Slashdot Mirror
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."
I don't get the exclusive association between Apple and Foxconn presented by the tech press. Foxconn is the world's largest electronics manufacturer and makes products for Dell, Sony, Motorola, Nintendo, Nokia, Microsoft, HP, and pretty much every other major computer-related company. The fact they're the largest also means that there really isn't much of an option for companies like Dell or Apple to stop using Foxconn, because nobody else can assemble products at the volume required.
The Foxconn suicides that originally drew so much media attention were the result of several external factors including several labor strikes and poor economic conditions throughout China in 2010. The working conditions are actually comparatively good for Chinese factories, and the suicide rate is less than that of the general population, but the idea of an industry darling like Apple using "slave labor" to make its products was a narrative too juicy for the media to ignore.
Though investigations did find overtime and other managerial abuses by Foxconn (making them not unlike Walmart), it's amusing to see thousands lining up to work there in contradiction to the extremely negative portrayal by the Western media such as that offered by the first linked article in the summary.
"Less than satisfactory" according to white, paternalistic Americans who frequent Whole Foods.
Sorry to stereotype here, but let the Chinese figure out what is satisfactory or not.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
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.
I first want to make clear that I am not "defending" Foxconn by any means. They definitely have room for improvement, as does every other company. But to say that working conditions at Foxconn are "less-than-satisfactory" and "harsh" is clearly biased.
Relative to most other manufacturing companies in China, Foxconn is actually one of the companies that treats is employees well in that they pay their employees on time, pay overtime when it is due, and provide perks for many of their workers (including rent-free accommodations, meals, entertainment, etc.). Because of that, Foxconn is actually a desirable place to work in China considering the alternatives. Foxconn is providing an opportunity to make a livable wage for millions of people in China.
Again, I am not defending Foxconn, but it really irks me to see people here blast Foxconn for poor working conditions when the vast majority of them have never been to Asia. Is there room for improvement? Absolutely. But I really wish people would be more objective in their assessments of the situation.
In Xhengzhou, Thousands Vie For Foxconn Jobs
I know the keys are right next to each other on the keyboard, but "Xhengzhou" is simply not possible in the Chinese spelling system. You got it right in the summary (Zhengzhou), but the headline is just nutty.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Plantation slavery was not much different from the way these workers live in their dormitories. I would hazard a guess that slave owners actually generally cared about their slaves significantly more than Apple and FoxConn care about these workers. In fact, the very fact that workers aren't even allowed to socialize in their dormitories suggests to me that on balance, plantation slaves might have actually had more freedom since they were free to form families (who admittedly could be sold like slaves), socialize and often free to work for money once their field work was done.
I say this not to defend plantation slavery as anything objectively good, but to note the irony that someone who defends FoxConn's treatment of workers while holding views antagonistic toward actual plantation slavery is being very hypocritical because on balance, these workers have it even worse. I'm white and if I had to choose between being a field slave in the South vs working under the conditions the FoxConn workers do with the sort of future that awaits them, hands down I'd choose to be a slave. At least then the master's tyranny would end at sun down.
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.
I'm reminded of a recent Slashdot article that had an interesting passage to me:
Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.
A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’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. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.
“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”
This raised many questions in my mind. Like whether or not other Chinese companies would respond with such force to a request? Is it just because Apple is so big that Foxconn takes these extreme measures? Are Foxconn employees experiencing longer shifts because of these pressures from Apple and, ultimately, Apple consumers?
... but at what future and permanent and irreversible cost?
You're also missing a point that I found interesting from the This American Life episode on these plants. One group had gone to a village that did not have a Foxconn plant but was due to get one. They looked at the village and the quality of life of the people. It wasn't pretty. After the plant opened, after people got the jobs and after electricity and running water were forcefully brought for the purpose of the plant, life improved. Sure, pollution got worse but the group couldn't argue with people being better fed, having electricity and (more) potable water. Is this a good argument for Foxconn and Apple? I don't think so but it's an ethics issue and I think you'll find a lot of people are divided on this issue.
Closer to home for me, people from West Virginia have been attacking the EPA for stopping mountaintop mining in their state. They say that the EPA is halting job creation and go on and on about how horrible the EPA is. It's so odd to me because this state is rife with environmental problems left over from just this mining and when there was no EPA and no regulations on the state level, chemical companies ran rampant in West Virginia. I wouldn't drink the groundwater there if my life depended on it now. And what was the reason for this? To give a few generations of jobs and stoke the smokestacks of the industrial USA? Sure
My work here is dung.
Lemmings don't actually jump off cliffs (on their own). Really.
Anyways, you only need one Blocker and you're good to go. At least until you hit the nuke button - "Oh No!"
Misery loves company. Online misery loves unsuspecting random strangers.
You'd think so but he's just a rabid Apple fanboy. His real name's Matt Deatheridge, a supposedly grown man who spends this much of his time defending a company he is a fan of, and relentlessly bashing one of their competitors, Google.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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.
When is the last time anyone heard that phrase in the U.S.?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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".
One summer when I was 15, I worked on a farm/ranch in western Nebraska. I worked twelve-hour days six days a week harvesting hay, helping out with dehorning/deballing of steers (not a fun task!), and general farm maintenance activities. Only day off was on Sundays. It was a hot, hard, smelly job. I personally enjoyed it (I treated it like an extended Boy Scout Summer Camp that I got paid for), but the bulk of the other teens out there complained and found it far too hard for them.
If you compare the general conditions of the Foxconn factories to the working conditions in the rural countryside, I would be willing to bet that it's far better to be a Foxconn employee than a farm worker (or other such rural worker). And honestly, if you don't have a job in China (for all their vaunted "Socialist" (socialist in name only, IMHO)) it's better than starving. It probably does amount to slavery, unfortunately.
According to Reuters, yo' mama so fat she uses an ipad to make phone calls.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Endorsed by corporations everywhere in the name of "globalization".
As numerous as Foxcon's flaws are, they pale in comparison to the more numerous non-name contractors. The non-names break many more labor laws, pollution and safety regulations, and stiff wages. They bribe or have connections with the petty bureaucrats. They've been known to pack up machines on off-day Sunday and disappear leaving workers unpaid and unemployed. Everyone knows this is going on and make movies and write books about it. I've seen several. The workers know this a crave the established contractors. A new farm boy will do a couple stints at a no name and they qualify for a Foxcon. It takes time for the legal system and societal expectations to take firm root.
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.
To quote "Business Insider" magazine:
Apple doesn't build iPhones in the United States, in other words, because there is no longer an ecosystem here to support that manufacturing. There's no supply chain, there aren't enough super-low-cost workers, and there are not enough mid-level engineers.
The real reasons Apple makes iPhones in China, therefore, are as follows:
- Most of the components of iPhones and iPads--the supply chain--are now manufactured in China, so assembling the phones half-a-world away would create huge logistical challenges. It would also reduce flexibility--the ability to switch easily from one component supplier or manufacturer to another.
- China's factories are now far bigger and more nimble than those in the United States. They can hire (and fire) tens of thousands of workers practically overnight. Because so many of the workers live on-site, they can also press them into service at a moment's notice. And they can change production practices and speeds extremely rapidly.
- China now has a far bigger supply of appropriately-qualified engineers than the U.S. does--folks with the technical skills necessary to build complex gadgets but not so credentialed that they cost too much.
And, lastly, China's workforce is much hungrier and more frugal than many of their counterparts in the United States.
$2B for the quarter! Sony earnings announcement.
Or the LG that loses money on handsets?
Samsung does "better" - it made 1/3 of what Apple made last quarter.
Last time I checked, corporations are investment vehicles, not jobs programs, or "making lots of things" programs.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
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.
Depends, is that woodworking plant you go to after you get your hand crushed producing for the domestic market?
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
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".
But not upset enough to stop buying Apple products.
Uh, what multi-touch screen phone came before the iPhone? And Android's SDK emulator itself presented a picture of a Blackberry clone until 2.2 or 2.3. Do you have evidence of a touch-screen Android phone before the iPhone's intro?
It's obvious Android wasn't made for touchscreens. Its UI thread is locked to the apps priority, which makes sense on a Blackberry but not a touchscreen. If you want to see a horribly sluggish and badly coded browser with the UI thread given priority, look no further than the PS VIta:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=eWXxCFmKUlQ#t=40s and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIIYAenI4Mc
If that were Android (and its browser were so badly coded), the phone would be freezing up and generally operating at 1 or 2 fps.
Awesome argument, because we all know the only alternative is living in a cave. You totally nailed that one.
And as for your comparison to the military, is that really the comparison you want to make? The military wakes you up in the middle of the night because they are training and conditioning you to be prepared for when a life or death emergency arises. Are things really life-or-death at Foxconn (cue the jokes)? And since military comparisons are apparently apt, then the military can throw you in jail. Should Foxconn be able to do the same? No, I think comparing the military and Foxconn is probably not the best thought out comparison.
As for your on-call comparison...yeah, I'm absolutely sure that Foxconn is paying on-call pay to all 8000 of those workers.
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_.
What you mean to say is "other jobs are worse".
This does not make it a good job. To properly godwin this thread, Stalin was better then Hitler, but that does not make Soviet Russia a good place to live.
I take it you're a nice, comfortable American who's never really ventured outside their own country. You have a nice house, multiple cars, all your idevices so forth and so on. You dont really need for much do you.
This is not the case in China, The average Chinese person doesn't have multiple cars, they dont even have a car, they'd be lucky to have an old motorbike. A lot of villages dont even have 24 hour power in their homes. This is where your Foxconn workers come from. They have the choice between being a farmer or being a factory worker and the factory worker is not a subsistence job (I.E. it pays). Now the Chinese worker can buy things, namely things for their family being no old age pension in China and it's hard to save up a retirement fund when you have been a subsistence farmer all your life.
So stop deluding yourself that a factory job is a good job, it's a job that pays better then their other options. Being better by default does not make it good.
Now that I've made that point, The reason that people are lining up for Foxconn jobs is because they went back to their ville's and families for Chinese New Year. They dont get paid annual leave in China, so in order to do this they quit before Chinese New Year and now come back and get another job after CNY. So the article is a complete and fallacious troll and a belated Gong Xi to Parent.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.