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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.
Take away their pay and call them 'interns'.
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.
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.