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Mistreated Foxconn Brazil Workers Threaten Strike
An anonymous reader writes "More bad news comes from Apple's iDevice manufacturing partner Foxconn that is sure to ruffle the feathers of Apple fans. From the story: 'Factory workers at a Foxconn plant in Jundiaí, Brazil are complaining of overcrowded buses, poor food and a lack of water and have threatened to strike unless the issues are resolved by May 3.
According to a report by Brazil's Tech Guru (Google Translation), over 2,500 Foxconn employees have complained about conditions at the factory. Workers reportedly met last Monday to raise the concerns and have given the company 10 days to address them.'"
Workers of the world unite! The only thing you have to lose are your iPads!
This plant has nothing to do with Apple. They make XBoxes.
Brazil workers have more rights then ones in China.
They even got mcdonalds sued and won the case over them offering only a limited free lunch menu.
Brazil has a government-backed program requiring certain classes of employers to provide meal and grocery vouchers to low-income employees. It is not uncommon for employment benefits in developing countries to include things such as meal vouchers or housing supports that are normally not part of benefits packages in more developed countries.
and only offering a limited menu does not fit the rules.
"Apple, and Dell, and Samsung, and Amazon, and Tosiba, and .... (insert evert other company producing consumer electronics here) ...partner Foxconn"
Guess only Apple shod be accountable or something?
Someone is wanting more bribes
Actual work conditions are irrelevant, as long as union leadership is compensated accordingly
That might be part of it, but labor laws in Brazil are much more strict than in most other places in the world. It is pretty common to hear people, especially in blue-collar jobs, to publicly complain about working conditions to pressure the companies to follow the law.
The working conditions there are certainly not even close to what you would see in China, but that doesn't mean this is just about bribery.
After the retraction, I don't know if I even care if this is Apple at this point. Quite frankly I'd be surprised if this was at the plant producing Apple goods. The latest outbreak of suicides and protestations have been over the division that manufactures Xboxes, funny enough.
Not Apple's gear.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Manaus and Indaiatuba are where phones are made, TFA states the workers threatening to strike are at the the Jundiaí factory. Isn't that where the xbox is made?
Watch those corners
This is the kind of thing that I think needs to make the news, the differences between workers' rights in different countries, especially as there are more pushes to reduce workers' rights in the United States. I'm gathering that Brazil is one nation that has gone through a similar process that the US has, with a labor movement that secured legal rights for workers. Obviously China is still figuring that out, and I am not surprised when Chinese companies run afoul of labor laws in other countries when they take production overseas, as they've never been forced to reform at home like these other countries require.
The more reforms China forces on their companies the more expensive those goods become, and the less desirable it is to send manufacturing there. It's a race to the bottom only retarded by workers everywhere forcing conditions to change.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
As a brazilian myself, I saw the news about it in the last few days in our local media.
Foxconn is in Brazil for serveral years. The main problem of water was reported as a temporary supply problem from the public water system, not Foxconn fault.
The second biggest problem was reported about the buses being overcrowded. This is most probably because Foxconn hired a lot of workes recently to increase its production and the guy responsible for transportation made a lousy job to handle the extra workers.
Also, the union president said the strike is very unlikely because Foxconn said it was already taking care of the situation. They aren't striking for salaries, bonus, or anything else related. The union just made a warning for Foxconn to act quickly.
-1, only in America are unions hated so much. You'll never see positive union viewpoints on the news without them being portrayed as combative.
Possibly.
But once upon a time, the unions were about bettering things for their members.
It's just possible that in Brazil, unions are still at that point.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
US union laws != Brazilian union laws.
As I understand it, the US is pretty much the only country with corrupt unions. At the very least union corruptions seems much lower in most first world country.
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More bad news comes from Apple's iDevice manufacturing partner Foxconn that is sure to ruffle the feathers of Apple fans
I'd bet they're more ruffled by the fact that Apple gets credit for everything that happens in Foxconn anywhere......
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I will go first. Belgium (Minimal rights for an office employee):
20+ days payed holidays (I have 35)
Medical benefits
Social security in case of unemployment
38 working hours per week
Choice of at least 3 unions (Although this is not a must and nobody will ask)
Reasonable privacy laws (e.g. No camera pointed to working people)
No firering when you told you are pregnant
No cubicles, but rather human interaction
Several laws that will favor the employee
Reduction on transportation (often 100% on public transportation)
Food checks (Often, not always. Between 5 and 7 EUR per working day)
Best beer in the world (OK, not work related, but still: this is Belgium.)
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
And still you offer none...
Yup, nowhere except America manages to so completely miss the point of unions. In most of the world, unions work like this:
A group of people are elected to represent the workers. If there are unreconcilable difference of opinion between groups of workers, then you get two or more unions. Each can negotiate with the employers on behalf of their members, and can pretty much guarantee that the deal that they reach will be agreed to by most of their members because they actually represent their members. If you disagree with all of the unions, you are not forced to join any of them. Any deal negotiated by the unions is open to all workers, irrespective of union membership.
Meanwhile, in the USA, they work like this:
To get the job, you must be a member of the union. If you are not, then you must join immediately. There is only one union that represents people in your position. Only employees can be union officials, and anyone who gets elected without being open to bribes finds that they no longer have a job and must therefore resign. You must accept the deal negotiated between the company and their, sorry, your representative or you lose your job.
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If Apple wants to insulate itself from bad press related to the employment practices of its contract manufacturers, it could buy its own factories and employ the workers who make its products.
There are contract manufacturers, totally capable of meeting their manufacturing requirements, that Apple could afford to buy if they wanted to. Or they could just buy the few factories that they would need.
When they choose to do business with sweatshops to build their products, they are essentially telling us they don't care enough to dirty their hands with that manufacturing business. They don't want to think about the labor relations aspects. They just don't care that much.
Same goes for Microshaft (whose products these particular workers actually make) and all the other big companies that use contract manufacturers instead of employing their own labor force. Little companies can legitimately say that they can't afford the investment in manufacturing capacity necessary to make their products efficiently. That's just not the case when you're making a big-ticket item that you sell by the millions.
To get the job, you must be a member of the union. If you are not, then you must join immediately. There is only one union that represents people in your position. Only employees can be union officials, and anyone who gets elected without being open to bribes finds that they no longer have a job and must therefore resign. You must accept the deal negotiated between the company and their, sorry, your representative or you lose your job.
You'd be surprised. I've traveled a lot lately, and i find it to work this way in most of the world. As a closer example: i live in Argentina. Joining an union is a de facto requirement in order to get a job on several industries (transport, particularly trucking, metal, food... even general commerce).
Unions aren't even that corrupt in the US. Cases of corruption are just highly publicized by those who have an interest in seeing unions outlawed / declawed.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
A lot of the things you list are not provided by the employer, but the government.
And no cubicles? I worked in a place like that, and it sucked due to lack of privacy! Couldn't even sneak a peak at /. without everyone seeing.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
If a sociologist were to get hold of this it would be interesting. Foxconn China vs. Foxconn Brazil. The parent company and the products remain constant, as do the sources of most of the parts, while what changes are local management, local laws, and local workers. So, if there were any systematic difference in manufacturing quality between the two locations, it might tell is some interesting things about differences in culture. Do workers in China or Brazil have better attention to detail? Better concern for precision? Better concern for what the inside of a product looks like vs. the outside, where tolerances allow differences?
My iPad 2, for instance, has a very minor manufacturing flaw. There is a plastic seal between the front glass and the metal that wraps around the sides, where along one bottom corner, the plastic protrudes slightly more. So there is room for variability in assembly that would be interesting to look at.
For Foxconn's sake, they could turn this into a benefit. Hey personnel A! Why aren't we doing better than personnel B?
In the US, we've kinda lost that competitive drive; we've adopted a culture of doing the minimum work for the maximum pay, but maybe Brazil and China have different values.
And how is shutting the fuck up going to improve conditions?
Oh, bullshit. We pay just the same price as we did for our consumer goods, the only difference is, with the full-scale assault on unions that started in the 80's, and rampant inflation, the purchasing power of the average American worker has stagnated for 30 years. Business aren't "forced" to do anything, they make a conscious decision to move operations overseas because it increases their bottom line. Those savings weren't passed along to consumers, they were passed along to CEO's, which is why today they make orders of magnitude more a year than they did back in those days. The "trickle down" bullshit is a myth, because the wealth never fucking trickles down. A billionaire getting another billion a year isn't going to do shit for the economy at all, but 100,000 people with an extra $10,000 a year in their pocket sure as fuck will.
It always cracks me up when people throw up union corruption but never fucking acknowledge the antisocial and outright damaging antics of the greed of these fucking asshole "job creators" on the other side of the coin. Terrorists, gangs, welfare queens...none of them are nearly as damaging to our economy as these goddamn parasites we call "corporations" that use every legal mechanism at their disposal (as well as some illegal ones) to avoid paying one single penny in taxes despite the fact that billions are pouring into their coffers every year. A single mother that loses her job is a parasite when she's reduced to applying for food stamps, but corporations sucking in billions in subsidies and tax breaks, while at the same time earning billions a year in profit, they're what? Something to celebrate? Fine, upstanding members of the community? Give me a fucking break.
Fuckin' A right.
Imagine if they publicized the underhanded shit done by the banks/corporate America with as much diligence. Hell, imagine if American citizens had to work a few months in one of those Foxconn factories...how long would it be before this whole "oh, those poor, poor multibillion dollar corporations that are making more money than they ever have in history are forced to employ slave labor on the other side of the world" nonsense went out the fucking window?
Half the people in this country still believe they're going to be part of that club of the super wealthy one day, and until that changes, we're going to continue being ruled by the real parasites on society, limited liability corporations.
How long do you think Belgium (and the rest of Europe) can afford this?
As long as those companies that wish to do business there are forced to participate in the social contract.
Once they ease that restriction, and allow them to offshore all their labor and dodge taxes left and right, then they'll be on the same path towards a corporate-controlled neo-fuedalist society that we are. The only reason American corporations get away with this shit is because our representatives allow them to. They're both at fault, but I'm not going to excuse the moral turpitude prevalent in corporate society in this country just because there's no specific law against their antisocial behavior on the books. We all know that they're playing these games, the difference is, half of the people in this country, for some reason, think it's excusable. Funny how those same people often bitch and complain about the "parasites" collecting welfare and food stamps but ignore the fucking billion dollar corporations taking billions in subsidies and paying zero net tax year after year.
One is just that they like to pretend they are better than other companies, and they seem to want to deflect from the China thing. Every product has its place of final manufacture stamped somewhere on the item and/or box. It is required by law. Most companies do that, it just says "Made in X." Apple doesn't, they prefix it with "Designed in Cupertino by Apple." They seem to want to deflect from the fact that they make things in China like everyone else since they are "different" and better.
The bigger one though is Apple could afford to manufacture somewhere else with their hefty prices. Yes, with low margin stuff you often have to choose a cheap place to manufacture, but with more expensive items, you can afford better manufacturing. Like Denon, for example. Their lower end receivers are all made in China. However their higher end stuff is made in Japan (which is where they are located). They can afford the higher manufacturing cost since the profit per unit is higher on those higher end goods. The premium priced goods have premium manufacturing.
Well Apple has quite high margins. This would be where that massive amount of cash they have has come from. All their devices feature premium pricing. As such they could afford to manufacture somewhere other than China. Also, with all that cash, they could afford to build their own facilities, if they needed to because the country they chose didn't have a contractor that could do it.
Now it would mean some tradeoffs. The main one would be the big profit margins. They'd still be profitable, but not as outrageously so. The other would be that they couldn't go and roust a bunch of workers out of bed because their CEO decided he wanted a new design, they'd have to go through the normal design process that can take a bit.
However they can do it. A company that is operating on thin margins may well not be able to. Like game consoles. If they make any money on a console, it is very little. Often companies will elect to take a loss to keep the retail price down and sell more (their profit is on the games). For that, the manufacturing cost counts and you want it done cheap. Choosing a higher priced place can kill your business.
So that's why Apple gets less of a pass than some others. They are in a position they could do better, they just choose not to as to make more money. That's fine, that is a valid position, but it is also one people can take issue with.
Finally, Apple is an "All the cheapest, all the time," kind of outfit. Many of the others you listed are not. Intel, for example, fabs almost all their CPUs in the US. They also have a fab in Ireland, Israel and a new one opening in China but 6 of their fabs are in the US and the newest one they are building is also there. Or Samung, who makes all their LCD panels in Korea (most higher quality LCDs are from Korea), and their final products all over (my TV is from Mexico).
Not trying to paint Apple is the Big Baddie here or anything, just saying there is a reason they get more shit.
The easiest way for Apple to acquire the capacity would be to just take some of their cash and buy a major contract manufacturer. Then all the manufacturing expertise comes along with the purchase. They could probably just buy Foxconn. They could easily buy Flextronics.
But unlike Apple, there are lots of American companies that couldn't manufacture their own stuff in the USA.
Well, to be fair they do care. They care a lot about their PR - the same as any other company. And it is a lot easier to say, "we audit these external contract companies twice a year and have given them x months to make changes" than it is to say, "oh, yeah, we treat our employees in China and Brazil like crap. You caught us.". It is much better PR to work with these contract companies than to have your own sweatshops.
I find your lack of self-awareness disturbing.
Obviously, because if the workers want to enjoy the pay and benefits won by the union, they should become dues paying members of said union. Obviously. If you worked hard at negotiating yourself a raise yet someone off the street piggybacked off your efforts without lifting a finger on their own, you'd be pissed.
Also obviously, if some of your union members have to do a lot of work outside office hours to support the union, they deserve to be compensated for that effort. So you have union dues.
Which is why right wingers have passed "Right to Work for Less" laws around the country, which allow workers to have the same pay and benefits as union members without doing any of the negotiating or making any of the sacrifices.
No more or less than any other country. Sometimes you have more than one union, sometimes you don't.
Only if your union votes that that be the case. And who doesn't want their union rep to either have had skin in the game or experience doing the same job you are?
Ah, there it is. The Hatorade. Why not go on about tomatoes and a union boss that's been dead for nearly 40 years while you're at it? Or, maybe give the "Buz Unionzzz are Corrupt!!!!" shtick a rest until Unions are responsible for trillions in bank fraud and have totally co-opted every western government the way FIRE has.
There are entirely legitimate reasons to outsource manufacturing. If you have your own factory, and you get a burst of orders, you won't be able to keep up because you'll lack the needed capacity, leading to long lead times that cause you to lose customers. Conversely, if you get a lull in orders, your factory will be sitting idle, wasting money. Big companies outsource manufacturing to avoid those issues. It gives you a lot more flexibility.
The problem isn't that Apple and Microsoft and all these other companies use outsourced manufacturing... it's that they outsource the manufacturing to sweatshops. They could easily pay a bit more to have their products manufactured by a company that respects workers' rights, or pay a bit more to compel companies like Foxconn to respect workers' rights. Instead, they constantly focus on driving down prices so that they can pocket a few extra tenths of a percent of profit. And if that means some Chinese workers are getting woken up in the middle of the night to work a twelve hour shift, or some Brazilians don't have access to sufficient drinking water, who cares? The executives hanging out in Silicon Valley or Redmond or wherever will still have their billions, and that's what matters.
Hopefully the continued pressure from the media and the public will make companies like Apple push companies like Foxconn to improve conditions, but there's still a long way to go.
To be fair, "Designed in Cupertino by Apple." is a holdover from when they actually used to build the machines in California or the US. For a long time it instead said "Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in U.S.A" or something along those lines.
They'd make less, but still be profitable.
Music to shareholders' ears... ;) I suspect this is the reason why the vast majority of corporations behave exactly as you'd expect from a psychopath.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
I have to agree.