Slashdot Mirror
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.
I think the difference here is, while you were doing this:
1) You made 0.52USD in a fraction of an hour
2) You could have quit and found another programming job, most likely within a drivable distance from where you live.
-Will P.
Is this picture genuine? I'm inclined to think not. Having lived in Shanghai for a while, I can attest to a culture of after lunch naps in China, in an office where software engineers earn many times as much. I was quite surprised the first time I came back to the office after lunch, to find people strewn across their desks, or heads back on chairs. I was looking for our QA Lead one day and thought maybe he was off on holiday. No: he was snoozing on something like a yoga matt under the desk of an empty cubicle at the back of the office.
Really, don't trust the Daily Mail.
Wal-Mart profits too much from their form of slavery to ask for decency(even if it gets rid of those pesky labor unions in the US).
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Unless they are being forced to work in this factory as literal slaves, the fact that they're doing it probably means it's the best option available. By all means lean on the factory to improve conditions, but before taking the business elsewhere for the sake of the employees, find out what the employees would do otherwise. Work in an even worse factory? Become prostitutes? Starve?
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
I know we always want to bash Microsoft here at Slashdot, but did the submitter fail to notice Foxconn (Apple's supplier), Hewlett-Packard, Samsung, Acer, Logitech and Asus all use this same manufacturing house? How about:
"Photos of Chinese Sweatshop Used By US Tech Companies"
I guess that just doesn't have the same bite? At least it's more accurate.
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
These Chinese workers earn just 34p an hour (about 52 cents in US dollars), work 15 hours shifts
The $.52 is meaningless; how much does an apartment cost? What is the price of food? When I was in Thailand in the USAF in 1974, the average wage was about $1,000/yr, but I rented a bungalow for $30/month (woman included), and could take three girls to a nice restaraunt for a dollar. It cost a nickle to go anywhere.
How many hours a day do American Microsoft programmers work?
It isn't just the Chinese who are being exploited, it's also the Americans whose jobs have been exported to China, and maybe even their American staff.
Free Martian Whores!
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.
This reminds me of the time I worked in a Sony TV manufacturing plant for 4 months. No heating or air conditioning, dirty restrooms, 12 hour shift where I'd gladly nap during my 10 and 30 minute breaks. The cafeteria basically only had snacks. Monotonous work. No sitting or resting outside of your breaks. Oh wait, this was in San Diego, California. Guess what, manual labor jobs suck? Congratulations! Of course I'm sure it's worse where OSHA isn't breathing down a company's neck, but is this really news? Did anyone expect Microsoft to *not* have these kinds of places?
At least here in northern Europe it got better when we formed labor unions and associated political parties, then we got new laws that protected the workers against the worst abuse. This is about a hundred years ago so not many people remembers it directly anymore, which is widely evident in political discussions today. Sure it can get to far the other way and we end up with ridiculous worker rights like full pension when your 50 and stuff like that. But profit seeking companies will not give their worker fair wages and decent working conditions unless they absolutely have to.
How is this gonna happen in China?
Correct me if I am wrong, but is it not still a one party state and "workers paradise"?
+5 insightful. Just read the friggin' article:
'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.
'This is not nearly enough to support a family. My parents are farmers without jobs. They also do not have pensions.
'I also need to worry about getting married, which requires a lot of money. Therefore, I still push myself to continue working in spite of my exhaustion.
Regardless of the working conditions, these people are there because they have needs and desires the same as the rest of us. They work there because there is no other work available, or the work that is available is even worse. That's the state that the majority of the world is in, and it won't be changed by any number of idealistic fools opining about the immorality of large corporations.
Come on, the toilets can't be that bad if nobody gets bathroom breaks. Sounds like a win for everyone!
--I'm so big, my sig has its own sig.
-- See?
Did you have have sick days and vacation?
Health benefits for you and your family?
Regulations for workplace health and safety?
Did you have labour laws to protect you?
Were you allowed to sleep at home? Did you even read the article?
I don't know how old you are, but you have forgotten all the principles for which the citizens who lived before you fought and died. If you're young, you have MUCH to learn because your education has been a failure. If you are old, you have even given up thinking or given up compassion.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
It may surprise many people who don't take naps, but there are in fact a lot of people who do - even in full view of others. /. - shocking to some, normal to others.
Not much different from eating lunch at your desk while checking
Move along.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
This is all meaningless, the factory will get slapped on the wrist, the workers will lose their jobs and microsoft will make a comment about taking such accusations 'seriously' and that they are 'investigating'. The public will be outraged for a month or two before forgetting which large corporation they are supposed to hate this month. Then the news media will go away and at the next contract renewal the whole job will get bid out again.
The reason it is meaningless is because the Chinese system of contract factories will at most simply shift the work to another factory - in China. The lax oversight, weak wages and rampant corruption in the system that allowed this kind of thing to happen in the first place remain. The only way to fix the issue is to stop production in China altogether and shift production to another country. That is the only thing that could possibly get the Chinese government to give a damn. Until companies start to shift work out of China and into a country that isn't inherently corrupt it just a game of whack a mole.
All that being said, the same factory, with the same management, employing the same people could still easily rebid and get the next contract simply by playing around with the paperwork on who owns the factory.
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.
In Ohio, the minimum wage is $7.30. This means that someone working 40 hours/week would earn roughly $14,600 a year. Our GDP per capita is about $48,000, so someone earning minimum wage is getting about 30% of the average. In china, GDP per capita is $3,266. Someone earning 50 cents/hour, working 40 hours a week, earns $1,000 US a year. Hey, look at that, right about 30%. So, these factory workers are basically earning the equivalent minimum wage in china (*if* scaling based on GDP is appropriate). This is to say nothing about actual cost of living, or the actual working conditions, but dollar for dollar if we expect someone in the US to work for $7.30 an hour when the average is much higher, we should have no problem expecting someone in China to work for $.50 an hour considering what everyone else makes.
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).
that the majority are from uncaring scumbags defending these working conditions. Not sure why, but I just expected differently from the slashdot crowd.
Is it wrong that when I saw the picture all I could think was look at those lazy gits sleeping on the job?
Most chinese factories work like this: You're hired at what seems like a good wage for eight hours. Only then you find out you are given quotas that you can't complete unless you work 80 or 90 hours a week, with unpaid overtime. In some slave labor camps, you are paid room and board and then given your wages at the end of a year contract, and they only need to find three infractions under the law to kick you out of your dormitory and not pay you a dime.
And if you're wondering why your wages are less than what your parents made, adjusted for purchasing power, then you are ignoring the answer. I do not want to compete with someone willing to work for $100 a month in such deplorable conditions, whose environment looks like this.
I'd rather have less stuff.
The scam of externalizing real costs to the next generation is worse than giving them a national deficit, because it could take hundreds of years to undo the damage, and much more money than we thought we saved.
Yes, why blame Microsoft? The root cause of these working conditions falls squarely on the Chinese government and Chinese culture.
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!
First is the cost of an xbox, or whatever, a major part of our overall expenses? I think I am fairly typical, and my biggest expenses - by far - have been: income tax, mortgage, health care, education, and retirement. Lowering the cost of computer mice, or toaster overs, does very little, if anything, to lower my overall cost of living.
Does lowering the cost of labor even lower our cost of goods? In the 1980s, when auto manufacturing was shifted from US workers making $15 to hour, to offshore workers making $0.35 an hour, did the cost of cars go down significantly?
Offshoring labor certainly causes inhumane worker conditions, and causes high unemployment in the west. But I don't see where offshoring labor is helping the average US citizen at all.
So why don't we stop buying goods that manufactured offshored? For one thing, we often have no choice, and we don't even know. For example, is an all-Americans Dell computer really made in the USA?
For another thing, I think it has to do with a lack of solidarity. If I personally stopped buying goods made offshore, it would not amount to anything. If several million people made an organized effort, that might get somebody's attention.
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
Well, maybe if the idealistic fools are on the board of large corporations, that would change. You cannot run a company based solely on how much profit every decision gets you, as it leads to social and environmental unbalances. That most companies are run like that does not make it right.
but if I don't work overtime then I am stuck with only ... 'This is not nearly enough to support a family. My parents are farmers without jobs. They also do not have pensions.
'I also need to worry about getting married, which requires a lot of money. Therefore, I still push myself to continue working in spite of my exhaustion.
I've worked jobs that are much harder, just as repetitive, under comparable conditions, here in the U.S. I didn't have a choice about working overtime...if they needed me, I worked a 16 hour shift. Or I got fired. If I was dumb enough to lose a body part in the machinery, I'd have wound up fired. I didn't get a place to sleep (driving home was usually extremely dangerous, due to the exhaustion). They didn't feed me. I'd usually get 2 10 minute breaks in a 12 hour shift, but you never really knew.
(I know this is where I'm supposed to keep going with that, talking about trudging through snow, crawling through the muck, going barefoot, and how we all enjoyed it. That all happened, except for the barefoot, but most people probably won't really believe the basics).
With all that, there's no way I was making enough money to support a family. Much less save up for a marriage.
I'm sure there are "real" Chinese sweatshops that are absolute Hell-holes. This isn't even close. This is pretty close to the average life for a huge chunk of Americans.
Regardless of the working conditions, these people are there because they have needs and desires the same as the rest of us. They work there because there is no other work available, or the work that is available is even worse. That's the state that the majority of the world is in, and it won't be changed by any number of idealistic fools opining about the immorality of large corporations.
Exactly! These conditions really aren't all that bad. Much better than I'd actually expected. If enough people throw a big enough fit about this sort of thing, then the company just moves its operation, and these girls go back to...what? Prostitution? Starving to death? Selling body parts? Whatever it is, it's almost guaranteed to be worse.
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.
My wife works for the British NHS - the following is a comparison.
She is regularly rostered in for 12.5 hour shifts, but is required to stay until the patient she is handling has been dealt with - if she takes on an A&E case 30 minutes before she is scheduled to finish, that case can take up to 4 hours to conclude, and she is not allowed to leave until then. She is still required to turn up for the next shift on time.
She is not allowed to take extended breaks, short comfort breaks are all she is permitted and any meals she takes are routinely interrupted - the longest she has had to eat a meal in the past 6 months is 20 minutes uninterrupted.
She is regularly pressured by the Trust to declare that she has not worked past her legal limit, even though they both know that she was rostered on to work way past that limit.
She has to pay money to a private, non-government body to be able to practice in the UK - she cannot practice without GMC membership.
She cannot become GMC qualified without being trained by the government - there is no alternative to the government workplace for doctors in the UK.
She does not get to plan her holidays, she gets told when she is on holiday, sometimes without any notice (she was told she was on holiday last week on the friday before).
And she gets paid less than the night security staff.
Oh, and shes responsible for the lives of her patients during all of this - any mistakes she makes and that's potentially her livelihood out of the window. Tiredness and overwork is not an excuse, but neither is refusing to work the NHS roster.
My point? The western world has its own little sweat shops and no one gives a damn.
Well, maybe if the idealistic fools are on the board of large corporations, that would change
Ah, more idealism :)
If these idealistic fools were on the boards of large corporations, those corporations would shortly find their profit margins disappearing, their stock plummeting, and their shareholders knocking on the door brandishing torches and pitchforks. Idealism can't compete with economics.
With that said, there ARE ways to improve living conditions, over time. We know what they are. We've known it for quite a while. The basics are relatively simple:
1. Provide a stable government which supports individual liberty and encourages entrepreneurship.
2. Provide good-quality basic education to everyone, and make it mandatory for children.
3. Create a reliable system of communication and uncensored information exchange, as well as some form of transportation that is available and affordable for the majority of the population.
4. Last, but certainly not least, make women the legal and social equals of men, with the same rights, benefits, and access to education and communication.
That's pretty much it. Unfortunately, those are not things which we can force on people, and they're certainly not something that corporations can provide. However, it's much easier to just blame those evil "fat-cats" than to actually look at the massive undertaking which would be required in order to achieve global prosperity.
You worked for EA right?
Quick! Someone tell the Communist Chinese government about this, I mean doesn't the whole idea of communism exist to "PROTECT THE WORKER" from crap like this in the first place, I'll bet Mao himself is spinning in his grave over this one.....
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Once again: China is communist in name only. It practice it is a shining example of near perfect anarcho-capitalism.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
No, it isn't an example of the No True Scotsman fallacy. In the no true Scottsman fallacy, the man in question really is a Scotsman. He isn't American or English. A country must actually practice some form of communism to be communist.. Was the USSR really a Republic? Was the DDR? Can we indict the Republic as a form of government because so many so-called Republics were actually repressive totalitarian states?
If you want to make the argument that many states that attempt communism fail to achieve it, I can agree with you. But that is because power hungry elitists fear real communism more than anything else. The power elite care about one freedom: the freedom to oppress others, the freedom to touch your life without being touched in return. 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.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Idealists can run easily run a corporation at a profit. Fools can not. I've got a Buddhist friend who owns a medium sized bakery business that specifically employs ex-cons, runaways, homeless folks, and so forth. He operates it at a small, reasonable profit. He isn't rich, but he is comfortable. Stock portfolios containing only socially responsible, environmentally friendly corporations have been around for at least three decades, and they have done well enough that people keep investing in them.
The idea that you can't be an idealist and make a profit is an idea promulgated by selfish bastards who don't give a rat's ass about the well being of others. It's a cop out, nothing more. Just admit that you aren't an idealist and you don't care about others; you don't need to put idealists down just because you aren't one.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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