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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."
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.
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.
"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.
And form trade unions, have their skulls cracked by the state enforcers, etc. It's all part of energing as an industrial nation.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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.
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.
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.
Exactly.
To put things in perspective, China's GDP/Capita is about equal to what the United States had 120 years ago in 1890. If you compare the various metrics of 1890 United States with 2012 China, the people of China are doing very well for themselves.
The people of China want a better life for themselves and they are willing to work to get it. This one company employs a million people and competes within the labor market to get them, which is why Foxconn is one of the best employers to work for in China. Nobody is holding a gun to the heads of these employees, its quite the contrary in spite of what Americas mainstream media wants to tell us.
"His name was James Damore."
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.
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".
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?"
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.
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
You're very mistaken about the relative conditions of plantation slavery compared to developing countries' low-wage labor. Plantation slaves made no money whatsoever, and their imputed income from consumption was certainly less than 10% of the $400/mo which Foxconn workers earn. In addition, plantation slaves were frequently beaten severely for non-performance. Most of the slaves did not even survive the journey to the new world, because of harsh conditions on the slave ships. Those who did survive and had the misfortune to end up in the Carribean, usually lived about 5 additional years because of overwork.
Your notion that plantation slave owners "cared more" about their slaves is absurdly incorrect. In many places of the carribbean, the ratio of freemen to slaves was something like 1:10, which posed the constant risk of violent slave rebellion, so violent suppression was necessary and continuous. The slave owners did not "care" about their slaves as they generally worked them to death within 5 years.
As an aside, I've noticed that much criticism of the industrial revolution and of industrial development more generally, is based upon extraordinary over-estimation of the quality of life before the industrial development. There is a great deal of romanticizing (especially on the far left) of subsistence-farming life, of medieval conditions, of village agriculture, and (in this case) of plantation slavery, of all things. All of those modes of life imply an annual income of $300-$400 and severe back-breaking physical labor.
On every step of the way to industrial development, conditions for workers are better than they were previously. The Chinese people lining up for these jobs are not stupid. They are aware that the alternative is village agriculture, and that village agriculture work is harder and far worse paid.
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.
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.
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".
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.