factories I've ever seen in China.
Still, I agree that the working hours are too long, but I'm sure the workers there are more than willing to work more than you'd ask for, given high-paid.
And in the meantime enjoy a shittier quality of life while making no appreciable difference in the situation.
There are a few inconvenient truths in the world:
1. Nothing you do yourself is going to affect the world large scale. You can convince others of your ideals and act as a group, but in that case your words' affect on others, not your own actions, made any change.
2. People typically act in their own self interest, and they benefit for it.
3. A large group of individuals acting in their own interests will often not enact a course of actions which are in the best interests in the group as a whole. Prime example here can be seen with a large crowd in a theater. If someone yells fire (and there actually is one), then it's in my own best interest the book it. The faster I get out of that situation the better. When every individual acts in this manner though, people can be trampled to death. The overall death toll will be higher, but the odds on survival rest on those who run, not those who calmly exit. Indeed those who walk out (the best for the group if everyone did it) are the most likely to be trampled. You can TRY to take the high road and walk, but the reality is once the crowd is running you're not stopping them, and you're only hurting yourself by not running along with them.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Reading the article, the main thrust of it doesn't seem to be the fact that they're using 16-year-olds, though there is a part about 14-15 year-olds as well. The problem is mostly the way the factory is being run.
The workers – mostly women aged 18 to 25 – work from 7:45 a.m. to 10:55 p.m. They eat horrid meals from the factory cafeterias. They have no bathroom breaks during their shifts, and must clean the toilets as discipline, according to the NLC.
They sleep in factory dormitories, 14 workers to a room. They must buy their own mattresses and bedding, or else sleep on 28-inch-wide plywood boards. They "shower" with a sponge and a bucket. And many of the workers, because they're young women, are regularly sexually harassed, the NLC alleges.
That wasn't true two generations ago, and I remember it clearly, as do a lot of other folks on this board who are early boomers or older. The USA made just about everything people here bought, and they bought everything that was made, and the currency shifted around internally a lot more than it does now, acting as an economic force multiplier inside our own 50 state/nation "free trade common market", and not near as much went to imports from outside of those 50 states. And we had a robust middle class that actually owned things, instead of being in debt for everything beyond the ability to pay, and you only needed one normal blue collar level income to support a family, etc. We had ten year house notes, 12 month car loans, and medical insurance was way cheap.
Now what has changed is Cxx salaries went from around 10-40 times what a line worker made, to now..who knows, thousands? What does Balmer or any of these other transnational CEOs-and all their legions of sub bosses- make compared to the wage of these Chinese factory line workers? I'm not going to bother to look it up, but I bet it is more than 40 times, a LOT more. We also didn't have near as much wall street mass wealth skimming going on, and the propaganda shilling to engage in global wage arbitrage or "globalism" hadn't started yet (much).
As to people here not wanting to do the work, any time a factory announces hiring they have thousands of applications for hundreds of jobs generally speaking. As to ag work and construction etc "no one wants to do it so they have to import workers", another fairy tale. And I know I have read here *many* times that in white collar IT work they game the system to get insourced cheaper labor as well, come up with background credentials needed that are physically impossible for anyone to have achieved, then use that as "proof" they need more H1Bs and so on. Musta read hundreds of those anecdotals here over the years now.
These fatcats goal is to break the back of the middle class, to steal their wealth, full stop, so they can have their global two class society, especially in the US where the middle class got so big and strong. They are feudalists at heart. Between outsourcing and insourcing, they are succeeding. If their schemes worked for the nation as a whole, like those liars claim, then we wouldn't have an economic "crisis" like is going on. That proves their lies completely.
Last year, because of their corruption and takeover of government, they granted over a million green cards (that's just the legal insourcing, who knows how many million more off the books insourced people showed up to keep driving wages down), right in the middle of a mass unemployment situation with a lowballed 10% unemployment rate, and if you add in real part time workers and people finally off unemployment insurance, it is 17%, which is in the middle of "great depression" era numbers.
Outsourcing and insourcing, the double whammy plan to marginalize and destroy the middle class here so they can have their globalist master/serf society, with one percent owning everything eventually. That's what is going on.
Bad examples still.
Milk is not a commonly used foodstuff here, and bread as you're thinking of it is purchased only by foreigners living here.
I can buy all I can eat in a restaurant for six yuan, and can eat for a week for 30.
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.