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Photos of Chinese Sweatshop Used By Microsoft
MongooseCN has a follow-up to last week's Chinese Sweatshop story. He says "The image Microsoft doesn't want you to see: Too tired to stay awake. These Chinese workers earn just 34p an hour (about 52 cents in US dollars), work 15-hour shifts, and deal with other abuses to package US-made products."
In China, it is common in many places to take a 30-45 minute nap after lunch, just sitting at your desk/workspace. While I cannot say that this is the case in this picture, it may not be as sinister as you would think at first glance. If there are 6 or 8 people sleeping and there isn't a manager with a cattle prod or whip in the background waking them up so they can get back to working, the conditions might not be *that* bad.
why are we pointing fingers at Microsoft?
"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." doesn't Foxconn make shit for Apple?
i think all companies involved should fork over some huge payout between the workers involved
Exactly. Nothing new here from previous post, except you get a bit of 'Daily Mail' sensationalism. /. to the Daily Mail...
Appropriate, since people are now (unfavourably) comparing
http://crashedpips.com/2010/03/slashdot-the-daily-mail-of-the-tech-world/
Better to read the NLC's original report, (which is actually even more damming, since it contains more detail):
http://www.nlcnet.org/reports?id=0034 - April 13
In the interests of balance:
http://blogs.technet.com/microsoft_blog/archive/2010/04/15/working-to-ensure-the-fair-treatment-of-workers-in-our-manufacturing-and-supply-chain.aspx
When I was programming, 16+ hour days were common.. as was sleeping at a desk.
Hey, I was there too, long hours, a cot in the server room, impossible deadlines. Of course I also was getting shares of the company and I could easily have quit and had a normal job and I was not required to live in company housing, was supplied with free booze and other perks, and got to choose my own hours. This is something quite different and more akin to slave labor.
I'm also quite certain Apple et. al are no better.
Actually, there was a story about lesser abuses at one of Apple's suppliers earlier this year. The difference being, the abuses were discovered by Apple, while Apple was auditing the companies they do business with to make sure they don't pull this kind of crap. That company lost out financially because of breach of contract and is being regularly audited for compliance. (We'll see how well Apple follows through in a few years.)
This abuse was discovered by the press because as near as I can tell, while Microsoft claims to audit suppliers before doing business with them, they've never actually discovered any cases of abuse or fired or censured a supplier. So, while Apple is not perfect and MS may well be average, the evidence to date does indicate that Apple is better about this.
I mean come on, 86 F? Oh NO! Not 12 degrees cooler than body temperature! I've worked on plant floors where the ambient temperature for my 16 hour day was >110 on average, and in some spots >125.
Do I make more money than them? Yes. Do I have more freedom than they likely do? Yes. Is my job less menial? Likely. But 86f? Please.
Quiz: True or False -- On a scale of 1 to 10, what is your middle name?
No, it's not just a matter of napping after work. It is seriously inhumane treatment.
The mostly female workers, aged 18 to 25, work from 7.45am to 10.55pm, sometimes with 1,000 workers crammed into one 105ft by 105ft room.
They are not allowed to talk or listen to music, are forced to eat substandard meals from the factory cafeterias, have no bathroom breaks during their shifts and must clean the toilets as discipline, according to the NLC.
The workers also sleep on site, in factory dormitories, with 14 workers to a room. They must buy their own mattresses and bedding, or else sleep on 28in-wide plywood boards. They 'shower' with a sponge and a bucket.
And many of the workers, because they are young women, are regularly sexually harassed, the NLC claimed.
The organisation said that one worker was even fined for losing his finger while operating a hole punch press.
Relevant reading on the work culture. Take with a grain of salt of course, it is anecdotal.
Ezekiel 23:20
sometimes I forget I can use other HTML markup besides the basics.
I didnt read your post, but found it very fascinating!
It’s funny how you conveniently failed to mention that this practice wasn’t ONLY conducted by Microsoft, and that HP, Dell, Asus, and many other hardware manufacturers outsource to the same company, and that out of all those companies, only Microsoft is taking action to investigate the reports.
Take two paragraphs from it:
For as little as 34p an hour, the men and women work six or seven days a week, making computer mice and web cams for the American multinational computer company.
It was the militaristic management and sleep deprivation that affected the worker most. 'I know I can choose not to work overtime, but if I don't work overtime then I am stuck with only 770 Chinese yuan (£72.77p) per month in basic wages,' the worker said.
If the basic wage is £72.77 a month and they earn £0.34 an hour that gives a working week of just under 50 hours which doesn't seem like slavery to me. It also puts them at a comparable income to a chambermaid or baker, which makes sense since it's working the line at a factory.
If they are working 15 hours a day, 6 days a week at £0.34 that's £132.60 per month. That puts them at a comparable income to an accountant, which is insane amounts of money for working the line at a factory.
Chinese incomes taken from: http://www.worldsalaries.org/china.shtml (and using the "770 Chinese yuan=£72.77p" conversion rate from the paragraph quoted above).
No corporation will champion human rights. Corporations only care about profits and market share. The only actual humans they give a damn about are their stockholders.
Free Martian Whores!
I worked as a teacher in China a couple years ago and was only paid $350 US a month, plus housing, and still managed to save money. So, that is not exactly slave labor wages by Chinese economy standards at $0.50 x 15 hours a day = $7.5 a day. That is something like $180 US a month. The working hours suck by western standards, but that is fairly normal working hours in China.
Also I don't buy that photo. When I was teaching at the University, I would go in to a room and there would be like 50 students all sleeping between classes. It is not unusual for Chinese workers to catch a catnap on breaks, because they work long hours.
Living in Chile
Edit, the food is deducted from their pay, but not the boarding, so I made one mistake.
You worked for EA right?
Your analysis rests on GDP per capita, as if that's how much workers mak, but it's not. GDP per capita might be $48,000 in the US, but it's not shared evenly by everyone. The median personal income is only about $32,100. Chinese median personal income is hard to find cited, but in 2003 urban median household income was about $900. In 2007, the US median household income was about $50,000. The American median is about 56x the Chinese urban median (rural China's large and poor population would make the difference even bigger, but they're not competing with Americans for factory jobs).
The GDP per capita is an average that includes all the money made by the few richest. All the profits on labor taken by corporations and investors. In America that disparity is pretty large, but in China it's larger.
--
make install -not war
Have you ever worked a programming job?
Have you ever had deadlines for YESTERDAY?
Have you ever had those labor laws violated, but the violations were implied so that if you did want to do something you'd have to pay a lawyer $200,000 just to get the case started?
Have you ever worked 16 hour days for 6 months straight only to be canned and have to move to San Francisco for another job only to rinse and repeat and end up back in So. Cal?
Have you ever been in a situation where if you took one of those sick days or vacation days, you'd get canned?
I have an idea that you're well beyond college age, but you need to realize that you likely haven't had the same experiences as the person you responded to so you shouldn't judge.
You miss the point - my wife works for a government run and mandated system that is little more than a sweat shop itself. But people turn a blind eye because its what is required to become a doctor in the UK.
I also didn't tell you about the contracts - if you apply to become a Training GP in the UK, you can no longer apply for any other NHS position until your application for GP is rejected. If you are accepted as a GP, you have to accept the position within 48 hours of being offered it - except its not a job offer, its an offer of a training position which can start either in August or February, be at one of a dozen hospitals in the area and one of several dozen practices in the area, and pay scales can vary significantly. You don't know any of these things but you are forced to make a decision.
Before you get to the offer, you have to get to the interview - the interviews for GP are held on the same day nationally, but no hospitals budget for their lowest grade doctors going to the interview, so you have to fight to take the day off. My wife was initially told 'no', and it wasn't until the tuesday before that she beat a concession out of them - they would allow her to have one shift off.
The problem is, she was on nights for that period - they were going to allow her to take one shift off, but she had to work the other one. So she could either take the night before off, or the night after off - taking the night after off means she couldn't attend the interview at all (her night shifts finish at 8.30am, the interview started at 9am and was a 2 hour drive away). But taking the night before off meant that she would have zero rest time before her night shift - and remember, its up to her to maintain patient safety, its her license and her job.
Yes she could quit, but then we have $100,000 of tuition debt to clear...
My kingdom for mod points right about now. I'm a registered nurse in the UK NHS, and your post is a shining example of the way that things are done in that organisation. I'm not a doctor, unlike your wife, but I work very closely with a team of doctors who actually haven't finished their medical training yet, but work up to 36 hours in one stretch (but get a small compensation each month in their pay for giving up their Working Time Directive rights) and often work alone when on-call. It's unsafe, and they're all constantly exhausted (as are we all, under current budget cuts).
10 PRINT "SCUNTHORPE"(2 TO 5): GO TO 10
Yes, they do. They think we are lazy and our way is wrong. They believe our media distorts the truth and unfairly critisizes them. They believe people in those crap jobs deserve it because they aren't smart or were too lazy in school. They think they are more free and we pay wayyy to much for stuff. They want us to buy more stuff for more money.
We aren't exactly a lot different. We believe their media distorts the truth. We think they are ideologically mistaken. We "know" we are free and they make wayyyy to little money. We want them to stop working for nothing and stealing our jobs, but still sell us stuff dirt cheap.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
Communism in its true form will prevent the sociopathic power elite from dominating others, and so they fight it, and/or infiltrate it and take over from the inside.
[Citation Needed]
Seriously though, you know there are a lot of people who have believed this, and sought to form their own independent - if small - utopian societies. Generally they form groups of 50 or less and go off into the wilderness where they can live their ideals in peace.
They never work. They tend to stick around a while, but that is only because new people come in as people who have been there a while leave. You usually find the original founders of these societies living in a downtown apartment some thirty years after they founded the society, working for megacorp X for a living.
Want to know why? Because at some point, two people will disagree on what is best for the community. That's fine and dandy, and by itself won't cause much of a problem, but there are points in every community's history where a decision one way or another must be made. If two people disagree on what is best, they both will attempt to sway the others that their way is right. If there hadn't been opposing groups before, they form almost immediately. The society is now divided and the communistic structure is well on its way to crumbling.
The reason the USSR was a heavy-handed communist government run by power hungry elitists is because that is the only way communism can ever be applied to an entire nation. As soon as you allow one person to say "No, I don't want to" the whole system begins to crumble.
Communist governments are always run by dictators because that is the only way they will ever work. Your idea of "pure" communism can never form until the entire nation is of like mind. I don't think any nation - no matter how large or small - has ever been of like mind on anything. The idea of Communism is that everyone should be equal. However, the only way to make it work is to force those who disagree to follow along. Therefore there must be a ruling class, and their primary purpose is to oppress the non-conformists. The very formation of a true Communist government will always fail for this reason, there is no way around it. Freedom cannot be allowed, or people would chose not to be Communist.
The reason we choose Capitalism over Feudalism or Communism is because Capitalism provides the most potential for freedom. In a capitalist society, there is definitely a top and a bottom, but the beauty of it is anybody can rise to the top. You have but to look at one of the richest men in the world: Bill Gates. He was nothing but a nerdy college kid messing with computers in his garage when he struck it rich, and now he is at the apex. Star athletes, movie stars and music stars often come from poor families but get wealthy off of their own talents and abilities. Yeah someone who starts out with a lot of money has it easier, but even if you don't you can move up. Communism, however, works out a lot like Feudalism - if you are born poor there is no opportunity to rise to a higher station. There is no higher station, because theoretically everyone is equal. Sure, that government official may actually get three square meals a day, and served by his private chef in his large house, but he doesn't actually own anything, he's just as poor as everybody else *wink wink*.
Oh and the USSR was just as much a republic as the Greek and Roman republics from which we derive our system. All that is necessary for a republic is that you have individuals designated to represent different groups of people, and that every person is represented by at least one representative.
Being a republic has nothing to do with whether the people get to vote on their representatives, and though the republic uses democratic processes, it does not preclude a monarchy or dictator. Look at the American republic - if the President were not chosen by the people, but instead chosen by birth, and if the senators and congressmen were chosen by their station (aka nobility), we would have the Roman republic. As long as people are designated to represent the average citizen in the government, you have a republic. The USSR had this.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
The reality is M$ is more of public target because of the premium they charge for their product.
Exactly, I mean you pay $23 for a Microsoft Bluetooth Mouse but only $40 for an Apple Bluetooth mouse! Those terrible people overcharging for their product...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!