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In Xhengzhou, Thousands Vie For Foxconn Jobs
hypnosec writes "Foxconn is supposedly looking to enhance its workforce in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou and despite the less-than-satisfactory working conditions in the company, thousands of aspirants are lining up for jobs in its factories. Not caring about the harsh working conditions at Foxconn, thousands of people congregated outside a labor office in Zhengzhou, the largest city of Henan province in North central China, impatiently waiting for a chance to work at Foxconn. Foxconn, which is engaged in assembling iPhones and iPads for Apple, is planning to hire an additional 100000 employees as it is aiming at augmenting its iPhone production."
Because Apple is their highest profile customer. They're raking in massive profits while utilizing a company that leverages the low pay of Chinese laborers and the lack of real labor laws, which has had some high profile incidents.
Thousands line up to work there because there are billions of people in the country who are increasingly being displaced and are poor, and need anything as a source of income. Doesn't mean it's a good job, just that it's a job.
This used to be common in America too. Young people would line up around the block to work in slaughterhouses, textile mills, etc. They, being young, thought themselves invincible. They thought they could handle whatever was thrown at them, and work their way out of poverty. They were wrong.
They'd be used up, and thrown away like chaff, and a new batch of starry-eyed youngsters would be brought in.
As long as workers are disorganized, businesses will play them against each other, and the workers will suffer for it.
Cultural relativism has many positive uses, but using it to give a pass to international labor exploitation isn't one of them.
There are some folks would like nothing more than to get us desperate enough to be exploited in a similar way right here at home.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
The increasingly number of stories on the poor working conditions in China are frustrating, because they are so dense. It would be much more honest to compare Foxconn to other Chinese factories, rather than to the practically-no-longer-existing factories in the Western world. It would make for a less exciting story - and probably also a less dualistic one: I'm afraid if the discourse is not framed in terms of bad villains (Foxconn and Apple) leagued to exploit the poor good guys (the defenseless Chinese peasants), it is less easy to stimulate discussion. But this is all stuff that cleverer people have said before me, why do we keep rehashing it?
When people are starving to death, living in areas so polluted by heavy metals that the chinese govt denies the who access to take soil samples, and where there is such a sickeningly huge divide between wealthy and poor, it should come as no surprise that people will rush from dieing of hunger and poisoning to dieing of overwork and poisoning.
The implied "look, thousands line up for these slave labor positons, so they can't be as bad as everyone says! So, its OK to buy chinese made things!" Is so morally destitute and wrong it defies reason.
Newsflash fuckers. Just because people are lining up to try to crawl their way out of the chinese agricultural infrastructure where they live in straw huts and lack basic sanitation, doesn't make the hellholes they are scambling to get to any less hellish.
People who want to create a better life for their families within the context of an oppressive regime queue for choice spaces that could potentially help them, and put a little more food on their table.
I wish them luck.
They charge "Made in the US" prices but use Chinese labour. No surprise that draws some attention. Also they seem to want to deflect attention from it. On their boxes they say really prominently "Designed by Apple in California". On the device where there's the required "made in" sticker they prefix it with "Designed by Apple in California".
Apple also has an image/style and a customer demographic that cares about that image. Lots of PC manufacturers have an image vaguely like Wal-Mart: boring, boxy, of mediocre quality. Those kinds of companies are much less hurt by allegations like this than Apple, because it's already widely suspected that they're selling what amounts to a rebadged whitebox product that emerged from some Chinese factory in some complex, undisclosed manner. Apple, meanwhile, is supposed to be premium and hip!
Sort of how Starbucks has felt a lot more pressured over fair-trade type stuff than, say, McDonalds has, even though McDonalds sells about as much coffee.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I'd say it's closer to 1880s-1890s American "company towns", like mining encampments where the mining company owned all the housing and the local store. I agree it's not good, but there are not-good historical parallels that don't require hyperbole.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I bet you had the "luxury" of talking to your fellow coworkers and maybe, maybe even some protective gear. You certainly weren't guaranteed to fuck up your hands by doing the same exact thing over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over. Though I do conceede that your bed might have resembled a coffin as well...
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
No, the choice they get is either remain on the farm and sling poop into a rice paddy for 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, or go work in a factory where the work is less arduous and much better paid.
I'd take the factory too.
This. I am so sick and tired of supposedly progressive people using tolerance to excuse horrific behaviors of other people around the globe. Yes, we do need to be tolerant of the cultures of others. If another culture wants to eat dogs, so what? We eat cows and pigs. Unfortunately, many people on the left, most of whom are otherwise quite intelligent and have very finely tuned moral compasses, take this argument WAY too far. Muslims want to force their women to dress in cloth bags? Heeey, who are we to say that we're better than they are? Tribes in Africa removing the clitorises of their little girls? Well, you know, they just do things a little bit differently... It is bullshit. We can (and need to) respect the rights of other cultures to do things in their own way, but that doesn't mean that there is no valid concept of universal morality. It is ALWAYS wrong to treat one gender/class/race as less than human. I don't care how many generations of your ancestors did it that way, or what your holy book says. This does not fall afoul of our need to respect cultural differences, it is simply a fulfillment of our obligation to our fellow human beings.
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
Most people where happy about the "leveling of the playing field" aspects of recent improvements in communication, technology, and travel. I can remember people talking in the late-90's about how the internet was going to make the world a better place, now that all the smaller countries could participate on the same terms as the first-world big guys. But all I could feel at the time was sad (selfishly so, admittedly). Because, unlike most of the cheerleaders, it occured to me that a level playing field was great news for poor countries--but really BAD news for the rich countries. If you're making $1 a day, the chance to make 75 cents an hour is a godsend. If you're making $15+/hr. though, this means you're about to be out of work.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
What bullshit. A very small percentage of people outside of the Foxconn factory actually know how bad those working conditions are. The suicides are just a small part of the scandal. There are deaths due to overwork. Not long ago, there was one worker who died after a 36 hour shift.
And the workers live at the factory, in dormitories, 16 beds to a 12'x12' room. The beds are stacked high like cordwood, with areas between the stacks of beds so narrow that a regular-sized Westerner couldn't fit through them. The dormitory rooms where these workers are warehoused have covered by the same surveillance cameras that are used on the factory floor to monitor the workers, making sure they don't take a minute to rest. There are workers as young as 13 in these factories who get no schooling beyond whatever training they need to perform their function. Even though most of the jobs at Foxconn could be done by automated assembly, it's actually cheaper to pay the little bit they pay to workers than it is to buy and maintain the machines. Workers who go to work at Foxconn from areas outside of Shenzhen don't expect to ever see their families again unless they also come to work at Foxconn.
I'm as guilty as any of eagerly buying products that contain hardware made in these factories. Unfortunately, if you want to use technology, there is no choice. But you know who does have a choice? Apple. Dell. Sony, etc.
And it's not exactly like Apple is even passing along the savings they get in having such inhuman working conditions. That saving is passed along to their very happy shareholders.
I'm not an Apple shareholder anymore, but I was. Apple stock paid for my daughter's undergraduate education and plumped up my family's nest egg quite nicely. But the more I learned about what's going on in the factories where the Apple products are made, the less I felt I could profit from their business model. I no longer respect Apple, no matter how shiny and slick their products. They are a shit corporation in my eyes now. Apple is one of the biggest, most successful companies in the world, and that position gives them the power to actually change some of the catastrophic conditions at the factories where their products are made, but they don't do that, because it might mean their shareholders would have to accept a percent or two less in profits, which would still leave them quite happy, but for some people, there is no bottom to their greed. There is no "enough".
Maybe someday I'll decide I can no longer enjoy products that come from factories where human beings are treated this way, and given no choice except to go back home and starve and have their families starve, but I'm not there yet, because I don't really have much choice. It doesn't make me feel much better to realize I have little choice when I think of the lack of choices that the workers at Foxconn have. And the only way I'll ever get that choice is if some company actually steps up and decides not to participate in human trafficking and starts making their products in a way that does not have such a high human cost. And yes, I will gladly pay more for such products. Hell yes, I will pay more for such products.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Yes, you implied that work is scarce in China. Which it is not. Good jobs are scarce. And in China, a Foxconn factory position _is a good job_.
No, it's "okay" because the Chinese people are better with Foxconn than without it, and they're better off if you buy from Foxconn than if you don't.
You don't help the developing world by not buying from them. Your purchases help make sure that tomorrow is a tiny bit better. Don't think for a minute than the U.S wasn't a mirror image of this 120 years ago. We got HERE because we went through this phase. If you try to stop China from going through the same phase, you're taking away their better tomorrow, just to make yourself feel better. And that makes you a dick.
You seem to be confused about taking away their future and wanting to stifle their growth as opposed to what most of us want, which is to stop seeing jobs that were here just 10-15 years ago showing up en masse elsewhere. I don't think the American people are so upset that China got 10,000 jobs from Apple as they are that we DID NOT get 10,000 jobs from Apple. This scenario would be held as true if the country in question was not China.
We'd also probably be less inclined to care if unemployment was not such a driving issue in all current political discussions and the income disparity wasn't growing while China's shrinks.
No, it's "okay" because the Chinese people are better with Foxconn than without it, and they're better off if you buy from Foxconn than if you don't.
That is the standard argument that people use to rationalize buying stuff made with slave or child labor or by workers in similarly horrific working conditions. Frankly, it doesn't hold water.
You're creating a straw man when you say "If they didn't work for Foxconn, they would have no jobs at all". The alternatives aren't "Work long days for 29 cents an hour" and "Don't have a job at all". There is also the option of "Work a bit shorter days for 50 cents an hour". We as consumers can demand companies to demand their subcontractors to offer workers somewhat tolerable working conditions.
At this point right wing idealists tend to say "If wages go up, prices go up, less products are sold, less workers are hired, growth is stiffled and people end up worse off". It's hard to claim that this would apply here: How many manhours per smartphone are spent in Foxconn factories? If the cost of workforce would go up by 15 cents per manhour, the price increase of endproduct wouldn't significantly alter the demand.
So no, we don't suddenly become dicks if we tell companies "We are willing to accept 2 dollars of price increase in our smartphones but we won't buy your products unless you tell Foxconn - or any other subcontractor you choose - to provide reasonable working conditions".