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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.
"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 agree with you wholeheartedly on the apple connection to foxcon. It is close to the entire electronics industry to blame. I disagree with your statements on the conditions not being horrific. 36 hour shifts wages under a couple bucks an hour, living and working in the same place, jail time for mentioning the idea of a union etc... The long lines is because china is just so screwed up that these horrific conditions, are the best they can do.
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
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.
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
Indeed. It's a shame that companies like Dell, HP, Asus, and HTC have to charge the same price for their "Made in the US" products that Apple charges for their Chinese-produced goods. /facepalm
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
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.
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.