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How the US Lost Out On iPhone Work
Hugh Pickens writes "Not long ago, Apple boasted that its products were made in America. Today, almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year are manufactured overseas. 'It isn't just that workers are cheaper abroad,' write Charles Duhig and Keith Bradsher. 'Rather, Apple's executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have outpaced their American counterparts so much that "Made in the U.S.A." is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.' Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option and recount the time Apple redesigned the iPhone's screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company's dormitories, and then each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day. 'The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,' says one Apple executive. 'There's no American plant that can match that.' Apple's success has benefited the U.S. economy by empowering entrepreneurs and creating jobs at companies like cellular providers and businesses shipping Apple products. But ultimately, Apple executives say curing unemployment is not Apple's job. 'We don't have an obligation to solve America's problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.'"
It is true that it is not Apple's job to cure America's ills. But, if you could use some of that famed 'war chest' of cash to at least try, it would make you less of a bunch of dicks.
In Obama's USA you do.
The only reason they dislike the US so much is that workers have too much freedom versus the slave-labor countries that Apple uses.
If Apple really wanted to invest in the US, and not have contempt for worker freedoms, it would find that there would be no shortage or issue with getting the job done.
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and then each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea
I see now, using these overseas better manufacturing plants allows Apple to meet their demand at product launch and overcome poor design choices. Way to go!
"l. A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company's dormitories, and then each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames"
Of course having next to no labour laws or enforced practices, combined with a workforce housed on site results in amazing results when last minute changes (or ramp ups in production) need to happen.
I'm sure there are many areas of expertise and scale where overseas factories outperform their American counterparts, but is this really the best example to use?
But ultimately, Apple executives say curing unemployment is not Apple's job. 'We don't have an obligation to solve America's problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.'"
If Apple had no other option, they would still be able to make high-quality products with large-scale US labor. A tariff based on worker freedom that punishes the practices of China et al while it rewards the practices of the US and EU with tax deals would go a long way.
The only good thing to do is to make it not only Apple's obligation, but everyone's obligation that sells in the US.
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Looking at the things that enabled the production flexibility, I imagined what would happen if an American company sought those abilities, and to each one, either the government or a union would have not only said "no" but "Hell no."
As to the logistics of mega factories and mega industrial zones with hundreds of other related manufacturing facilities located close together .... environmentalists and, again, the government would be saying "Hell no."
It's funny. Communists in China get it done, while Communists in America prevent it from being done.
Don't even try! We need to perfect our laser powered reductive fabrication technology. Fully Integrate robotics into the assembly line and hook it all up to renewable energy sources. The whole plant will would probably employ a few dozen people, but at least they would be made locally and sustainably.
Wait, but I thought corporate 'persons' are job creators, whose taxes must be cut for the benefit of jobless Americans! If these "people" aren't willing to lose a little money to create jobs in America, then I may start to consider the possibility the trickle-down conservatives *may* have been wrong, all along!
It is a viable option, just not the option that maximizes their hell of excessively huge margin on device prices. They have the viable option of producing in the US, loose few bucks of margin on each device and still be very profitable. They might be right this is not the best option for shareholders, but this is in all cases a viable option, especially because money they loose in paying more expensive workforce comes back when the employees and their families purchase more gadgets from the company that gives them bread and butter.
'We don't have an obligation to solve America's problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.'"
Correct, you don't have an obligation to solve America's problems, you do however have an obligation to ensure fair working conditions and above-starvation wages for your workers. I wonder whether those 8000 workers who were raised from the company dormitories were paid overtime rates? And how much of their wage is docked for the "privelege" of living in said dormitories. Globalisation of manufacturing is a necessary and logical step forward, but it does need to be accompanied by fair working conditions, a matter on which Apple's manufacturers have a poor record.
Laughter is the best medicine, except if you have a broken rib.
Slave labor doesn't sound so bad when you call it a sweat shop and do it overseas.
Workers in dormitories
24/7 uncompensated on-call
12-hour shifts
Not mentioned:
worker safety
Triangle Shirtwaist Company
Shorter summary:
All the USA needs to be a better place for companies like Apple is to repeal the last 120 years.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I would be very interested in seeing photos of those dormitories, to compare them to the dormitories that Apple supplies to their workforce in the USA. Then they would be in a position to say that offshoring the work was beyond the matter of costs.
The only skill that the US doesn't have that these workers have is being overly pliant. Businesses hate freedom unless it is solely in the hands of business.
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We don't care if we screw up or change our mind at the last minute. We expect others to work slavish hours to compensate for our mistakes, because of our fickleness or just on our whim. We can't make the American worker do this anymore because, even as bad as the economy is, many of them have other options or have unions to protect them from this. Even if the American worker didn't have other options once word got out Apple would get a bad rap. We don't have to worry about that when our factories are in a place where the workers don't speak English and our treating them like serfs will unlikely get back to the US press for a long time. And rather than admit we are selfish assholes who feel entitled to get what we want when we want it we are going to call the American worker lazy, call the US manufacturing base lazy or come up with any other excuse we can that allows us to feel OK about how we treat these uneducated, poor workers.
Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option
It is a self-fulfilling prophesy. The jobs were initially shipped overseas due to the cheap workforce. Then the overseas workforce built up their skills because those skills were in demand and being used, meanwhile the skills of American workers atrophied because no company wanted to use them. The overseas manufacturing facilities were heavily invested in because that is where the cheap sweat-shop labor was, and still is. Do you know the working conditions at these factories are so bad that the companies install suicide nets around the building to catch the workers trying to commit suicide by jumping off the roof? Do you know that the workers in those factories are required to sleep 8 to 10 people in a dorm room, and they are not allowed to talk or socialize with their roommates?
Now it is at the point that manufacturing in the US has been neglected for so long, that to catchup and compete is a daunting task. And no company wants to make the investment in American people and manufacturing infrastructure anymore.
The Apple execs are being very self-serving in their rationalizations for abandoning the American worker. They are just trying to paint a smiley face on a sad situation.
In reality it is the American companies that neglected the American workforce and manufacturing infrastructure for cheap overseas labor. Then the American companies invested in the overseas workforce.
Then they should follow their own HR tactics. If you don't like it here, then leave. I'm certain China will accept their corporate HQ. And, based on their own example, it should be up and running is less than 48 hours.
This is the same rhetoric that is under cutting the US competitiveness. Companies DO have a social responsibility to the country from which they gain many benefits.
or kept in the dark?
"guided to a workstation"
A surprise, onsite inspection would be far better. Otherwise you just get a Potemkin Village demonstration that things are cleaner than they actually are.
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As bad as it may be in a factory, it's better than staying in the village with no electricity or running water and trying to eek out an existence as a subsistence farmer.
the time Apple redesigned the iPhone's screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company's dormitories, and then each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.
How is this anecdote NOT just about "workers [being] cheaper abroad"?
"Foreign workers are cheaper. WAY WAY WAYYYYYYYYY cheaper. And they accept tea and a biscuit in return for a 12 hour shift of mindless drudgery."
Shame on us for rejecting those terms! Every loyal American should be willing to bend over and take it up the rump repeatedly for their corporate overlord!
Didn't you people get the memo? The U$ isn't for us anymore, corporations are the new citizen! We're just the proles.
The executive class of these companies have been farming out more and more work to China. They do so under the arrogant premise that the manufacturing can be done without learning the original design work. Already fair parts of the design work have been taken over by Chinese companies.
The arrogant part is in thinking that we are the only ones that can come up with a good design, that we can create 'intellectual property' and make profits solely off of that. Nature grants no exclusive rights to creativity or intelligence. There is no inherent reason that the creative minds in China can't take over the one piece we think we can exclusively own. This is why American companies are so big on intellectual property. They think they are the only ones that can do high profit design work and that this is the only thing worth doing.
One day these companies will wake up and realize that Apple etc need the ODM's far more than they need the brand names. They will simply refuse more contracts and start manufacturing their own original work. Apple etc will have no place to build or design their hardware and Foxconn etc will become the next Apple.
I give at most five years before we see Chinese brand names taking the place of our familiar brand names on our store shelves. By the time this happens there won't be a damn thing we can do about it in less than two decades.
The reason manufacturing left the US is money. Loose, if any, environmental standards and dirt cheap labor. there was an abundance of skilled labor in the US up until about the mid 90s when offshoring caught on like wildfire. companies left the workforce hanging as design, engineering and manufacturing jobs left for china, india and korea. people holding those positions had to look for work elsewhere and in different fields.
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...instead of coming up with something nobody would pay.
Instead of $499, you'd get something more like $519-529.
Instead of $699, you'd get something more like $729-749.
The US is more than capable of the volume, just that business has to be given no alternative.
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They should take the filthy billions they have in the bank to BUILD a fucking factory that rivals the overseas shit and make USA # 1 again, ut nooooooo they just care about making a buck. Fuck Apple.
"Given a biscuit and tea and led to a workstation" Sounds like a fucking slave camp. Do tose workers actually sign up for that or does their government FORCE them to work there? I wonder..
Put it this way, Apple is a racist slave company that employs asians.
What the proof? They wake up the slaves from their manufacturing plant dorms (yes they live on site) then give them a cookie and say "back to work gook nigger"
Fuck Apple. Steve jobs fucked children and raped the poor. Fuck America. Its a dead pile of shit.
Steve Jobs destroyed America. Fitting that he has terrorist blood in him. Fortunate for us, its cancer ridden. Fuck him, Fuck apple.. Glad hes dead, hopefully the slave company will follow
With the US, there is plenty of room for various industries of differing scales, instead of having to specialize in supplying labor for other countries. What is it with your home country that makes it ill-suited for people to remain in it?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I hate this fucking country. I hope it dies.
Yeah....the reason that "no company in America can match that" is that any company that tried to would be facing legal prosecution with regards to indentured servitude, a human rights violation which is outlawed in the U.S. as far as I can tell. Nice omission there Apple.....
...and all the freedoms for which it has?
by not being prepared to work for the same wages and the same conditions as the Chinese.
Free trade floats the boat-holding business owners, but drowns the boatless individuals that are not business owners.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The fact that they were able to find 8000 biscuits and cups of tea is astonishing in itself!
I will not buy an Apple product. Their arguments are pure bovine effluent. You could do the same in the U.S. But the thing they leave out is a huge environmental cost. And sooner than later, they're going to face the exact same thing in China and the rest of Asia.
Rigid tariff and investment laws solve the problem in ONE (1) penstroke. Use-it-here/make-it-here/invest-it here or suffer crippling tariff/tax penalties. The Gub'mnt smoking gun-barrel in protection of the public good can persuade even a stiff-necked fecking-A smarmy social-Darwinist that 4% ROI is better then a bullet in the head. Raw materials excepted of-course as Adam Smith pronounced! Black-market sourcing is Coast-Guard target practice.
A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company's dormitories, and then each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.
I wonder if this has anything to do with the having to add 'no mass suicide packs' into their contracts?
So whipping the slaves into the fields is still very viable..
'There's no American plant that can match that.'
And that's because the US and most (all?) civilized countries have labour laws that are in place to provide certain minimum standards as far as health and safety goes... so your average US and European worker don't have to sleep in factory provided dormitories (and most likely pay a fair chunk of their paycheck for the privilege) and be forced to work 12 hour shifts.
Off course, labour laws in the west was prompted by things like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire - in China such incidents are considered part of doing business.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
There is no room for civilized arguement. They dont give a fuck about your point.
The only these fuckers understand is WAR. Kill every fucking corporation by refusing to spend a dime on them.
And if you want, get a gun and shoot a few of them too. I dont give a fuck
One of my customers provides a chip used several of apple's products as well as other phones and products. They were a spin off of TI engineers and products that TI did not want anymore. They designed the chip had the chip manufactured overseas and tested them here.
We built 3 testers for them to final test and package the chips, which we build in less than 3 months the first one. Then we not only built it but ran the production on that machine for 6 months 24 hours a day seven days a week. While we built two additional machines. There are only two of us in our company. I think Americans can step up, in fact I know they can.
After our customer was firmly entrenched with apple due to our support, they needed to start shipping millions of chips per month. They also had a new management team, who did not care if we helped get them off the ground, and did not even let us bid on the equipment and they intended to do the testing in Korea due to being closer to the final product. They also said the new vendor could build the machines for 1/3 the price. I told them bull shit. I have spend quite a bit of time in asia and while it could be made cheaper if they would be buying in larger volume something was wrong with what they were quoted.
Well after about a year we found out it cost just as much for each machine as we had been quoting, but they were buying 20 of them at a time. We would have loved and been able to hire at least 10 people if we had been able to compete. Then we found out not only were they building the machines, they were running the machines and getting paid per part for the testing. Wow, we could have had at least 20 more jobs there, and I would have matched the Korean price too.
What It real truth is, that companies like Apple, and my customer supplying parts to apple like, is they don't have to directly supervise people. It is so much easier for them just to be a engineering and marketing company and not worry at all about any "Production" at all. They feel that they are supporting "Talented Engineers" here.
The other problem is for companies like our small company cant compete with Asian companies as they have a better infrastructure for expansion. Here we have venture capitalist who are looking for the quick buck. Just try and go out and get say 10 million to expand your operation even if you have a contract in your hand for 20 million per year. Just the blood suckers who want it all back within two years AND own half your company will be interested. Pretty darn sad it really is that way.
Apple is an evil company who feels that abusing their employees is justified if it raises their stock price by an eighth of a point.
I give at most five years before we see Chinese brand names taking the place of our familiar brand names on our store shelves.
Let me guess: these brands will sound something like Acer, AOpen, ASUS, BenQ, CyberLink, Gigabyte, GWS, Haier, HTC, Huawei, Lenovo, LiteOn, Realtek, Thermaltake, Transcend, VIA, and Vtech. All these companies are based in PRC or ROC.
So, as a result of poor planning on Apple's part 8000 people living in company housing, possibly virtual slaves, had their lives severely disrupted. And Apple is proud of the ability to do this? That company has no ethics.
Eventually the third world countries will catch up to the developed countries. After a bit of yo yoing things will sort themselves out. May take a generation or two though.
We'll never make it.......oh! we made it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWf3iJjqYCM&list=FL7kKrE4eTs17mQl7eyvJIOg
So, getting woken up at midnight, having a sip of tea and a cookie then 12 hours of work for little pay? Maybe Apple should set some hire standards for their employees! I'm sure if one of the employees just rolled over on is company provided bunk he would be quickly escorted off the premises.
"We don't have an obligation to solve America's problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible."
Seems they misspelled "cheap".
(then again, according to the Thesaurus of American Executives, "best" is listed as a perfectly acceptable alternative, along with "super" and "most awesome-est")
"..each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames."
Well, there's something the elitists at Apple (and their monied, snobby, mostly white customers) can be oh so proud of.
Throw the world a biscuit.
May the world throw it back.
<sarcasm><irony>Cause there's no way that analogy couldn't be so appropriate it actually defeats your argument.</irony></sarcasm>
The best solution is to stop purchasing so many gadgets. Purchase healthy local food for your kids instead.
The "need" to have those gadgets for whatever reason.
Slave labor or close enough and no safety or environmental safeguards. Excuse me, I have to go. The sound of folks sharpening those guillotines is getting too loud.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
As bad as it may be in a factory, it's better than staying in the village with no electricity or running water and trying to eek out an existence as a subsistence farmer.
We'll have to fix that, too.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Did you ever read the reason Chinese goods are cheap because China manipulates their currency? I'm sure you all have. But have you ever though about what that really means? For instance why don't we just manipulate our currency more and make our good cheaper? And what does manipulate even mean?
The manipulation they are talking about is inflation. The Chinese government creates money faster than we do. But what is the effect of this? When governments create money they rarely hand it out equally to all of their citizens. They create money in order to pay for things or reward their political friends with free loans, grants, or bailouts. But where does the wealth go? Since no wealth is generated by inflation it transfers wealth from those that create real wealth to those that get the inflated money. So what the Chinese government does is impoverish it's people by stealing their wealth in the form of inflation at a much higher rate than the US government does.
What is the solution? A tariff doesn't work. All it does it tax the US consumers and gives that money to the government. With more tax revenue the US government has to borrow and print less which creates a stronger dollar. This makes Chinese goods even cheaper. No the only solution is to embrace it. Let the US consumers keep buying Chinese until the people there get a clue and overthrow their government. Think about it why should the Chinese people work so hard for so many hours for so little reward? They will wake up eventually and you will see China fall apart like the Soviets.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
When companies can move production anywhere, they'll always use workers in one location as bargaining chips to get an even better deal for their next plant, so it becomes a race to the bottom for wages.
The old deal was "you want to sell to our people, either open a plant here or be prepared to pay duties."
Real wages haven't risen in 30 years. NAFTA was a mistake, not because the US and Canada and Mexico are "enemies", but because a healthy trade relationship involves give and take between all participants - and companies are no longer required to "give" in order to take.
Look at Caterpillar's latest move - record profits, they buy a locomotive engine manufacturer, get government grants, then tell the employees - take a 50% wage cut and also roll back all those benefits, or we're closing shop - we've got another place that is giving us money right now to train workers to do your jobs for $12 an hour in Muncie.
The NAFTA legislation only requires a 6-month notice to pull out. If multi-nationals won't play fair under the new rules, let them live with the old rules.
Is it? My grandparents were subsistence farmers living in China who never had more than $25 USD, now they live in an apartment. My grandfather says he was much happier living of the land. Now he is just waiting to die.
Im a dual citizen USA & China living in the USA.
I hope I had mod points for you. I just saw 'Last Train Home' last night, by Lixin Fan. It shows exactly what you describe: a subsistence level in the countryside, but an independent life for people living in small communities, rather isolated but often in beautiful surroundings. Then the brutish city life of the factory worker, which is indeed a form of indented servitude, and widespread desperation among those who have hoped to better their life in that way.
The absolutely last thing I want in my life is my boss waking me up in the middle of the night to give me a fucking biscuit and force me to start a 12 hour shift.
How much more expensive would it be to manufacture an iPhone in the USA? It's hard to believe it'd add more than say, 10% to the cost, and would that really make or break the product?
Thirty years ago it was somewhere around 25%, now it's pretty close to twice that. What that means is that for about half of the working population of the United States, it takes about half a month's work to pay the rent. Back when I was starting my career, you could count on having somewhere around three-quarters of your pay left over after paying the rent; now, half or less.
I'm sure that the failure of the median household to save for things like medical emergencies is just due to lack of character and work ethic, though.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
1. Apple doesn't owe you [presuming you are US American] anything and doesn't care to help.
2. Apple believes US American laborers are sub-par and unqualified.
This, from the mouths of Apple people.
Whoever apple employee made that comment about the 8,000 workers...shame on you. How is that NOT slavery? And you're fucking proud of it?!?!?
Second off...you can do the same thing in less time by reprogramming a machine.
America wont stop it, cant stop it, and will ultimately destroy itself for a few rich multi national corporations who have no interest in America, other than benefiting off our high dollar value.
This is the world economy folks. America gets fucked to death, while the rich benefit.
So keep talking.. none of it matters. The articles dont matter, the government doesnt matter, the poverty level doenst matter, wages dont matter, nothing matters. You are being sold out, and thats the way it is.
Enjoy the blood bath thats coming, buy your guns, stock up on ammo, medicine, food, and water... then head for the mountains. You can leave your iphone behind. It wont be worth shit.
You are a chartered corporation in the US, so you do have some obligations to benefit the US for what you get for that. Oh wait, I guess not.
In this rate, the iPhones will be obsolete, disphased out, and ridiculous priced as the Brazilian coffe 100 years ago.
JCPM
I mean, as long as we're going for Medieval labor practices and all. I'd rather not, thank you.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
What I find most striking about American manufacturing is how labour-intensive it is. So many American businesses employ far more staff to do a job than what other first-world countries world, or more often they have people doing things by hand that anywhere else would have a machine doing the job. Then there is the issue of how many Americans are obese and eat terrible food; this genuinely lowers physical and intellectual productivity.
I'm sure they could reduce that 96 hours even further under a feudal system. And dormitories? Why not simply chain employees to their workstations, as was frequently done before "safety standards" and "workers' rights" became de rigueur? This would reduce transit time and increase productivity significantly. Further, some sort of stimulus, an electrical shock, for example, could be used as an incentive for those employees whose productivity drops below a set standard. And while we're at it, why not have an on-site abattoir to dispose of employee corpses quickly and efficiently? This extra protein might be turned into a slurry, which could then become a dietary supplement that would help keep employees in good working order. And, of course, there's the added benefit of vertical integration in all of this. Seriously, what are we waiting for?
It's true in 1982 Mac's and APPLE's were made in the U.S.
Slave labour is profitable.
It's not that the workers did volunteer or something, there was no free will involved, and they didn't get a nice bonus for it. They live on campus in a virtual prison. I wonder how Apple sees this as a positive story.
Two points:
Why so upset about slave labor in Asia? It is not as if (mainly black) people aren't forced to work at slave wages in the US.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TpFlOioXys
(mainly in the second half of the clip)
If the price of iPhones wasn't reduced by manufacturing at reduced cost, less money would come to the US from sales abroad. Basically it is money that Americans didn't have to work for.
Bert
Western workers have those too, it's just that, since we're not starving to death we're not willing to work 80 hour weeks for a pittance and accept orders unquestioningly.
We like to have a decent standard of living, to work on interesting things, to have our expert scientific and engineering judgment respected by our managers, to take pride in our work, to make quality products that people want to buy and to be able to learn and grow.
FTFA: A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the companyâ(TM)s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames.
I have a wife, a son and a life. You will not catch me living in a company dormitory at some PHB's beck and call 24hours a day just to be able to make some VP in the USA another bonus this quarter. These Chinese people are only doing this because they have to, for now. In a few more years as their standard of living goes up, and they realise how badly they are being exploited, it will stop.
I've just left HCL having been transferred there from Xerox last year as part of a global outsourcing deal where Ursula, Wim and Mark did a "partnership" with HCL to "leverage" there huge global talent pool or something. 600 out of the 3600 permanent engineers were transferred (the rest may follow soon). We were told it wasn't about outsourcing and that we'd have thousands of extra motivated and empowered people to help us accelerate the delivery of our projects, so we all went home and put our updated CVs on the job boards.
It was just as well, because what really happened was that much of the existing work was taken away to us with very little time and resource being put into Knowledge Transfer. Lo and behold, these "passionate and empowered" super-humans from the sub-continent are struggling to deliver anything.
The outsourcing companies run on this hubris-fueled delusion that they sell to western CEOs that western staff are fat, lazy and stupid and that their staff are intelligent and "motivated." What they actually do is to employ vast armies of fresh graduates (with absolutely no professional experience) at rock-bottom salaries and ship a few them over for a few months at a time (as long as they can get away with on the cheapest work permit) to "acquire knowledge." Of course, these poor young people are under enormous pressure to take on years of knowledge in a few weeks. Then they often go back to India (or wherever) with that knowledge and get put on a different project. The original project gets shipped offshore and work stops because no one knows how to do it.
This is why outsourcing to places like India gets a bad name: the Indians (or wherever) aren't stupid or lazy, they're just young, inexperienced and being badly exploited. 25-year-old guys are being given the work of mature teams with decades of experience.
Stick Men
They'd better start treating their foreign workers better, because Steve Jobs might just have been reincarnated as a Foxconn drone.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
We used to have workers like that in the South before the civil war. They were called slaves, and boy were they ever the backbone of the cotton economy!
The Apple execs are akin to the 1800s plantation owners in that they claim without slavery they can't produce the products the market demands. How many of these dormitory workers are able to afford any of Apple's products? Whenever workers are unable to afford the products they produce themselves it leads to an unsustainable economy. Our country learned that during the Great Depression but our generation has forgotten all the lessons from that experience. Of course the global economy has been floated some time by currency manipulation by both China and the US but once those parlor games no longer work the reality of the true economy will reveal itself.
China is still a communist nation; what would happen to Apple if some sort of conflict erupts between the US and China and China either implements a US embargo or nationalizes Apples manufactures for the good of the Chinese party? Certainly the Apple execs have thought about this and have made certain that they get compensated regardless.
The ironic thing is that Apple claims they have no responsibility to help solve the US economic and unemployment problems while at the same time they donate millions to candidates and lobbyists to protect and promote their own special interests, drowning out the voice of everyday Americans. This is like when the Madoffs of the corporate world who spend their whole lives combating regulations and "government interference" are interviewed after a huge fraud is exposed and the first words out of their mouths are "It may be unethical but it is not illegal".
As Socrates wrote long ago:
"I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good, public and private."
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be-T J
how about slave camps? Definitely not "dormitories". A Foreman? It's either that or what be shot and have your organs sold? Or get carved up, preserved and displayed at the "Bodies" "art" exhibit. What a fucking world eh?
Just show them old pictures of Willow Run. A B-24 every 30 minutes. 50,000 workers and 13 megawatts of electricity to run the place.
And then there was Oak Ridge. So big they ran out of copper and had to borrow 14,000 tons of silver from the Treasury. 75,000 workers + absolute SOTA nuclear tech at the same time.
For aluminum and Oak Ridge the TVA had 12 hydroelectric plants under construction at the same time. Bigger total capacity than Three Gorges and built 70 years ago in 1/5 the time it took to build Three Gorges. It is the development model the Chinese used for the Three Gorges project.
Boeing's Everett WA aircraft assembly plant is the largest building in the world. 400 million cu ft. I guess somebody forgot to tell them that you can't do that in America.
America can't do it = stupid. America is still the largest manufacturing nation on the planet. And it uses only 8% of it's work force to do it.
And typical from Pickens. Every cell phone used in the US is made overseas. As are most electronics. Look around your own house and count them up. If you're adamant for labor and environmental laws and against low wages, then you're a hypocrite if you own any of these items. Therefore this was simply an attack on Apple and not on labor practices.
Apple makes gobs of money by owning the high-value part of the product - the design, engineering, and final sales. There's virtually no profit in actually manufacturing the product. So as a result, companies have emerged like Foxconn (the biggest) that specialize in the manufacturing process. And they make money by doing a _lot_ of manufacturing, for a lot of different vendors. They set up shop in mainland China for easy access to workers - and for most of those workers the crappy pay they get is better than they could earn elsewhere.
And because of that, a whole supply chain rose around those companies to keep them freshly supplied with components. There's an entire infrastructure in and around China specialized in low-cost electronics manufacturing. That's not the only place Foxconn makes stuff (they have factories in Eastern Europe, Brazil, and India - all places where they can get relatively cheap access to an educated workforce). And also, Foxconn doesn't just make products for Apple - nor are they Apple's only manufacturing vendor.
Also worth noting again is that the manufacturing is a low-margin business. Based on their 2010 numbers, they had about $59 billion in sales. Sounds like a lot, but less than 2/3 of Apple's numbers alone. Again, in profit they did $2.2 billion - but that's a low percentage of sales, and that's after supporting nearly a million employees.
The only other thing I'd mention here is that there are companies manufacturing products in higher-wage places, and there are products better-suited to manufacturing here in the US. Precision electronics, low-volume, high-price items, and goods where the manufacturing cost is lower than the shipping costs from overseas would be - these are all good candidates for onshore manufacturing. iPhones, PCs, gaming consoles - those are gone, and they're not coming back. But the jobs they create are crappy ones anyways. And they'll always be chasing the lowest cost somewhere in the world.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
When people talk about China in this context they mean the People's Republic of China, 2011 GDP (PPP) per capita estimate $8,394, not Taiwan, 2011 GDP (PPP) per capita estimate $39,245. The two countries are in different leagues so far as personal earnings are concerned. It's China which is really on the way up on this stuff - and I don't think it's just going to be fairly obscure pieces of hardware.
Taiwanese headquartered: Acer, AOpen, ASUS, BenQ, CyberLink, Gigabyte, GWS, HTC, LiteOn, Realtek, Thermaltake, Transcend, VIA.
Chinese headquartered: Haier, Huawei, Lenovo and Vtech (which is Hong Kong-based anyway).
Apart from Lenovo I wouldn't say those other three Chinese brands are particularly well-recognised among the Western public at large (though I don't pay much attention to refrigerator/comms hardware/educational toys brands).
I do not feel that employees are responsible for the incompetence at the executive and managerial levels. I will help you fix your failure, but it is not unreasonable to expect to be paid for it. More than eight hours is overtime. More than time than that agreed to by my union is double-time.
I like double-time. Screw up more often. My union and I are glad to help out.
They had to wake some workers up? Oh the shock!
I'm an IT technician for a big europe-based company and i'm on call 24 hours a day.
single player healthcare will help in the USA so that jobs don't have to pay for workers healthcare but that is only part of the costs and still it's hard to keep up with factory's where the workers safety is not there.
"We don't have an obligation to solve America's problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.'" --- FTS
And we, as Americans, have no obligation to purchase your frivolous Chinese junk. We've all got plenty of frivolous junk already. We can always spend our money on some other companies products and not feel like we just did something wrong to ourselves and our neighbours. If the only jobs Apple thinks Americans are worthy to have, are retail jobs selling their Chinese made goods, then fuck Apple. Seriously.
This is like Reed Hastings' comments from the Netflix price-hike all over again. Why not just come out and say, "Sorry, lazy Americans, it sucks to be you. Just keep giving us billions and we'll keep shitting in your hat and shoes." At least that would've been a little bit comical at the same time. These comments are just saddening.
And so... without further ado...
Moving into my #2 spot, right behind Sony, and sending EA down to #3 on my "Never-buy-anything-ever-again-from" list... Apple.
Let's hope the rest of the sheep come along and decide to dump their billions of excess dollars into someone that doesn't have 100% proprietary, DRM'ed, walled-garden, products in every single aspect of their sales. Surely, someone else does this, and with less spite for the people paying them.
North Korea has had that condition for over 60 years.
Before that, the Soviet Union was that way for almost 100 years.
So, history is against you on that one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIfu2A0ezq0
And Apple has the gall to claim they don't use slave labor?
This is not story about manufacturing agility - this is a story about oppression and exploitation.
Damn and to think I was going to get an iPhone.
However I doubt that my Droid is innocent either.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
This isn't just Apple, it is every manufacturer of almost everything you own.
There is an excellent documentary called "China Blue" that follows a young girl from her village, to a work dormitory producing jeans.
http://video.pbs.org/video/1488092077/
In a world of economic, regulatory and political disparity, this is what Global Capitalism generates. The locations willing to offer the lowest wages and the least protection to workers, get the work.
It the the golden times, from the late 1940's into the 1950's America enjoyed a massive competitive head start with most of the rest of the world being bombed into oblivion, and needing to rebuild. This was sustained for some time longer by staying ahead of the technology curve, and only outsourcing lower tech commodity work.
But the world has shifted. There will be no golden times for the USA in our lifetimes. Our competition is no longer recovering, we are no longer ahead of the technology curve. We outsourced the technology and the engineering. It doesn't take long for our contractors to become our competition when they are the ones designing to hardware and software anyway. Did we think them reliant on our brilliant executive management?
People can point fingers at "evil" right wing politicians, "evil" left wing politicians, "evil" corporations or "evil" unions. But in the end, that is trivia to occupy us while Rome burns.
We are in a race to the bottom and it has significant momentum, so you better get used to it.
Uh...does he realize how BAD that syoryabout forcing 8000 workers to work an unannounced 12 hour shift with a biscuit and tea as compensation makes them sound? Way to promote swet shops guys!
Apple has demonstrated that it is a traitor to America, the American Way of Life, and the American People. It should be treated as such.
The statements from their management demonstrates their commitment to providing comfort and support to America's enemies.
I vote we outlaw Apple and all those companies who are aiding and abetting the enemies of the American People, and arrest them. The company resources can be deconstructed and handed off to their America competitors so that American employees of Apple do not lose work or income.
Since corporations now enjoy "Personhood", we can apply or local laws and arrest them accordingly. Think about it. :)
Does Apple not see that, if fewer people can afford its products, it will do poorly? Is the lesson of Henry Ford and the $5 a day wage lost on contemporary American management?
"Our only obligation is making the best product possible."
Yeah, simply sue everyone that dares to make a better one...
So some dickhead designer decides at the last second to retool an assembly line because either he made the wrong decision or is just a douche, 8000 people get woken up and shoved on a 12 hour shift and that's a good thing? We're applauding the fact that the Chinese are treated like slave labor now?
I'm not saying that the west hasn't gotten a little soft on entitlement lately, but really? We're going to applaud 12 hour shifts and zero work life balance as a great thing and we're going to call companies that want to operate like that great because they created a couple of entry level support positions at Telcos?
Apple make their products in Asia because their workers in Asia will work for almost nothing even taking into account cost of living differences. They treat those workers like machines which can be turned on and off at will and have no right to any kind of life outside of work(or even the ability to actually live away from work). They then sell those products to western consumers at western prices and pocket the difference, which given they're the most valuable company on earth must be a pretty big difference. They're assholes plain and simple, and when the Chinese workers get too up themselves and start asking for basic things like not working 12 hour shifts 7 days a week, or being able to get a good nights sleep, they'll move somewhere else.
Saying no to working 12 hours a day isn't lazy, it's being human, it's seeing your wife or husband and spending time with your kids, it's being involved in community activities. It's all the things we used to value in the US, but now consider to be lazy. Chinese workers don't do that because they want to or because they have some massive work ethic, they do it because they have no choice.
In a nutshell it s not only that workers are cheaper. It s also the lack of rights the workers have and the possibility to exploit this via worse working conditions.
But yeah.. it shouldnt be left to the companies and let alone the enterprise to solve these kind of problems. They're highly profit-driven and that s what their decisions will always will be aswell.
I long for the days when such brash statements would constitute business suicide. But Americans don't give a shit about annything any more. Any company that takes advantage of despotism and calls it "breathtaking" has some real, deep-seated, sociopathic issues. I would say "everybody" knows these "dormitories" are actually like imprisonment, that many workers aren't allowed to leave, that toothpaste can cost a month's wages and that the cost of living there ensures the employees become deeply indebted to the crime-syndicate family Tongs that run the businesses amd local governments, but, not only do I realize most Americans seriously don't give a shit, I also realize that Apple is probably rightly betting that most people have no idea about any of that. I can see Apple, as a large and influential corporation, having a vested interest in cutting costs even more by instituting similar practices here in America (less shipping). People don't need rights to be Apple customers any more than they do to be Apple workers. Apple doesn't even need Americans to have te ability to pay for their devices. Since the damn things are basically tracking devices and electronic snitches and spies anyways, the government would be happy to pay Apple to provide them free of charge to uplift our productivity in some destitute and Orwellian future. Besides, the real money is in weaponization and Apple only needs governments and nations as clients to maintain their wealth and power brokering.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
And that's according to the "job creators." How many more hugely expensive tax breaks do they deserve?
The New York Times shared drafts of their article with Apple before it was published. In addition, Apple just recently joined the Fair Labor Association. I wonder if the former prompted or accelerated the later.
For the children.
There are no individuals, no people. Only workers and management.
What is breathtaking is the irony.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYecfV3ubP8
Deleted
Regarding Foxconn...
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-january-16-2012/fear-factory
The gig is up, though. Don't the last twenty years of closed door "summits" and other shady shit tell you anything? America silently became just as despotic and uncaring a government as the Chinese or North Koreans, and it was only recentlyrevealed how truly sick things have gotten when the Occupy movement pulled back the curtain and got pistol whipped by the wizard. It is not in the best interests of America to do what you're suggesting because we no longer even HAVE enemies. Our government LOVES China because they represent the possibility of total domination and control, the dream of every last cabinet member, congressman, and executive. All government leaders, globally, are currently concerned only with how to take away rights and how to put people to work building their dream projects, which are usually grandiose schemes involving either adventures in space, immortalized wealth for their progeny, murdering lots of people, and having a stronger selection of higher quality sexual partners. Government, everywhere, has become materialistic and evil, and I'll be lucky if work conditions in America aren't exactly as in China by the time I'm out of college.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
I'm mixed on this: but it's capitalism as usual. My knee jerk reaction was the workers are being treated like shit, and "how can Apple get away with this?" But, many police officers and firemen essentially have the same work on the drop of a hat mentality, and we don't disrespect them as subserviant slaves; rather we thank them for their sacrifice and service.
The flip side of labor laws is that they inhibit an individual's ability to go above and beyond, to earn wage or recognition.
You can get 15 minutes of fame, but you can go down in history for infamy.
And what the heck are these "engineer" jobs that have more education than high school and less than college that are referred to in the column? What, the US doesn't have enough Engineering school drop-outs? The fact I don't have an engineering degree makes me ineligible for anything related to manufacturing in the US, but I guess that wouldn't be the case there. Because they hire people without education, yet all the politicians in the US talk about companies complaining about not having enough trained employees.
Where are our priorities? I`d give 15 hours for only a half-eaten doughnut and the glory of making toys for American hipsters.
to corporate thinking like this. We need sizeable tariffs on imported manufactured goods. The tariff should be assessed based on the estimated man-hours of labor in the product and set nullify any difference in wage, environmental and working condition standards between the country of origin and your country, e.g. the USA, Germany, Italy, etc. Exceptions could be made for things that can't be manufactured in your country for reasons other than labor costs or if the unemployment rate goes too low.
American corporations, by and large, never have felt much responsibility toward the people whose money they take. "Caveat emptor" is what they give, while unquestioning customer loyalty is what they hope to demand. Apple has been unusually successful in obtaining the latter, but that has no reflection on how they address the former. For most corporations, any demonstration of loyalty to a customer is only a means to an end, with few exceptions. If the board has any loyalty at all, it's to their quarterly bonus and, hence, to a display of loyalty to the shareholders. At every level, it's just hired guns ready to wash their hands to line their pockets.
There's laissez faire capitalism, but what we get is generally laissez unfair.
The NYT story does not square at all with this recent CNN Money piece, which, among much else, describes how the Reality Distortion Field was being applied six months before product release to turn Gorilla Glass from a discarded research project into a mass-produced product.
The reason China workers can/will work for so little is because they "need" less. Most everyone in the US need that $100 phone (maybe free) with a $50-100 a month plan, feel the need to spend hundreds on shoes and cloths, and every other luxury. Where in China they do not "need" these things. And guess what, it was after Obama was elected that Apple moved to China, why? Obama promised higher taxes, which made moving to China a smart move to save money. The reason they could move and say what they said in this article is because its not going to stop people from buying apple. And yea, apple has no obligation to creating jobs, they have obligation for making money for share holders. Its taxes and regulations that prevent job creating. And we would have have to tax so much if the government was not giving money away. We barrow money from China just to give it back to help them build stuff. Or give billions to Europe to give to their people that don't work. First step is to kick out a President that is anti-business, and put in someone who has had a job at least once in his life.
An employee dormitory with forced wake-up and 12-hour mandatory work shifts? Sounds like any number of dystopian science fiction scenarios I've read or seen. Elois and Morlocks spring to mind...
Welcome to the future.
Then I must not be working for a business.
I have a union. I have 30+ days of payed holidays. I have a 13th and 14th month. When I get sick I get payed for. And if I try to do overtime, by boss sends me home.
Also I am not the only one, nor is it the only company. They still make a very good profit.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Apple is incredibly arrogant and offensive, but I have to admit they are quite frank about their contempt for American workers and for worker rights elsewhere. China would be the first country to outright demand they erect the factories that will sell Apple products right on their own soil (which they have done), then turn around and seize/shut down Apple's retail outlets over there due to some bullshit trumped up charges, again to lean on them for bribes and hit them up for / extort even more money from them.
The Chinese aren't fooling around and I can promise that if Apple thinks it can stay ahead of the curve on this forever, they are sorely mistaken. China will not allow Apple goods to be sold there unless the production remains situated there, and they get a handsome cut of the profits. Very likely, the Chinese will completely steal all the technology and produce knockoff products to flood the world's markets, as they have already done in endless permutations, at far lower prices.
I think the American Govt seriously needs to reign in all this misguided arrogance, and I think American workers must begin to demand that these factories be brought back to the states in the grounds that they cannot be sold here without a majority of the construction be built here. These occupy Wall St kids should rally and begin to organize for Worker Rights and demand these companies begin to redeem their arrogant selves by building right here, under penalty of MAJOR long-term-endurance organized Boycotts against Apple and others. Apple and other corporations need to get this forceful message loud and clear.
These kids that are whining about lack of job opportunities haven't made the connection yet that those opportunities will never present themselves again until they take some radical sweeping measures, the silver lining of which will simultaneously address the ruthless mistreatment of foreign workers. If foreign workers see a strong and powerful backlash against all of this evil in America, maybe it will embolden them to finally do serious Labor Organizing as well.
Has anyone seen what's possible with modern robotics? The only reason the Chinese employ people in their factories is because the robots are still expensive. Already robots are starting to displace workers .. and the pace of that is increasing .. google Hon Hai robots .. you'll find the story of how one Chinese factory plans to introduce about 1,000,000 (yes .. one million robots to improve its manufacturing capability). Jobs of the future will be in maintaining, programming, and arranging these industrial robots. And they are so reliable they wont require that many maintenance workers. Also the robots will be cheap enough that they can merely be swapped rather than repaired .. so special skills won't even be required. In the not too distant future (2025) .. the total number of workers needed per million iPhones will be very low.
Here's what was possible 15 years ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb7foG1rtlA (fast forward to 1:35 to avoid the text crap.
The only reason so many Chinese are in manufacturing jobs is because robots are currently expensive. Eventually about 90% of them will be replaced by robotics .. and those robots will likely be made by FANUC in Japan.
It seems to me that the West really needs to force the issue of Chinese human rights and do it now. For our own self interest, if nothing else. Only by enforcing human rights on the Chinese government (and making it easier for workers to protest) can we make these factories less economically competitive. Otherwise their slave labour will outcompete our mostly decent working conditions, and it will be a race to the bottom.
This.
People often ask me why I will not buy Apple products. It is precisely this kind of anti-americanism that their own execs are now publicly admitting.
I'll never buy one of their products again.
--- Generation X: The first generation to have SIG lines inferior to their parents... ---
Their what were made in the US? And should t that be U'S?
If you don't like the way Apple manufactures their products, then don't buy their products.
Why is it that all these "Free Market" GOP candidates never seem to point out that all the manufacturing jobs are going to the dreaded communist countries (or other totalitarian regimes)?
Maybe, just maybe, there's a link between between being obscenely profitable and using labor that has no rights whatsoever?
This article and the subsequent arguments about it are based on a false premise. Since the suicide rate is lower in these factories than it is in the United States (according to Steve Jobs and backed by real stats), obviously the workers must have a higher quality of life and must be content. So the question is not whether conditions are worse and Apple hates the freedom of workers but instead why is life so difficult in America and why is it so expensive considering how poorly Americans live in relation to Chinese factory workers?
Globalisation of manufacturing is a necessary and logical step forward, but it does need to be accompanied by fair working conditions, a matter on which Apple's manufacturers have a poor record.
Could you please tell me which electronics manufacturers have a good record?
This concept of 'we need those manufacturing jobs' needs to stop. The fact is that if we had them we probably couldn't accommodate the entire demand of Apple let alone the entire industry. The fact is those products are made abroad for a good reason ranging from our economic policy and workforce to those of other countries. Just as a business can freely move from state to state for more favorable legislation, business can also do the same on the national level. Unions are demanding ridiculous pension plans that can't pay out - cya latter.
The bottom line is that yes apple may outsource the manufacturing job, but so what? We lose out on blue collar jobs that are soon to be replaced by robots. They are low paying, unskilled labor jobs that are a dying bread. Apple is still doing the higher level skilled jobs in the U.S., marketing, designing, creating, testing. I was looking at a box that had the install discs and software that came with the mac desktop. It didn't say made in China it said Designed in California.
No, the management is ashamed: they could have saved 8,000 biscuits and cups of tea !
What's the benifit to being able to start work in a half hour, if it'll take at least half a day to ship the result to this side of the planet?
Unless iPhone launched in asian markets first?
Are you the Flying Dutchman? http://www.flyingdutchman.co/
Funny how no one on this thread has said anything about deciding not to buy Apple products because of this situation.
It is the truth.
Also, it is easy to use the proverbial consumer to justify harm against our own - while suggesting that those that would not cause harm as those that would cause harm.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
You won't get healthcare or freedom. You'll be crushed under the jackboots of capitalist thugs. Just like those iPhone workers who aren't allowed to talk among themselves.
Oh, as for treatment: that works great for a broken bone. Try getting Chemotherapy so that your cancer goes into remission. Or try getting dental care so that your tooth infection doesn't spread to your brain and kill you. In America, if you get sick, better die quick.
And they're working on that whole 'Just drive down to the hospital and they WILL treat you' stuff anyway. Public emergency rooms are massively overcrowded. Instead of building more or expanding the current ones I'm seeing privately run urgent care centers crop up. They're private. They WON'T treat you. They'll tell you to go to the overcrowded public ones. The 1% are way ahead of you.
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You forget these routinely charge much more than your local grocery store that may be closer. In this case you might pay more because you're already there and just remembered you need it. Or you hate going to crowded grocery stores. Or you hate dealing with the idiots that work at your local grocery store.
They pay the same generally, there may be a slightly higher wholesale cost for the convenience store if they are buying from a 3rd party distributor instead of the same place the grocery is buying from. But the convenience store without fail charges more, and sells enough to keep restocking the items. So the one charging more is not getting screwed, and is actually thriving in a market with intense competition even though they charge more for the exact same items.
Capitalism is far more than paying the lowest cost for goods. I don't know why everyone is suddenly saying that, its not true now and has never been true. Capitalism is letting the market set the prices for their own goods and sinking or swimming by them. Its charging what the market will bear, and the market is very very complex with many different ways to approach it successfully.
Posted AC cause I deleted my /. account long ago.
Multiplying by 5 just makes a politically defensible number while ignoring the ways value is added. $30-50 is more likely given how various inputs are used, currency differences, and how one must account for the costs of using various despotic and knockoff-prone countries.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
"Capitalism means to exploit the workers for the least amount possible"
NO. That is Greed.
Apple has a premium product and charges a premium price. Service, support, ergonomics, ease of use, Apple has all of these and a cult like following. Apple does not need to compete on price. And the huge hoard of cash proves Apple does not need a huge cash flow to maintain it;s tech or marketing lead, nor is Apple re-investing it's huge cash hoard to conquer new spaces in the new markets, nor is Apple dividending out it's huge profits. Simple GREED, my friends, GREED. It is a deadly sin. It has consequences.
At the beginning of the industrial revolution, the workers were exploited. But wages and conditions improved. This is an unstoppable social force. Exploiting the workers was and still is an injustice. Polluting the environment is wrong. Lawyers and Unions will spring up. Unlawful death. The Green army that shut down the XL pipeline can and will be redeployed to Foxconn, when it serves an agenda.
Apple is currently on the wrong side of this inevitable tsunami. And despite all the chattering and twittering and spinning, nobody, can change this. Steve is dead, the suits are in charge, and all that apple will have left after the 5S is good will.
If apple moved production to the USA, it would get a following like Harley Davidson has.
I do not know how to manufacture an iPhone, but I have the right to force Apple to make iPhone like I want them to.
Wah wah wah.
Quick, name one non-US based tech company started in the past 10 years with at least 500 employees.
Can you think of one? I can't.
Now let's try US tech companies. Since 2001 right off the top of my head there are Facebook and Twitter. I think Youtube was also in that timeframe, but they're kind of gray area since Google bought them before they got really massive.
Microsoft still has something like 50k employees in the States, if they could get better technical staff by outsourcing to India why would they care about H1Bs? Why not just open an India office?
Face it, the best place in the world to be in high tech is still Silicon Valley. Close runners up are still Seattle and New York. You would have to look pretty hard to see any indication that America isn't the place to be for high tech.
"We don't have an obligation to solve America's problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.'"
What a fascist statement. It's sickening. Thanks to who was Apple able to grow and blossom? Which infrastructure it used?
We can build nukes but not phones? Fuck you Apple.
You just endorse Communism for your own greed. Here is what a fair split would look like. 400,000 per employee 100,000 per year for Apple 300,000 per year for the employee. You know the one who does the fucking work.
If you buy Apple products you too endorse communism over your way of life. And you too will one day be communist or starve.
Think about how you own purchase can fuck yourself. They should be hung for treason.
> It's true in 1982 Mac's and APPLE's were made in the U.S.
Of course, in 1982 the only Macs that existed were prototypes. So it wouldn't make much sense to send them overseas to be fabbed.
What I don't get is how this is an Apple problem. People have been forever whining about how Apple PC's were too expensive when compared to WIndow's PC's. Then, when the Window's PC manufacturers took their manufacturing overseas to places like Taiwan and then China, the gap in prices started to accelerate. Apple was one of the last major PC manufacturer's to take their manufacturing overseas. Do you think any of the other PC (or other electronics) company exec's don't have the view "Apple doesn't owe you [presuming you are US American] anything and doesn't care to help" or "Apple believes US American laborers are sub-par and unqualified", hell they are the ones who originated that viewpoint!
All of us would benefit from listening to this episode of This American Life, which is really even-handed (listen to the WHOLE story) and entertaining in its treatment of the problem/benefits of sweat shops and in particular those that assemble Apple products (along with everybody else's).
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/454/mr-daisey-and-the-apple-factory
Wow, wish I had 38k disposable per year. WTF, a burger flipping single mom makes 160 x 12 x 9.04 = $17,356.80 /year (I'm using Washington because they're the highest, it's $13k where I live). And don't pull out that 'but she works overtime' crap. Businesses don't give overtime anymore, they just hire more workers. Hell, she's lucky if she gets 40/week.
So what you're saying is, according to his Missisippi study not only is she getting ALL living expenses paid in full (food, shelter, helathcare) but she's getting 21k/year cash on top of that. I call bull shit.
Hell, I call bull shit on the entire "study". Since Clinton you're limited to 4 years max for public cash assistance. Utility assistance is generally 50% max unless you're over 65). Oh, at federal minimum wage you're bumping up against the poverty line ($14k). Once you cross that you'll find lots and lots of those programs cutting you off. In Arizona 130% of poverty level 18/k per year) disqualifies you for food stamps. Cash assistance is even harder to get. And our local free health care gets cut off at $17k/year. I hear Mississippi (and all of the south) is worse. So I say again, I call bullshit.
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Apple is wrong. Instead of investing in USA factory's and training workers here to build their products they tapped the cheap labor market overseas. Now that cheap labor market has a head start on the labor knowledge curve and Apple isn't looking back.
ANYONE WHO HAS WORKED AT ANYTHING IN THEIR LIFES KNOWS YOU GET BETTER THE MORE YOU WORK ON THE SAME THING, ITS NOT HARD TO UNDERSTAND.
"'We don't have an obligation to solve America's problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.'"
Let's assume that's a perfectly fair position and take everything else they said at face value just to avoid the argument.
Did anybody else notice that absolutely nothing they said was an advantage of foreign workers has anything to do with a better product and everything to do with what they are denying--namely, that it is all about the money? Diligence and industrial skills? These are essentially assembly line workers, give me a break. Even if they were somehow superior at putting Widget A into Slot A, all that affects is the number of returns Apple would have to deal with. Annoying, yes. Costly, yes. A better product? No. Everybody receiving a properly-assembled product would receive a product of identical quality either way.
Flexibility, and their little story? Cute I guess, if you think a society where workers sleep at their jobs and are at their boss' beck and call literally 24/7 is something to be proud of. Still, again, nothing about quality. With American workers Apple would have had to... what? Wait until morning? Hell, let's call it significantly worse and say they would have had to wait for re-training or something and it would have taken a month. Better product? Again, no. Just better timing -- for Apple.
None of their comments are about a better product, but all of them, even just at a cursory examination, are very much about money. Returns and defective products hurt the bottom line. Delays hurt the bottom line, especially if it causes them to miss an event like Christmas or their little Apple love-fest get-togethers. Paying more for workers obviously hurts the bottom line. And that is, of course, just setting aside the question of whether anything they said is actually true.
Maybe that's good enough. I'm not here to argue it. I simply don't enjoy being lied to by corporate shills. Of course it's about the money. If you care nothing about American workers and just maximizing your profits, fine -- but have the fucking balls to say so. Don't spew some bullshit and hope you fool people who aren't paying attention.
"Apple redesigned the iPhone's screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company's dormitories, and then each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames AT THE POINT OF A GUN". Wonder why they left that part out? Now obviously, they probably didn't have a gun pointed at their heads, but, when you have a population of people, who, for the most part, have NO OPTIONS, live their lives according to what the STATE tells them, and have no other options to make some sort of money, you can do what you want. Waking people up, escorting them to work on a TWELVE HOUR shift (most likely with few breaks) is just flat wrong. Is the American worker lazy? LOL, you bet! Apple made a business decision that it would be easier to move overseas, than deal with the over regulated environment in the USA. Dealing with the labor unions would have just be the tip of the iceberg to deal with. There has to be a balance, one that is missing in the USA. From businesses who want to exploit the labor for profit, and unions who want to exploit the businesses for profit.
Your argument, and the argument the article makes, held more weight before we found out the A5 was being manufactured in Texas...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
started a 12-hour shift
So, they're only working half days?
Have gnu, will travel.
The Green army that shut down the XL pipeline can and will be redeployed to Foxconn
The Green Army, this destroyers of the environment, will be tossed out on their asses in November.
Do you realize how much damage you idiots have done? Rather than having oil used in America be transported from a nearby source, through a pipeline we can monitor over the whole of the U.S., instead now the EXACT SAME amount of oil (meaning NO impact to the environment from blocking Keystone on the Canada end) will be transported by ship (which tends to leak more than pipelines, or could crash at sea) over to China, while the oil we could have got from Canada will instead come over from Sadia Arabia - further funding the oppression of women and AGAIN being transported in leaky ships.
I am a TRUE environmentalist. I do what is best for the environment by considering ALL costs, not just my own convenience or wish to not have a bulky looking pipeline somewhere close by where I can see it. You assholes have caused untold damage and although I am not religious I hope there is a Hell so that you can be slathered in burning oil and exist in torment for a thousands years after you die, with all the sea life you have condemned to an oily death pecking at your eyes.
Just thought you should know.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's also all those pesky environmental laws in other countries.
"China’s Pollution Is So Insane You Can See It From Space" http://gizmo.do/zkiOIG
A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company's dormitories, and then each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.
So basically Apple has moved factories to china where it can exploit the fact that the population is so poor they have to live at work to have a "decent" job. A job where you can be awakened in the middle of the night and forced to work long shifts with only a biscuit and tea in order to meet the quota.
Brilliant.
Need slave labor? It's cool, bro - China's got you covered like a jimmy hat.
I work to live, I don't live to work.
I've seen friends and family members die too soon. My father passed away while I was in college. He did not get to see his kids marry and start their own families, he did not get to meet his grandchildren.
He worked though. He worked 9-5 and overtime whenever he could get it. He put away a nice nest-egg and paid off the house that my mother lives in. He put off vacations and told my mother "we'll travel when I retire".
Well that day never came. 10 years of battling cancer finally killed him. What do you think his family remembers? His career or his ability to balance work and his life as a father?
It is your right to work to live. It is not your right to expect that all of society should place work above all else.
I've only got one life to live on this planet - I'm not going to spend it making someone else rich. I've seen too many people do that, and I can say it is not worth the opportunity cost of your LIFE.
-ted
The speed and efficiency of human slavery is breathtaking, indeed. I saw not one reason they couldn't be building these things in America, besides corporate greed, and a mindset that views humans as livestock.
Apple made no promise to "Do no evil."
Facts take all of the premium out of arm waving - T. Reynolds
Businesses hate freedoms...
No. A business is motivated by profit, period. Freedom and hate have nothing to do with it. If supporting workers' rights helped to maximize profits, then you'd find the just the opposite - businesses would go out of their way to support their workers.
I would say Capitalism probably more likely means your workers, customers, and competitors (if possible) get screwed.
But why is this so shocking? They are trying to get the most return for the least expenditure. You do the same. When you, as an individual go shopping, especially for high value goods like cars, you try to find deals or get discounts, etc.
Corporate Responsibility is to make profit for its stock holders. Yes, in regulated countries, corporations must also comply with whatever regulations ---> which usually increase corporate costs and decrease corp. profit. So, in a world-economy that DOES offer exponentially lower costs to the corporation in other countries that have fewer, if any, regulations (which means much higher profit for the corporation), the corporate personnel who do not 'make it happen' that the corporation shifts its manufacturing OVER TO the lower costs\more profit location, lose their (usually high-paying) jobs to someone who will 'make it happen'. --- That is simple business according to the business models used in the USA. . . . . Now, in our country where worker's-rights are established and where human rights are demanded, yes, a company that is 'associated' with places that are not in our country (which we have no control over) that DO NOT have workers' rights and that DO NOT honor human rights, etc., etc, to the same degree that we do here in this country, well, yes, here in this country our citizens see that as "bad" (which 'humanly', it is bad). In the current world situation, we cannot 'do' anything 'to' the company or to the country where these issues are generated, so, we can only turn towards the American company we buy the products from. We can demand that they stop being associated with those things that bother us (or, what?, somehow, someone orchestrates a large-enough movement\group of people who will stop buying the products, so that it hurts the American company?), and that is all we can do. The American company can, and may, "shop around" over in that or those countries where the costs are lower and the profits are higher, to find a company\country where the offenses are less offensive to Americans, but as long as its costs are higher and its profits are lower by coming back to the US, they will stay over there. If Americans can really make it hard on the American corporations, well, it makes sense to realize that the corporation may stop being an American Corporation (b.t.w., America is losing its position of being the largest purchaser of consumer products.). HOPEFULLY the situations in those other countries concerning worker's rights and human rights will improve FAST enough for those workers\people. - But in a world driven by profit, the leaders over there have no incentive to 'give up' their profit, and the leaders of American corporations who are profiting by the current situations also have no incentive to change. So what do we do? (just to make it clear, I personally advocate human rights and workers' rights.) cjacobs001
Ultimately, cheap energy is at the foundation of prosperity. While the US is wasting trillions on wars to keep the oil flowing, and inviting terrorism which we must then defend against, China is investing heavily in securing a cheap source of energy. Not only are they building out conventional nuclear as fast as they can, they are also investing heavily in next generation reactors. Before long, Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors will provide them with a rapidly scalable energy source that is cheaper than coal, and allow the massive Chinese population a true chance at prosperity.
While it is only a hope for the Chinese, the possibilities are endless. Meanwhile, the US is truly headed right off the cliff, and before long we will probably be looking upon the now pitiable working class in China with envy. Even our vaunted freedoms and liberties are disappearing rapidly, and it looks like we have a 1984-esque security any surveillance state to look forward to. With a prison state producing slave labor, populated by infractions of laws which shouldn't exist, such as growing a plant or sharing a file.
The lives of most Chinese today may be miserable, but they will have a hope for their children. Our leaders have staked our entire future on intellectual monopoly and war, and there is no hope there whatsoever. The US cannot survive on litigation and banking alone; we desperately need to be investing in a manufacturing base and energy supply. In critical infrastructure, such as transportation and networking. In the people themselves through education. Together we could prosper, but individually the greedy sociopaths running our nation have resorted to cannibalizing the shrinking wealth, rather than investing in the future.
Our government has been complicit, but large corporations like Apple are at fault. They have pushed nearly everything of value out of the country in pursuit of obscene profits, and actively lobby at every turn to thwart any meaningful progress.
I have a union
Well there you go. You actually have someone looking out for your interests. Without unions, most businesses shit on their workers.
"....and recount the time Apple redesigned the iPhone's screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company's dormitories, and then each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day."
Try walking into an Americans house at 11:45 at night, just walk into his house.... walk in through the door. Then tell the whole family
to wake the fu%^ up, turn on the coffee maker then get the whole family back to the factory for some last minute 12 hour workload
WITH NO OVERTIME OBVIOUSLY, no benefits of anykind.
try that.....
You will become a human sieve....
covered in holes.
GOD DAMN apple products, and GOD DAMN foxconn.....
Specifically foxconn...
"Those who must compete against slave labour must adopt the practices of slave labour"
It is not discriminating. It is onlyabout money. Not human rights, not environmental sustainability. Nothing but money. However, most of Apples products could not even been designed in the US alone, as they do not develop all the components required. The same applies to all other smartphone and modern gadgets.
The Chinese have an edge here because their workers live like a scene out of 1984. Of course they are going to have an advantage over any other country that has something resembling work-life balance. Although it's not like the US is great in that respect anyways. The fact that there's somehwere someplace else that's even worse is just sad.
Hardly something to emulate.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
A big part of the problem isn't working conditions. It's loss of supplier infrastructure. The article mentions "The screw factory is down the street". That's typical of major manufacturing centers. Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Trenton ("Trenton makes, the world takes") used to be like that - if you needed some part for your product, there was a local supplier.
The US is no longer set up like that. With good roads and reliable delivery, manufacturing of parts was consolidated. You can order screws from Amazon's "small parts" unit and resistors from Digi-Key, and get them in a day. But that's for prototyping. If you need to talk to the suppliers about a production item, they're all over the country, and often too big to talk to you about a custom item. This matters for consumer electronics, where cost reduction involves using the minimal custom part for the job, not the off-the-shelf part which costs more.
The Internet has had an effect on this - companies don't answer the phone any more. Many don't answer e-mails. You can order stock items on line, and fill out forms.
Ok, I've been against the idea of putting tariffs on foreign jobs because it would drastically increase the price of goods we can buy here at home. Anytime someone argues for tariffs I tell them it would hurt us the most and it's a bad idea. But, now, having heard Apple say that they don't give two shits whether or not we have jobs here at home, I think I may be wrong after all. The ONLY way to solve this kind of attitude is to impose hefty tariffs on foreign goods. That will force consumers to start buying American manufactured goods and bring us back as a world manufacturing power again, bringing with it jobs for the poor and middle class. Jobs they sorely need right now. Apple has officially changed my mind on this. If you agree with me, contact your representatives. This needs to happen. The fact that a company like Apple can boast about their slave labor overseas with impunity is proof that this has gone too far. I'd gladly pay a higher price for an iPad or iPhone if I knew it was creating jobs here at home.
Have you read the rhetoric in your own country's press about unions lately? I agree that you're in a good position. Sadly, it's a declining good position - union membership and unionized jobs are both declining - and the corporate interests have successfully convinced *even the American working class* that unions are evil and damaging to them. It's a hell of a rhetorical trick. Be glad you have your union job, but do note the likelihood of many others having such jobs in future...
Wah wah wah.
Quick, name one non-US based tech company started in the past 10 years with at least 500 employees.
Can you think of one? I can't.
Now let's try US tech companies. Since 2001 right off the top of my head there are Facebook and Twitter. I think Youtube was also in that timeframe, but they're kind of gray area since Google bought them before they got really massive.
Sinoval Wind systems group (China ) founded 2005, one of the top 5 wind turbine producers in the world. >1000 employees.
Quick name one US based technology company started in the past 10 years, with at least 500 employees, that actually manufacturers something.
Twitter and Facebook aren't going to save the US economy.
thats why I do not buy any Apple products period
FU US
I'm not advocating moving across an ocean to get a job.
But if you're unwilling to move for a job because it would uproot your spouse and children from their school and social circles, well... ...you're just not flexible enough to be employed.
People move and make new friends all the time. I did it when I was a kid, I've done it a couple times as an adult. That's what people have to do, and if you're unwilling to do it, then you can starve I guess.
paintball
recount the time Apple redesigned the iPhone's screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company's dormitories, and then each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames.
So, with the glee of a 8 yr old girl who just found a pony under the Christmas tree, this Apple exec gushes about how easy and flexible it was to house workers in sardine cans, rouse them from a probably short nap anyway, command them to the assembly line and order them to stand there doing repetitive, mind numbing tasks for 12 hours. Pay of the day? 31 cents an hour. But yea, competition and capitalism is good you say. If they don't want to do it, then hundreds of other Chinese, Taiwanese, other South Asian immigrants would gladly take their spot, right? Well I dunno about you, but I consider the US extremely luck in that for the most part, you don't have to be forced to sleep in barracks, be called to work at anytime your employer chooses, and be subjected to low-paying highly boring jobs. Then again, it's turning this way for some people. I'd rather save my dignity and live in relative poverty (I've already done so for a big chunk of my life, and it wasn't too intolerable) than succumb to the machinery of this misguided capitalist enterprise.
I do own consumer electronics, and they are virtually all made in Asia under circumstances very similar to those of the iPhone.
It seems that virtually no one posting in the thread has RTFA. The whole point of the article is that the reason all this manufacturing happens in Asia and not in the US has very little to do with wages, and everything to do with supply chain.
If you're going to make any piece of electronics, you're going to need chips. These chips have uses in products in several manufacturers, so you have one manufacturer of Chip A, that companies B, C,D and E need for their products. Where is that manufacturer? In Asia.
So no matter what piece of consumer electronics you want to make, all the parts you need for it are manufactured in Asia. Since all your parts are there, and it takes 35 days to ship them to here, if you want to manufacture an item of consumer electronics, you have three choices:
- Manufacture in Asia and ship finished products here
- Manufacture here, but get your parts from Asia, adding 35 days to your production cycle (making you uncompetitive from a product design and cost standpoint)
- Build manufacturing for all your parts here, which is uncompetitive because you lose all the economy of scale of part manufacturers in asia that make parts for hundreds to thousands of different products for different companies.
Unfortunately, we have allowed the "Critical mass" of electronic manufacturing to develop in Asia, and now that it's there, it's there.
You can actually see something similar in the US - nobody makes cars in, say, Nevada, despite there being an abundant, inexpensive labor force. Why? Because all the companies that make the parts that go into cars are in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio. So you can get away with putting a factory in Tennessee or Alabama and still be close to your source for parts, but not Nevada.
One other point half-mentioned in the article: Labor costs alone would account for only $65 if iPhone production was moved here from Asia. What is not mentioned in the article is probably about half of that $65 is not the amount of money paid to the workers, but is instead the amount of money paid in federal wage taxes - FICA. That's NOT income tax either.
If we want to make production in the US more attractive, we need to fix our tax system so we don't penalize wage income. Stop providing preferential income tax rates for "capital gains" and stop charging penalty tax rates for work. All income should be taxed the same.
paintball
The only reason St. Steve moved production overseas is because slavery was abolished in the US. Not that others much better - but this company suppose to be a symbol of innovation and progress. The example with 8000 people being rushed to the assembly line to work 12 hours is just disgusting.
I guess if Apple executives find it unreasonable to work on unemployment porblem in a country which made Apple possible - they should move to place they do care about (iPhone with the golden star instead of a rotten apple on the back - I would like to see this one).
Yeah, it has nothing to do with the inhumane conditions of Foxconn.
My parents owned a small business, a quilt shop in fact, and after five years of it, all they have to show is $100k in debt. It was quite stressful for them when it was open, there's a hell of a lot of work to do as the owner of a small business and they worked all the time. I never called them to talk, because I could never keep track of when they were available, I'd just let them call me. After all that, after all is said and done, they not only didn't make a profit, they still owe $100k they used to get it started up.
Now they'll be fine, this isn't some sob story, but I just wish to emphasize the parent's point: The risk to their workers was only unemployment. If they went under, the workers would need to go and find new jobs, of course. The risk to them was not only unemployment, but losing money, which they in fact did.
The world isn't a situation where there are two magic classes of "workers" and "owners" and "owners" get all the money all the time and forever have a good life. Owners put their financial success on the line, and there are plenty of times when it doesn't work out.
You are mistaken. It is consumers that drive off-shoring through their complete and utter disregard for where things are made. Cutting costs is only beneficial to a corporation if sales are not lost. If consumers show a preference in their purchasing decisions for domestic production then corporations will not off-shore. Corporations don't care where things are made, they care about profits. Profits are based on sales and consumers make the decision as to whose products sell and whose do not.
Look at 3d printers. The cottage industry is coming back.
Deleted
"Me either. I can't afford it, ironically because nobody wants to manufacture anything here."
Good ironic point. We need a "basic income" and other ideas to deal with structural unemployment from automation:
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
See also for how far the USA and the legacy of Steve Jobs has fallen, from 1990 and the NeXT days: ... Welcome to the Next world. Here a robot that looks like a futuristic sewing machine places tiny capacitors and integrated circuits, rapid-fire, on a printed computer circuitboard. A laser zeros in on each electrical connection. Two robot arms move in tandem, one selecting parts from a bin and the other deftly inserting them into the board. After 20 minutes the board reaches the end of the assembly line, where -- finally -- a real person steps in to check it. Robots outnumber people 13 to five on this line, which turns out the brains for aging whiz kid Steve Jobs's new workstation. Not to save money: Labor accounts for only 3% to 5% of the cost of a typical computer-manufacturing operation. Instead, the automation is meant to ensure the highest possible quality. When Jobs left Apple Computer and started Next in 1985, he was determined to create a manufacturing process as advanced as the product it makes. He assigned some of his best engineers and software designers to the problem. Until recently the 40-person manufacturing staff had more Ph.D.s than the group designing the Next machine. Says Randy Heffner, vice president for manufacturing: ''Most startups don't invest in advanced automation, but that's the key to long-term success.'' ..."
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1990/02/26/73121/index.htm
"THE ULTIMATE COMPUTER FACTORY Steve Jobs has built a Next workstation plant with just about everything: lasers, robots, speed, and remarkably few defects.
But even China is automating more now for the same reasons...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Our only obligation is making the best product possible.'"
This is the iPhone they are talking about.
The one where they changed the screen at the last minute?
The one that they did not test in the real world and was found that it did not work in the real world unless you held it that way?
Apple only sell shoddy stuff for the benefit of their shareholders and that is an inconveinent truth.
Despite the fact that there are people who would happily take a high-tech manufacturing job, working weird hours and living in dorms when pulling multiple shifts, Apple would find itself stumbling across Union regulations if it tried to find service like that in the US. Union rules and other labor laws are keeping the US from competing globally. It's the reason for the recession and why there are so many out of work. The US has legislated itself out of providing the services modern employers require.
It's a perfect time for being wasted.
A perfect time to watch the stars.
- Burden Brothers, "Beautiful Night"
Actually, Capitalism means to get anything for the least amount possible.
That is not correct either. Capitalism is about delivering a product that best meets the consumer's requirements and preferences. If consumers have non-monetary preferences that factor into their buying decisions then those preferences will be reflected in products. For example consumers have demonstrated a preference for environmentally friendly products and the market responded. Similarly if consumers demonstrate a preference for domestic production the market will respond.
There is nothing inevitable about off-shoring in capitalism, nor is there a requirement for the lowest cost of production. These are artifacts of consumer preference, namely the preference for the absolute lowest priced goods regardless of all other considerations. Consumers drive off-shoring, not corporations. Corporations desire profits, in other words corporations desires sales. So corporations will follow the preferences of consumers.
When you to shopping, and you have two sellers selling the exact same thing (let's say, cheese), with the exact same quality (insert everything you can think in this: brand, weight, environmental conscience, distance from your house, amount of sunlight, nice vista etc.), but priced differently, which one do you chose? The one where it's cheaper, or the one where it's more expensive? In the exact same way you don't usually ask, or care about, the expensive cheese vendor reasons in charging more ...
That's the key. To reverse off-shoring consumers need to actually care. I'm not suggesting some ultra patriotic buy-domestic-only dogma. Just to give domestic production some weight. If a domestic good is "close enough" to the imported good then give the domestic good the preference.
Another GOP/Fox news shill?
How much do you get paid to post your anti-union/anti-american CRAP?
let's repeal a small number of laws that act as a barrier to business in the US
Sure, why not. Let's give it a whirl one more time.
If you keep flogging a dead horse it's gotta get up and start galloping eventually, right?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
...in theory. In actual practice, prices are random.
If you have lower quality good (and phones qualify, they only have to survive a couple years maybe) and you can put up with failures in the products and basically do the QC elsewhere then they can do well.
However this idea that China can just magically make high quality good for so much less seems to be so much bunk in my experience. As an example:
A popular type of reflex sight for long guns is the EOTech Holographic Weapons System. It's made by L3 in Michigan and it carries an "American" price tag. Their cheapest sight is about $400, and they go up from there. They are top notch pieces of equipment though rugged enough that they in fact ARE used in combat, exceedingly good optics (never have I seen such an amazing anti-glare system) and so on. Plenty of shooters both recreational and professional buy them. EOTech is the only company that officially makes sights quite like this. Other red dot sights perform a similar function, but are different in the details (only EOTech seems to like to use holographic projection of the reticule).
Well, turns out you can get something like them for cheaper, thanks to China. There are cheap EOTech knockoffs you can find, Cheotechs we can call them, for sale on line. You can get them for like $100. So, proof of China's amazing ability right? They can produce the sights for 25% of the cost and all of the quality!
Not hardly. They are 25% of the cost and 25%, or less, of the quality. The optics are crap, cheap plastic lenses that reflect a lot of light as opposed to the basically completely reflectionless EOTech lenses. The build quality is crap, the sights cannot handle recoil well and will break under heavy recoil, and lose their zero position under moderate recoil. The reticule isn't a holographic projection, so it doesn't keep it's apparent size regardless of distance, and isn't completely parallax and distortion free. Also while they have a "night vision" button like some of the more expensive EOTechs it does not set the sight to a night vision compatible mode, it just turns the reticule green which does fuck-all.
So sure enough, they found a way to build the things much cheaper (including not paying for the R&D of course) but it is also much cheaper quality. There are no influx of high quality "Could fool you it is the real thing," sights that cost a ton less. No, they cost less because they are of lesser quality.
Rev. Martin Luther King stood up for workers' rights (and much else), and he was killed.
Bobbie Kennedy stood up for workers' rights, and he was killed.
Sen. Paul Wellstone stood up for workers' rights (sponsored much improved labor law), and he was killed.
I think we get the message........
he greatest insult of all is that in this great country so many people cannot afford the most basic of medical care. Jesus Christ, my country of origin is the second poorest in the western hemisphere, and the average city dweller has basic medical access more readily available and affordable than his/her American counterpart. How can we explain that????
I explain it as you lived in a socialist nation.
Fail. Fail of the worst kind. Ever been/lived in Japan? I have. You can get health care more readily, cheaper (and better) than what we get in the US. My second to the last trip I got a severe case of food poisoning - the doctor pretty much said that my stomach linen and blood were not just infected, but inflamed (how the fuck do you get inflamed blood!!!???.) From the time I got to the hospital to the time I got IV antibiotics pumped on me up to the wazoo in intensive care: 2 hours. Cost: $200 (US dollars) including follow-up prescription medicine and additional anti-biotics for 4 more days.
And this is a capitalist country that almost, almost knock the shit out of the US 2-3 decades ago. How much do you think the same hassle would have cost me here in the US? How much do you think it would have cost me in South Korea or Germany (another pair of capitalist countries)?
So there you go, a nice counter-example pin to blow your argumentative bubble (unless you find a way to explain me how socialism has anything to do with better, more affordable health care in these other 1st world capitalist countries.)
Myself i will give up health care in exchange for freedom.
I respect your freedom to have that sentiment, but it is still full of shit. Anyone can be an armchair Che-Guevara or Paul Revere (depending on one's ideologictardic predilections.) When shit happens, then talk to me, specially if you have children. Are you gonna trade health care for your family in exchange for freedom as well?
Are you that gullible to think this is the only capitalist country in the world, and that if something happens somewhere else it is explainable by socialism alone?
Also, you are incorrect since anyone can get care in this nation if they need to. Just drive down to the hospital and they WILL treat you, regardless of your ability to pay.
Oh yes, absolutely, and then you get an un-explainable expensive bill that is completely out of proportion, and then you either pay (because you can), or you don't (because you can't)... and in the later case you get either hounded by a collections agency until the hospital writes you off as a loss (and you get a nice red x your credit history). on your or you fill for bankruptcy.
60% of US bankruptcies are due to medical bills. How the fuck do you explain that? This was never like this and this country has always been a capitalist country. This situation is pretty fucking unique among developed capitalist countries.
Also I find your post disingenuous. It is a fact that a large number of Americans do not have health coverage. Yes you can get emergency medical coverage regardless of whether you can pay for it or not (with the caveats mentioned above.) But that's not health coverage. A far greater number do not have dental coverage (do you have an idea how that affects people and the economy, specially since we know that dental health is linked to cardiac conditions)? If you really think this is acceptable, I'd suggest you go travel a little to other developed capitalist countries, or better yet, learn something about recent US history. What we are living now is an immoral anomaly. Armchair patriotic antics about freedom and shit like that aren't acceptable explanations for the unjustifiable lack of health care in this country.
This is a first world country, the most powerful country in the planet, capable of moving far more shitloads and shitloads of money than any country in the world. You would expect then t
Unskilled labor is becoming more and more unneeded because technology. Chasing after low skilled jobs is not a way for America to have a prosperous future. The key to the betterment of America is better focus on education, skill development and retraining. The day where you can sit on your butt and take some random well paying job without any education are coming to an end. Unfortunately, a lot of Americans are lazy.
You can do the same thing with slave labor, but essentially their workers are almost slaves. The only difference is that the owner of slaves has to take care of his investment (the health, room and board of his slaves). What we have here is actually worse than slave labor because when the worker can't (or won't) do the work, they just discard him like a child discards a broken toy. You see, the corporations don't have to worry about their workers, they just fire him and replace him with someone else. They cry that their workers no longer have any loyalty to the company like they used to 50 years ago. They of course don't have loyalty to their workers. A DECENT company would not make such demands on its workers!
"I can tell you that you simply cannot live at a hamburger flipping salary. How? You cannot even pay rent with that."
Sure one could. Last year, a university (University of Missisippi?, cannot find link) released a study comparing a single parent that held minimum wage jobs vs a single parent that had a degree and a professional job. 15K vs 68K respectively.
Since the "burger flipper" is considered "poor", they qualified for many government programs. Rent subsistence, food stamps, health care, utility assistance, Earned Income Credit, etc. The result was that this class of worker had 38,000 USD of disposable income each year.
Since the professional at 68K does not qualify for any of these programs, their disposable income each year is 34K.
If someone knows the study, please correct my mistakes as I am going from memory.
Ok, let me rephrase that (and I call bs on how you applied this study.) Here is my rephrasing: A single person with a hamburger flipping salary without expecting or asking for welfare support (which is pretty much passing the costs down to the rest of us.) I honestly don't mind paying higher taxes and help those in need. But constant, never-ending welfare the way it is implemented in this country is not a solution.
What you want in a healthy economy is that the majority of low-paying salaries are enough to subsist without requiring welfare and food stamps, leaving those only for the extreme cases of poverty or struggle (single moms and families devastated by disease come to mind.)
If I'm a single person working at a minimum wage, I cannot expect the same type of welfare a single mom is entitled to when working at that same minimum wage, not unless I start cheating. A solution for a single mom is not a solution for the general case, and for that reason, the study you mentioned does not refute my original postulate.
For the general case, depending on welfare is not a solution. And having the majority of low income bracket people having to make trade-offs between basic necessities and health coverage is not an acceptable situation for what it is supposed to be the richest country in the world.
Indentured servitude tends to make people work harder.
A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company's dormitories [...]
And if, after reading this, you still buy Apple products, you've won a free confederate flag.
Apple should manufacture in Detroit. Thousands of unemployed manufacturing workers looking for work.
"Our only obligation is making the best product possible."
Should read
"Our only obligation is making as much money as possible."
Robots.
Apple is spinning things to put a happy face on what Apple is doing.
IMO: Apple is no different than any other major US tech company.
I am surprised at how many people still fall for this BS.
Shorter version: your "idea" is to steal money from people.
Thanks for letting us know.
How is this fundamentally different from, for instance
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
But you and many others also have a "no we can't" attitude.
It's quite possible the the USA can't -- we appear to be stuck rather hard in a mode of "there is nothing that the rest of the world can teach us."
However, American perceptions of our own inferiority aside, other countries seem to be doing quite nicely. Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway seem to have combined thriving economies with high median standards of living and more upward social mobility than the US. Perhaps someday we'll decide that we can learn something from them other than "don't be like them."
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
He didn't mention the fact that most of Apple's cash is held in overseas accounts because they don't want to pay taxes on them, so they have no choice but to spend that money overseas. I guess this is a shining example of proactive PR, as corporate taxes are going to become a hot topic in this year's elections. Point out the fire on the stove so nobody notices that the rest of the house is also on fire.
Toyota build the Camries and Intel build the chips in U.S. Canon build the cameras in Japan and BMW build the cars in German. My guess is that these products technologies are relatively mature, so the manfacturing processes are streamlined and automated and not much will change between this and next generation.
iPhones are evolving all the time. My guess is that it require lot of manual customizations between this and next generation to the extent that it's more economical to hire human than robots to do the assembly work.
We should definitely learn from them. For example, all of those countries have lower corporate tax rates than the US.
Lower nominal corporate taxes, but higher revenues from them thanks to fewer tax preferences.
And then there's the higher personal income taxes. Which are also "theft."
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
N/T
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The PRC becomes a glowing parking lot, courtesy of its own internal fighting and a hyper-nationalist US taking advantage of the situation.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
1. Nobody owns you a job.
Then fix things so that the obligation exists.
2. Apple didn't get help from government coming up with their own computer, it was all private enterprise.
Only if you don't count the PRC funding all the factories and supplying them with pliant labor.
3. Apple has done PLENTY for USA and the world, produced products people loved, hired other people, who got paid, weren't a drain on the system, paid their taxes.
Not enough for the USA. But if you want to apologize for some despotic hellhole, go right ahead. Just leave your US citizenship and assets at the door.
The rest is just a tax squabble.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
too late. "He who has the gold makes the rules". And, "The borrower is slave to the lender." At this point, any attempt by the US to enforce much of anything beyond a bit of food safety will quickly result in the Chinese deciding they'd rather not lend us any more money, and that 40% of US government spending that they are supporting by buying all those bonds goes away. Then you'll see the US government really, really cut budgets in a hurry.
Economists are already talking about how China may well control the future negotiations over a new worldwide monetary agreement to replace the existing floating rate system (that was based on using the US dollar as the reference currency). And it will probably look a lot more like a centrally planned system than we are used to. The US dollar was the reference currency because we were the world's biggest lender. Now, we're the world's biggest debtor.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Let's do a little thought experiment.
Take a manufacturing firm, one with an inexplicable level of political clout. For unknown reasons, this firm is able to manufacture any product whatsoever, completely free of royalties or licensing fees, but only if the work is completed entirely within the borders of the United States.
Could this firm manufacture and sell an exact copy of one of Apple's designs more cheaply than Apple can manufacture it overseas and ship it to the U.S. for sale?
I'd say that the answer is probably yes. So logically, since Apple does not care about the United States's problems, the United States should stop caring about defending Apple's Intellectual Property and start making cheaper iPad clones for itself.
'We don't have an obligation to solve America's problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.'"
In that case as an American, my obligation is to make sure I avoid buying any Apple products. Thank you for drawing attention to the fact that Apple officially regards itself as unamerican.
Unless, American consumers choose actively to buy and invest in companies that hold America in higher regard than Apple, America will continue to be burdened by corporations like Apple that feel its fine to accept a broad range of tax credits from the American taxpayer, without providing anything in return that they wouldn't also provide to Iran or North Korea. Essentially, Apple's official policy is that it doesn't give a shit about Americans. All that it wants is their money.
Personally, I make it my business to avoid doing business with corporations such as this, lest I suffer even more from their malevolence in the future.
The US lost? I don't think so.
NOBODY wants those kind of jobs in the U.S.
I'll tell you who loses. Apple. While they rake huge profits now, "think different" looks too different, and as their attention get gathered, Americans are going to be just as upset as they were about similar abuses in the clothing industry, for example. Foxconn also loses, big, as it is going to become unpalatable for American businesses to with them, lest they suffer a similar castigation as Apple is about to feel.
The ones that lost the most are the Chinese workers who have been bid all the way to the bottom. I feel genuinely sorry for those people.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
Americans and westerners simply need to stop buying Apple products. That is esp. true of the American and EU gov. Likewise, if the western gov. will insist on secured products the way that China does (i.e. ONLY produced in their nation), then we will see things change.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You can do anything you set your mind to when you have vision, determination and an endless supply of expendable labor.
People aren't so oblivious to fact that Apple products are being made by workers in extremely slave like conditions
because you're submitting anonymous, but I hate this sentiment. If it's one thing I've learned, you don't leave anything important to unregulated private industry. Fuck, they couldn't even get SAUSAGE MAKING right, let alone medical care. Leave private industry to itself and all but the super rich get taken advantage of.
Anyway, here we go: You can't make informed healthcare decisions because healthcare as a product is different than the crap Adam Smith was hawking in Wealth of Nations. You don't but it enough and the consequences for purchase are too high. Please read this and the STFUGO. Once again, fuck. Even Steve Jobs with all his money screwed up and bought the wrong product. He realized at the end that that homeopathic junk didn't do anything, but by then he was on the way out the door.
It's just another reason why, for anything really important, capitalism doesn't work. You want capitalism? You can have it for twinkies and video game consoles. Keep your capitalism off my body. It's dirty, and I'll get an infection.
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Apple just recently reported on its contractors and sub contractors and sub-sub contractors regarding their human rights policies, and charges. Suicides at FoxConn, and various worker injuries and deaths at Apple direct and subcontract suppliers have made Apple a target for Human Rights campaigners.
Apple just wants dirt cheap workers. And they are willing to sacrifice like Nike, poor publicity, inevitable scandals, huge cultural differences, vast time zone difficulties, and huge lead times in order to get dirt cheap workers. Simple as that.
American workers offer: a US legal system insuring human rights are not violated, no slave labor, proper heath/safety inspections, no hassle for employing companies that kill workers or enslave them, to shave a few pennies off manufacturing. They also offer flexibility, in that most factories are six hours at most away from Cupertino, and many far closer, so execs and engineers can personally visit them and communicate in English what they want. They are also more flexible, with lesser lead times, because they don't have to ship across an Ocean.
BUT American workers cost more. A lot more. They won't work for $1 a day. Like in China. That's why Apple makes everything abroad. In search of dirt cheap labor. Want to stop that? It requires quotas. Hard ones. Import duties, and the like.
> A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company's dormitories, and then each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day. 'The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,' says one Apple executive.
One person's "breathtaking" is another person's "appalling".
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
ASUS got to the point where they could sell things on their own without a DELL label on it.
Am I slave? People in the US work ungodly stupid amounts of hours as well. We get paid more, but in economic terms our "living wage" is a lot different than China's "living wage".
Abuses should be found and stopped, but ask any of the people working for Foxconn if their life is better or worse off because of Foxconn (and by extension Apple), they'll probably say their life is much better with the high-tech manufacturing jobs.
Foxconn, the biggest supplier and manufacturer to apple, as mentioned in the apple executes, was facing a severe moral problem.
Its workers, who made apple products, just committed suicide in series, 18 in 2010.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides
It is just capitalism in its full form.
I've never purchased an Apple product for myself. But I bought the wife an ipod, Macbook Pro, Iphone 3, iPad 2 and most recently an iPhone 4S. But I recently told her we are through with retail Apple products. I will use Steve Jobs' argument against him. Apple has made such great products there's no reason to buy any more.
When you take Capitalism and apply it by proxy to a communist workforce you get a form of proxy slavery. Who calls waking up 100s of people in the middle of the night to fix your problems "flexibility"? Someone with a heart of stone. We should have laws not to protect our workers and their very valid rights but to protect these other countries workers from exploitation in order to subvert the rights of local wrokers.
I don't suppose anyone noticed that they roused 8,000 workers to be producing, eventually, 10,000 iPhones per day? Why is that? I mean, the 1.25 / iPhones per worker per day? I'll tell you why, it is because they are using people like they use machines.
This is not the American way to produce things. The American way to produce things is to automate the process, and use 250 workers to produce those 10,000 iPhones / day, with the help of computer-controlled machines to do it.
Why don't we do it? It has nothing to do with the American worker. What it has to do with is income taxes and regulations. Income taxes are sabotaging America's ability to compete both at home and abroad, and these income taxes have help in doing this by the over-regulation from the Federal gov't, much of which is from the EPA.
You will note in ANY newspaper description of ANY attempt to build ANYTHING in the USA, there are ALWAYS a phalanx of environmentalists that are against it. And, they usually get their way. That's a big reason why no one wants to even TRY to build here.
If you study the Fair Tax (www.fairtax.org) you find that their research shows that 22% of the selling price of American-manufactured goods is composed of passed-thru income tax expenses incurred by American manufacturers. That's a lot. In contrast, look at the auto industry, where the workers, according to the newspaper reports several years ago when they were going bankrupt it was revealed that these auto workers were costing companies a total of $78 / hr. It only takes 30 - 33 labor hours to build a car in the US, tho, so that is only about $2,500 or so of the selling price that can be attributed to worker expenses. And with 22% of the selling price being taxes, then a $20K car would have about $4,400 of embedded income taxes, a $30K car about $6,600 of embedded income taxes, and, say, a $40K SUV having $8,800 of embedded income taxes.
Put another way, with only 30 hours or so of labor, if they paid the workers $20 / hour more, it would only raise the price of the vehicle $600.
So, really, its not the workers. Its the gov't that's at the bottom of it, and its/our corrosive methodology of collecting taxes.
Fair Tax research also indicates that if the Fair Tax was adopted, and the income taxes totally repealed as called for by the legislation proposing the Fair Tax, there would be an economic expansion of biblical proportions within the USA, and an unemployment rate of 3% within 2 years. 10 - 14 trillion dollars of American money sequestered overseas for the purpose of hiding from the US income taxes would come back home, and the building of factories would begin. 10 - 14 trillion dollars is far beyond any stimulus that the US gov't can approach, but it would be free to America if we were willing to treat our entrepreneurs and businesses right.
You have responsibilities to maintain your investment in your property. But employees can be discarded and replaced at zero cost.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
"A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company's dormitories, and then each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames."
If you cant do that, some one overseas will be ready..
Despite living in the first world I still feel my viewpoint is rooted in the third world.
There's a lot of scorn here for the working conditions at the plant. (12 hour shifts and low wages.) A lot of people conclude that China is a giant plantation.
That's a first world way of digesting the facts of the article. You guys only manage to see how relative to rich world standards, the working conditions are terrible.
However, I think the article shows that China has pulled off an amazing feat. Anybody in China can get a regular wage job, live in a dorm, and save money to send back. No country in the third world can claim to give such an achievement. Not a single country. In all other third world countries, many laborers are outside of the formal economy and must figure ways to eek out from emergency to emergency.
This article shows that China is doing an outstanding job of distributing benefits to the mass of a population living in the third world.
I know I will be dismissed as an apologist but I think the analysis of people here is too limited and doesn't consider a worldview.
Being roused from my sleep in a factory festooned with nets to prevent me from committing suicide would be a close approximation of worker hell. I've got other ethical problems, and don't need to make poor Chinese wage-slaves one of them.
Even in the context of a lower cost of living in China this is slavery.
China now spends more on internal repression and policing than on national defense.
These super profits made by companies like Apple are the proceeds of slavery and theft by proxy not to mention the usage of and low price paid for energy, water and other natural resources and the unpaid costs of pollution remediation, (smugly called "externalities" by economists).
Slavery has not been abolished in the West, merely displaced.
I'd like to see some fascist boss try and get me and 8000 other western workers out of bed for an emergency 12 hour shift with the offer of a cup of tea and a biscuit (ten cents each?). It would cost them a hundred Dollars and "time and a half" the regular pay, minimum.
Apple shareholders should not too happy about this situation because the Chinese workers are fighting back. China had 100,000 social/industrial disputes last year and 20,000 of these had to be put down by the national armed police (PAP) or the army (PLA).
Lastly we international workers promise you that we will expropriate and redistribute ALL this stolen wealth sooner or later, it is just a matter of time.
If Apple want to continue to exist as a US business they had better move back to the states and take a more moderate profit otherwise fewer and fewer Americans will be able to afford to buy their products.
This will bring back a resurgence in automated manufacturing. In fact, with the rising cost of wages in China, factories are already exploring this. Automation and robotics aren't going to happen tomorrow. But there are only so many third-world countries where wages are still low. Wages in Vietnam, China and Malaysia are already slowly increasing. There's already movement in the textiles industry to shift capacity from China to Vietnam.
In 50 years all low-cost labor (barring WW3) is going to be expensive.
And when robotics actually reaches the point of replacing factory line workers, then people aren't going to have jobs. This argument, and this essay, in some variation, are going to appear again. It's no longer slavery, it's simply technology making basic labor irrelevant. What then?
I'm surprised no one takes the other side of this argument - the middle class has shifted. No it's not about working a production line, it's about implementing ideas. It's not about avoiding an education and being able to be protected by a union doing menial labor. It needs to be about developing skills in design, implementation and management. Throughout history, these professions have never been obliterated. Take a look at the fashion industry - it has virtually remained unchanged for over 100 years from the top down. The factories are the ones that constantly change location to find lower costs.
Engineering failure meets the success of the slave worker. No one should have to be roused out of bed to retool an assembly line because some bright eyed idiots decided to switch things around at the last minute. Let the product be light, it isn't like people's lives are at stake, just their pride. This really makes me not even want to try apple.
I art more snarky, and terse than thou. I art Slashdot!
It is as simple as that.
When you employ slave labor it's pretty easy to make cheap products. Make the same products in Germany then talk to me how uncompetitive American labor force is....but forcing workers to work 12 hours shifts at slave wages in a Communist country where workers go to jail is the forma union and factories can pollute the environment....not exactly Apple and Oranges comparison comrade.
So 8,000 workers 12 hour shift.10,000 phones made per day. Assuming 3,000 of the workers are management and do not make phones. that 5,000 workers make 10,000 phones per day. Wow, no wounder it can't be done in the US.
And we wonder why employee suicide is a real issue in China!
The fact that Apple executives value such absurd levels of service at the cost of people's humanity is sickening.
At one time, companies made a point of providing the relevant training and skills so that they had the workforce they wanted. It worked quite well then and would work well today.
US citizens, if provided direct-hire, full-time and well-paid middle-class jobs, they would outshine the world. The problem is that they are too free to object against business. Business hates freedom that it can't control - which is not freedom, but slavery.
You have the mindset that's making things worse in the US - the Southerner's one. Or one that is envious enough to want to tear down the US down to Third World levels.
As for your canard about "competition", it implies a defect that does not exist.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
"Why does Apple hate America."
How many American cities are factory-dormitories where the employees have no rights and kill themselves at an alarming rate when not doing repetitive labor all day?
Oh right, none. We have rights and we try to treat people with dignity -- that's what sets First World countries apart from the Third World.
It's cheaper to make products overseas because you can mistreat workers. I'll gladly pay a premium on goods that were made in the USA, and I do so when I buy goods within reason.
Apple sells overpriced, overhyped junk that was made by people in deplorable conditions. You can't spin it any other way.
They don't talk about the slavery that it takes for such manufacturing.
The workers live under constant threat, where the company, government, and Apple make sure that workers aren't free. That, and a constant supply of replacements seal their fate as unfree. But feel free to write what you're told by the PRC to shape opinion.
The only good way to fix it is to tariff until they start harmonizing worker conditions to EU standards.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The problem with that is that such "improvements" come at the cost of pulling the US down. All that suggests is that you're trying to put a wedge between the First and Third World's folks.
A lesser evil is still evil - even if it looks shinier than the other. State capitalism only rewards totalitarianism while providing an interface to nations that have the (as viewed by business) encumbrance of worker-side freedoms.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
If they want to deal with US customers and not be considered on equal footing with AQ, they can start doing things in the US.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Aside from the rent, that is.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
That's not the case - Apple and other companies do have that option and it is a good thing that they do, because USA is unbearable and nobody should have to be put into a position of hiring an American or a European worker with all the rules, regulations and taxes (including the counterfeiting tax of inflation, that destroys investment capital) present in those systems.
Pardon if you're denied divine right and are required to have some sort of respect for those that aren't business owners. But not everyone is fit to be a business owner, nor should they be consigned to destitution for that specialization.
By hiring a worker in USA or some of Europe the entrepreneur becomes a whipping boy and a slave of the system, the entrepreneur has to be a fool to subject himself to such a stupid predicament.
While making the worker the whipping boy? All you support are totalitarian systems that reduce freedom unless you're a favored entity.
The only thing that governments should do is make sure your kind don't have the option, and have to hire US and EU workers - on the terms of the worker. For as long as your kind refuses balance and nations like China exist.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Can we then conclude Apple (and probably many companies) have successfully defied the holy trinity law ?
If the US starts taking over all these tax havens by surprise, it would be able to put a stop to that.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
There. Fixed that formula for you.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
That are highest common denominator.
The mantra should be:
No WTO World Trade Organization (with teeth) without a WLO World Labor rights and Regulations Organization (with teeth)
If you knee-jerk call me a communist for saying that, I'll knee-jerk call you out as a wannabe slave-owner.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Steve Jobs sent out an email telling his employees (I was one at the time) to please vote for Obama, and contributed to the Democratic party directly to get around the donation cap for a presidential campaign.
Steve was very much a Democrat, you need to quit painting him as a Republican merely because you disagreed with his take on economics.
China was granted Most Favored Nation status under Clinton, and continued it under Bush, and now Obama, just so you can't call me as playing favorites.
If this status was revoked, 95% of imports from China would be subject to additional tariffs, which in turn could be linked to pollution controls, Carbon emissions, and labor reforms, which would tend to raise the cost of doing business in China, making it more economical to employ American workers to achieve the same results. See also: http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/crs/rl30225.pdf
The U.S. is pricing itself out of certain types of labor by the artificially depressed costs of doing business elsewhere, including government subsidies. If you actually read the article, then you would have noted that the reason China's factories were able to move so quickly on the glass iPhone screens was that there was immediate Chinese government subsidy for a speculative build-out of the factory.
Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats are willing to address the sacred factory cow that's protected by business interests, such as CD and DVD pressing on behalf of RIAA/MPAA member companies -- it's not just Apple. People will pay more for Apple products; they probably wouldn't pay more for another crappy movie retread of a story from the last century whgich had better actors.
-- Terry
the assembly job goes like this: do { a production line moves in front of you; you pick a part; place it on the right place; do one more manual operation; and the line goes on; } while (forever); why would we want jobs like that anyway? even if they were paying u.s. salaries. with today's technology you CAN replace them with robots, it's just that it takes enormous effort to program/build the robots, but at least it's more fun, and we can volunteer undergrad students just like for any other research.
'We don't have an obligation to solve America's problems. Our only obligation is making as much money as possible'"
Prior to the 1990's there wasn't much of a race to the bottom. At least not at this rate.
Clinton signed massive amounts of free trade agreements and in the last 20-25 years our import tariffs are basically set at zero. Free trade has lifted a significant portion of China out of poverty, but it has basically been at the cost of US manufacturing jobs.
Clinton was a pretty smart guy, and I can only assume that he and others that promote free trade knew full well that free trade = draining US wealth and spreading it around the world. I guess they assume that as we lift the standard of living around the world, that eventually things even out and the US might be selling goods in China, and vice versa, at an equal level. To get there though, does require a race to the bottom.
But that race to the bottom is easily prevented by putting in place the tariffs we had in place prior to several administrations worth of 'free trade' agreements. I guess the question everyone should ask is, "Is it worth it?"
I'm not even sure where I stand on the issue.
I kind of feel like tariffs should be in place to reflect our society's morality. Take into account lax environmental laws, worker safety, etc.. and put a price on those externalitites, and then put a tariff in place to account for them. That means that any country that wants to sell in the US, has to act like the US in terms of pollution, safety, worker rights, etc...
And I don't think it should even be up for debate that tariffs should be in place to account for governments who massively subsidize an industry with the obvious intent to undercut the global market. China is doing that with solar panels right now. I heard an npr interview with a US solar panel maker that said that the cost of labor is a small amount of the total cost of solar panel production, but that his company can't compete with Chinese panels because their government directly funds their solar panel companies. That sort of practice just begs for a tariff.
Prior to the 1990's there wasn't much of a race to the bottom. At least not at this rate.
Clinton signed massive amounts of free trade agreements and in the last 20-25 years our import tariffs are basically set at zero. Free trade has lifted a significant portion of China out of poverty, but it has basically been at the cost of US manufacturing jobs.
Clinton was a pretty smart guy, and I can only assume that he and others that promote free trade knew full well that free trade = draining US wealth and spreading it around the world.
I think you give them too much credit, and assume politicians were pulling the strings.
Getting rid of tariffs, was almost certainly a lobby by large corporation that could see the short term gain of reduced labor costs from outsourcing.
Corporations think short term (get the CEO the next bonus, for the next big quarter). China exploited this behavior to do the labor, but also take over much of the technology it builds.
Look what they did with high speed trains, had contracts that insisted on technology sharing, so short term thinking corporations, took the deal and now China has used the technology to steal their business on future contracts around the world.
Rolling this back would be near impossible now, without near worldwide agreements to have something like fair labor tarrifs, that would ensure decent working conditions, and of course tariffs to ballance unfair subsidies.
But it isn't going to happen. The USA is too dependent on China's manufacturing. China holds over a $Trillion in US debt and China keeps dangling the carrot of access to their market and the suckers keep taking the bait.
So essentially, there will be a movement toward equalization, which means we will sink and they will rise, until we meet closer to the middle someday. But that is going to take a long time as they have hundreds of millions of people left to exploit.
Luckily, I had a document retention order. The email is retrievable because of a number of court orders regarding certain disputes before the court which were not very narrowly scoped to specifically case-relevant content. All it needs is another court order.
-- Terry
The author of this article has no idea what he's talking about. The core idea of H1B visa is that you need to pay at least as much as the US market price if you want to hire a foreigner. The term is called "prevailing wage", and in Bay Area the prevailing wage for a entry level (foreign) software engineer is over 90k a year. Cheap? I don't think so. Not to mention the enormous amount of hassle/paperwork/legal issues to hire a foreign citizen in any company that is a govt contractor.
My team has doubled its size during the last 2 years. The average salary in this team is a little more than 100k, and guess what, NONE of the new hires are American, simply because NONE of the American candidates are qualified for this job.
Blame your own American ass for not being able to compete with China/India's education systems.