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Foxconn Invests $210 Million To Build New Production Line For Apple
redletterdave writes "On Monday, Foxconn agreed to invest $210 million to help Apple build out a new production line for 'unspecified components.' The 40,000-square-meter plant plans to hire roughly 35,800 new employees to help assemble parts for either desktop and laptop computers, iPhones, iPads, iPods, or possibly even new products or devices. Apple projects the plant's annual output between $949 million to $1.1 billion, and also estimates the import and export value at roughly $55.8 million."
Since Apple invest their money in China, I think I'll invest my hard earn money in someone else product beside
Apple
Why on earth do they need that many people. Aren't these electronics lines automated? (On another note: When was the last time a U.S. or EU company announced hiring 36,000 people.)
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Don't you get it? The new product will be the technological equivalent of Soylent Green ... a "Soylent brushed metal and glass".
I buy locally (or at least nationally) produced products when possible.
With electronics, that's pretty much NOT possible, with some small exceptions.
At least with Apple, they are making some efforts for transparency, and improvement in the conditions of factory workers. Currently there is NO other major electronics consumer that I have the same degree of assurances from, not within an order of magnitude...
To that end, I have stopped buying NON-Apple products when possible. Normally in the past I bought non-appel wireless routers, because cheap.
But the last time I went looking I bought an Airport because I knew the chances of the people who assembled it being treated better were higher.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In some places people are cheaper than robots.
35800 employees in 40000 square meters means 1.117 square meters per employee. Assuming they are arranged in a square pattern then the distance between employes is 1.06 meters. This is in both directions, ie if they are arranged along production lines then they can be 1.06 meters apart along the line, but also there is somebody facing the other side of the production line 1.06 meters away in front of you, and somebody facing the line behind you 1.06 meters behind you.
"to help assemble parts for either desktop and laptop computers, iPhones, iPads, iPods, or possibly even new products or devices" How specific, thanks.
It's mostly down to the time it takes to design and construct an assembly line for making electronic products. The time it takes to do all that it generally longer than the production run of the device (especially with smartphones). It's much cheaper and simpler to just get a massive manned production line to do it instead.
UFC 146 live Stream
This is all part of their new environmentally friendly strategy.
35,000 of these employees will be running on treadmills to generate the plants electricity.
Here's your 1.2 square meters, now get to work!!
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
They are accounting already for the suicides?
bad joke.. very bad joke I know.
I sometimes wonder what these people will do once the reverse is true.
1.2 Square meters? You are way to generous. And do not forget the bars on the windows and restricted access to anything over 1 mt high, so they can not jump and kill themselves. No sharp devices and no poisonous chemicalls (The last one will be a bit difficult considering is China we are talking about)
Huh? Huai'an city is not in Hainan. It's in Jiangsu province, about 100km west of Shanghai. Hainan is an island off the southern coast of China, near Vietnam.
The China Daily article says there are two separate projects. Foxconn is both building this plant in Huai'an and starting up a new manufacturing base down in Hainan. The Hainan facility is not necessarily Apple-oriented.
Why on earth do they need that many people.
I don't know, but I'm imagining many years from now: a Spartacus like 3D epic with a cast of thousands of Cgi avatars, all battling over freedom from the apple slave pits in China. It probably won't be as good as the original book, and the producers will probably make the Apple employees english, whilst all the chinese workers magically transform into american actors speaking in a scottish accent. The film will naturally be saved by the romantic love interest who almost shows some clevage, the really over-done screen wipes, the freemium app tie in, and the 17 weeks of marketing preeceding release. The lack of any plot, or any relation to real life events, is unlikely to raise too much concern: because it's created some skilled jobs.
1 person / square meter
This is the reason these plants aren't built in America. The average American's obese ass wouldn't fit into a square metre.
Please let it be iTV. That should be enough for the people who think they're "different" to wake up and realize they aren't. "Dude. It's TV. The revolution is dead, to the extent that it was ever alive".
It's called shifts. Likely 3 of them. An average 3.6 square meters is definitely small (surely less when you subtract equipment) but it isn't 1.2.
I'm sure they know what they're doing. But I do find it interesting that this foxconn plant will employ ten times as many people as all of facebook.com (with 3500 employees). The idea that there could ever be enough "knowledge worker" jobs to replace what manufacturing used to be just doesn't hold up.
This is why baby factories need to be shut down. Technology is all about eliminating jobs. Sometimes, but not always, the technology in question happens to produce a net-gain in empoloyment if it can scale out. But generally, that should not be a goal. For example, come up with a vision of a future city/town -- does that vision include more cars, more postal workers, more smoke-filled factory stacks?
Stop producing babies that will need to be socially protected and require jobs. Technology will just keep marching forward to eliminate the need for them
And you cannot believe how cheap they are. I order tools from india from time to time. Any type of marking is done by hand. For the majority of the markings, the machinery to do that can of work cost only a few thousands and would run literally forever with little maintenance. Yet, people (and mistake made by those people) are cheaper than that.
If you watched the Foxconn video (or seen any industrial production video), you'd see that for certain types of assembly it's cheaper and easier to get people to do it than to mechanize.
Mechanization requires lots of tooling and is relatively hard to change once built. It's easier to just hire a lot of people and change their procedures when needed.
There's no secret to mass assembly - it's just a serious logistical challenge. Everything needs to be specified, exactly.
There's also some loss of information in TFA. The submitter changed "a plant that covers 40,000 square meters" to "a 40,000 square meters plant". Quite possible there will be more than one floor. A plant with five floors covering 40,000 square meters would be a 200,000 square meter plant.
Why on earth do they need that many people. Aren't these electronics lines automated? (On another note: When was the last time a U.S. or EU company announced hiring 36,000 people.)
- yeah, because Chinese government hasn't yet mandated an entire slew of things that would prevent a company just from trying to build a business and instead would force a company to look for ways to get away from hiring people and find ways to do the same work without any hiring at all.
This is the direct proof that all this government intervention in the USA and Europe etc. is what PREVENTS JOBS FROM HAPPENING and KILLS EXISTING JOBS.
You can't handle the truth.
I'm sure it is a 1 m^2 40,000 floor building. They love their tall buildings.
In all seriousness, footage is based on floor (walkable), at least before machinery and accommodations are added. Now they may have some high ceilings, but they can't walk up there.
Whoa there... you might want to check your own pedestal.
Yeah, but you don't need to install netting for robots.
They prefer using the suicide booths.
I'll go out on a limb and hazard a guess that this plant is not in the USA and won't provide any jobs in the USA.
Too bad that one of America's top companies outsources most of its production. Their profit margins could support USA jobs.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Kick back to a life of leisure while machines do all the work?
I buy locally (or at least nationally) produced products when possible. With electronics, that's pretty much NOT possible, with some small exceptions.
Those exceptions can still represent common and decent options. For example I recently noted that a 24" 1080p monitor from Samsung was "made" in Mexico.
Flexible work force. You can issue orders to a group and have them execute different orders or work different shifts immediately.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
The Chinese gov't wouldn't support automation, the gov't wants jobs for the masses.
That massive FoxConn factory/city, it was built by the gov't not FoxConn. That's a helluva subsidy/stimulus package, and you only get such a package if you are going to employ people.
It's so that Apple can have their own clean, friendly production facility so that Foxconn can stop disrupting work at their hellhole^H^H^H^slave camp^H^H^H^H^other sweatshops to comply with public inspections by people who'd be outraged by how they NORMALLY do business.
In other words, a facade, like everything else at Apple.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
"The 40,000-square-meter plant plans to hire roughly 35,800 new employees" That's a little OVER a square meter per person! How generous!
Yep, it's fine, very big, and filled to the brim with honest people with spines like me whose dicks are big enough to admit they're part of the problem.
Dear Sir,
You have my respect, for being honest about the way that is
However imperfect the world we live in, at the very least we must be honest about where we are in the chain of events
There are too many fanbois with foam in the mouth, hopping on the bandwagons accusing the Asians for "stealing their jobs" and accusing the corporations of "exploiting the Asians"
And all the while they never look at themselves, the very root cause of why jobs are leaving Europe/America to Asia and elsewhere
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
For example I recently noted that a 24" 1080p monitor from Samsung was "made" in Mexico.
Yes but what are conditions like THERE? I can only imagine the horrors that would be easily hid in Mexico...
But since we lack any visibly into TV manufacturing I suppose possibly Mexican assembly workers may be treated better... it's a pretty large jump to make though, with no facts to back up what is the better choice. I'm limping along with older equipment until I know better (and no, I'm not waiting for Apple to produce a TV, I would have no use for that).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
filled to the brim with honest people with spines like me whose dicks are big enough
Yes, we could tell easily from your first message you were a huge dick. No need to confirm.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Oh please STOP with the typical fanboi elevating yourself on a lofty pedestal
I'm not elevating myself. I'm showing others how they can climb.
I don't own one single Apple product
And some decide to stay in the gutter. That is your choice, but don't pretend you are better than me because of it.
If I'm completely honest, I actually don't care very much because ultimately this is about capitalism and supply and demand
That's fine, but again don't label me with a term like "fanboi" because I seek to become a little more enlightened.
And if they don't like those conditions then they can go through the same processes as happened in Europe and the USA around a century ago when workers formed unions and fought for proper employment rights and better pay.
And get shot and/or fired and replaced by the MILLIONS of other people who would literally kill for those jobs.
I respect a free market myself, and they do have the ability to leave any time if they don't like the conditions. But that doesn't mean it's not better to throw a little support behind those that try to help the workers even before they make moves to help themselves. You are waiting for some event that may never come, living high atop the conditions of the moment until that happens.
I choose to make things better in whatever way is possible NOW, so that change may come gradually and peacefully instead of rapidly and with destruction and mayhem as the mother.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Too bad that one of America's top companies outsources most of its production
Well ... there is one very simple way of stop companies from outsourcing anything - work in America while accepting Chinese wages
Are you willing to work in America while receiving wages equal to what the Chinese workers are receiving?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
a "Soylent brushed metal and glass".
With rounded corners!
How is your usage of electronics products from company X any better?
Apple outsources ALL of its commercial production.
I'm just waiting to see how the /. Apple haters twist this around so that it's bad when Apple builds their stuff in China but okay when Dell and HP do the same thing because Linux. Or something.
Well one hardware device can support a whole lot more than one site or one piece of software. So Foxconn makes hardware for Apple devices. How many app developers in total make software for Apple devices? According to the latest bragging numbers there's over 500,000 apps and while many are simple some are not. And that doesn't include every other site on the Internet who can live off people using the web browser. For that matter, look at PCs and compare the hardware industry to the whole software industry. Intel may be big but there's many millions of people writing software from the smallest one-man shops to juggernauts like Microsoft. I just don't see your data supporting your conclusion.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I don't own one single Apple product
And some decide to stay in the gutter. That is your choice, but don't pretend you are better than me because of it.
Why do you think he is pretending he is better than you? The rest of the quote you conveniently left out is
because I don't buy into walled gardens, it's that simple.
It sounds to me like the closed ecosystem doesn't appeal to him. Saying that "some decide to stay in the gutter" sounds like you are pretending that you are better because you purchased a particular brand.
Wait, are you saying that Apple demanding, and getting, better working conditions for the employees that assemble their products is somehow a bad thing?!? I mean why would you be down on Apple rather than all the other tech companies that outsource to Foxconn and don't make the same demands?
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Not everyone here wants to get rid of regulations like minimum wage, OSHA, and environmental laws. Historically corporations here have screwed the environment (and everything else) if they are not regulated. I think things would be different if somehow the CEO was personally liable to some extent for the corporations' actions but I think we can agree that they are not.
Yeah, ALEC and Republicans really want to bring China here, fast. And many Americans don't like it!
Don't be an idiot. The more people we have, the higher the rate of technological advancement will happen. Humans are the ultimate resource. Without people eventually development would stagnate or even reverse itself. It has happened before when there were large population implosions (fall of the Roman Empire, Black Death, etc).
If someone else owns the machines do they owe you anything? This is not some sort of socialist paradise.
Especially since knowledge management is ever increasingly done by machines. Even some tasks which used to require human intelligence like voice recognition or eyeball inspections of produced goods can now be automated. What's left? Making clay pots and selling them? Or perhaps tulips...
Nah, it just means if they can save a buck by moving to China they will.
Portions of the parts manufacture are automated, but Assembly is done by humans. Don't know if you have ever disassembled a laptop or not, but it is definitely delicate work better done by quick dextrous humans.
music lover since 1969
I remember several years ago (5 maybe?), a report came out about how "green" various laptop manufacturers were. Lenovo won, flat out. Apple was the worst. A couple years later, Apple was on top and boasting about it. However, they changed because the spotlight was put on them. They work to a different standard now because people are holding them to a higher standard. So, it's not all altruistic. But this doesn't really matter, as your point still holds (now, anyways).
They are leaving because they can dump toxic waste straight into the rivers there and treat workers VERY poorly. they can expose them to chemicals you'd never get away with here, unsafe working conditions that would never be allowed, and basically they are nothing but "disposable people". It is no accident that over 10% of the farmland in China is now so toxic the produce from them is unfit for human consumption or 9 out of the top 10 cancer causing cities are in China.
So please get off the bullshit high horse that it is somehow the west's fault because they gasp! horror! Refuse to live like a Charles Dickens novel while sucking carcinogens with every breath and having drinking water just slightly better than raw sewage. free trade should be banned simply because it does not exist but is instead an excuse those 1%ers use to poison third world countries with the help of the 1%ers in power in those same countries. The amount of toxins the average peasant is exposed to in India and china is not only horrifying it just serves as proof that the west has been brainwashed by the "job creators" elite class that exploiting peasants and treating them as disposable people is perfectly alright as long as they aren't over here. Its disgusting, shameful, and I believe the history books will look upon this period just as they do the "white man's burden" of the 19th century.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
/. really needs a sarcasm tag
The don't have two story buildings where you are from?
Aren't these electronics lines automated?
No, that's ridiculous. Robots are expensive to buy, and expensive and difficult to re-program and re-tool.
Humans take instructions readily, are easy to find, easy to fire, and more dextrous than most robots. And you don't have to make any investment in them; just pay them while they're working and stop paying when you don't have anything for them to do.
The only things that are automated are things that require too much precision for human hands, which is basically only the chips themselves. Everything after that, from putting them on boards to sealing the case, is done by meatbags.
If you were building such a line in an industrialized country, where even an entry-level worker requires twenty times as much compensation, you would be stupid not to automate. But that's why they don't build them in industrialized countries.
The problem with your argument is thus, Humans are NOT the ultimate resource but SMART humans ARE. the problem is the smart are NOT breeding in any real numbers while the dumb as fuck, barely able to count their change total retards are popping out kids by the pile. Hell didn't you see that story that went around last week about the guy that had THIRTY KIDS and wanted them to cut down his child support because he only makes minimum wage (and frankly always will) even though divided up among that many damned kids they each get on average $1.94 a month?
Sadly what we are seeing is the simple fact that while a comedy Idiocracy is rapidly becoming reality. When you have someone with a 90 IQ frankly education will only go so far, because just as you can't train someone without the genetically gifted muscle type (lack of lactic acid buildup but off the top of my head i can't remember if there is a term for it) to be a world class or even state level sprinter you simply can't turn people with 80 to 90 IQ into rocket scientists, it simply can NOT be done.
Whether you choose to believe it or not frankly a HELL of a lot of the work at the bottom of the ladder in the USA right now is simply "make work" that wouldn't be feasible if the government didn't pay for it by taking it out of your pocket. Walmart even shows a training video on how to apply for food stamps for Pete's sake! Do you HONESTLY think if those government programs disappeared tomorrow it would be cheaper for the stores like Walmart to pay a living wage than to simply automate?
In the end we are playing IQ musical chairs and more and more simply will never get a seat. Most of the minimum wage jobs in the USA could be replaced by machines tomorrow if government programs didn't artificially tilt the favor for humans. Hell you could replace most fast food with automated assembly quite easily, stocking shelves with robots, self checkout lines, hell you could even replace most plumbers and electricians by just using prefabbed homes.
Whether we like it or not the day is RAPIDLY approaching where capitalism, like every other ism before it, will simply fail. If the workers can't trade their labor for capital then how is capitalism gonna survive? We are already seeing the beginnings of it by how so few at the top can control so much of the capital while it becomes ever harder for those at the bottom to rise above anything but poverty because they simply can't get the capital required to advance from labor alone. Did you know you can put the ones that control over 80% of the capitol in your average HS gym and still have seats left over? This is a sign that the system is failing because otherwise those workers killing themselves daily would be able to work their way into that club but the majority just can't.
In the end it just doesn't work friend, you have nearly half a billion people in the USA alone and with just current technology you could get by just fine without any real losses with just 1/5th of that number. Mark my words the next bubble to burst will be the education bubble as millions go into debt they will never be able to pay only to find that the jobs simply don't exist. With robots and computers frankly we just DO NOT NEED all of these people, so short of make work or handouts you are gonna have some major upheavals as all these unneeded people aren't simply gonna wander off and die, they WILL fight back any way they can. But in the end one simply can't escape the simple fact that we have millions more people than we have jobs that need doing.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Nooo...he is saying what Apple and Foxconn is doing is simply a variation of a Potemkin Village where you build a front to please the suits but in reality the vast majority of Foxconn workers will be living like shit. This lets Apple say they are "changing things" when in reality they are still doing business with a scummy company, they are simply having a nice front made for THEIR products and their products alone.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Whatever the conditions in a Mexican factory might be, the workers are there by choice.
I disagree that that differs at all from conditions in China. The Chinese workers are the ones that seek to work in the factories. They can also leave at any time, the state does not have to force them to work there because there are so many that wish to.
In both countries poverty makes the factory choice much more appealing than the peasant countryside life.
Life is full of choices. If I have the choice to buy products made in a country who has a history of treating their workers respectfully, I do so.
As do I. But on that front there is no difference between modern China and Mexico. In fact if anything the Chinese are a little better off because China is trying to bring in capitalism, while Mexico is fighting a losing war against corruption and REALLY scary drug cartels. I was in China last year and felt very comfortable there, I would not step foot in Mexico at this point.
anything I can do to support my neighbors to the south is far preferable to supporting a country on the other side of the world.
I agree with the sentiment but am not sure money filtered down to the factories is the best form of help for those in Mexico, whereas it is the only way I can help the Chinese.
I think the better thing to do for Mexico is greatly increase legal immigration from that country and treat them as a true neighbor.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You're a retarded moron..
It will be after the revolution, comrade.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Apple changed when the spotlight was put on the industry, way before the spotlight was put on Apple.
The thing that really gets me is now that spotlight is only on Apple, not the industry. There is a factor of decreasing gains, Apple can only do so much - meanwhile the rest of the industry laughs and continues to do whatever the hell they like, burning egrets to make bezels or what have you.
That is what is making me angry, that the focus on Apple is a HUGE opportunity cost for cleaning up all other consumer electronic makers.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It was one of the most hypocritical posts I have seen in the sea of /. hypocrisy. The walled garden argument is so lame. Calling everyone who says anything positive about Apple a fanboi is equally lame.
Someone really abused their mod points. Great post btw.
Or 3 - 4 shifts of manufacturing either.
Chinese workers are cheap, and plentiful (in the less developed provinces that is, this plant is to set up in Hainan, not in Shenzhen where their main site is).
No matter what, that's going to be one heck of a crowded factory.
40,000 m2 for 35,800 workers: that's just over 1 m2 per employee. Now they're said to work 12 hours a day, so assume two shifts, that's doubling the space to 2 m2 per worker. That's incredibly tight, considering this includes all space for tools and machines, conveyor belts, warehousing of both parts and finished products, etc. Now Chinese factories tend to be quite packed, but this just doesn't sound right.
Three shifts? More like two. Read TFA. Many workers report working 12 hours a day.
It's worse.
By the way, Foxconn is going to save on dormitory space by having the first 38,000 employees lay down at night on the factory floor. Then trained crews will cover them with sheets of plywood and the second 38,000 employees with sleep on that. In the morning the employee pairs will be responsible for returning their sheet to the storage shed.
Who needs safety nets for cheap, unregulated, 3rd world labor?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Only assembly lines in the western world are automated because labor's expensive enough that having a few robot technicians to maintain/program the robots is far cheaper than hiring people to manually do it. In China, labor's so cheap that the initial capital costs of robots and robot technicians aren't recouped by the time the robots get obsolete.
The average American worker is roughly 10 times as productive as a Chinese worker. And given the extreme automation possible with electronics (especially when you need to build millions a month) the productivity of a robot would be even higher if the factory was in the US.
It's one aspect the "move the jobs back to the US" folk ignore - those 300,000+ Chinese workers are out of a job, and you're not hiring that many Americans in their place. Of course, the few you do hire are well-paid high-skilled workers so there's a net benefit that way. But it's not going to make a huge dent in the unemployment rate. And possibly negative if it distorts local hiring that companies lose their skilled workers and have to shut down. (Apple needs enough workers to man the factories, and the demand will be so strong that there's a very real chance local companies cannot compete for the sudden lack of skilled employees...).
For those curious, the best way to help Mexicans out (besides the way I already mentioned and you missed) is of course greatly increased ability to move across borders to work, but failing that the next best way for the individual to help is to support micro loans for people in Mexico, to rebuild the economy from the inside up.
I mention that for the benefit of those who have not replaced their brain with a second misshapen penis, and therefore support enslaving the people of Mexico to make your toaster.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Just because you outsourced most of the work to China it doesn't mean it doesn't need to be done by someone as this news tidbit clearly shows. Just because it is across the ocean it doesn't mean there aren't people actually doing a significant part of the job. In a different society if there was less work to do and there was a superabundance of resources and goods the number of working hours would be reduced (some corporations like Google actually do this by giving their employees time to do their own activities) and people could use that time in all sorts of ways that would enhance growth or their own personal well being. Instead everyone is being convinced by the people holding the money that they need to work as much as Chinese laborer, which is something which will never happen, even Chinese laborers aren't happy working like that anymore and are increasingly demanding changes to their situation. There is also a massive wealth transfer in progress towards Asia. Despite some people only looking at the short term balance on their own accounts, in the long run one thing that makes or breaks a society is its own capacity to produce and maintain a healthy import/export balance. This was one of the causes of the fall of the Roman empire which had endemic economic problems due to their trade inbalance with China. This was something they never managed to overcome as they kept sinking into increasingly larger deficits.
The notion that robots are always cheaper than people is also a mistake. The Japanese, which have advanced the state of the art in robotics probably more than any other nation, figured that out a long time ago. In the middle term one of two things will happen: either new industries will show up which will make use of the available workforce, or there will be an economic reversal. There is plenty do to which is not make work. In the US at least much of the infrastructure was done before the 1970s and is in need of major repairs or replacement. This ranges from transportation to power transmission and generation, telecommunications, and more. One example is nuclear reactors which were supposed to be decommissioned once they reached 20 years of operation which are now planned to run for twice that long. A disaster in the making when there are newer and safer Generation III+ designs which aren't getting built. Even in the much vaunted defense sector you have pieces of hardware like the M1 Abrams tank which was originally designed in the late 1970s and most of the USAF still uses F-16s and F-15s which were also designed in the late 1970s. In the commercial aviation sector any airframe 20 years old is considered too unsafe to fly. Yet the military still fly B-52Hs and other platforms like that regularly simply because they never had any viable replacement.
Spartacus would argue that adding lots of people at the bottom of the wage scale just inevitably results in violent and bloody revolution.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
*DING DING DING!*
And we have a winnah!
*Forks over a cigar*
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Blablabla... Still wrong. http://xkcd.com/603/
Chinese complain and guess what? Corps are already starting to move to Malaysia. Just as it started here its the cheap plastic items like buckets and trash cans that are currently made in Malaysia but if the Chinese ask for more they will find themselves on the breadlines as well.
And your second point is ENTIRELY GOVERNMENT WORK which can NOT happen if there is no CAPITAL to take from the workers to pay for that work! or sure DC thinks they can keep doing it without any pesky taxes but you get what we have now where our credit ratings slowly goes to shit and our entire system called capitalism collapses because whether you accept it or not China is a communist country with a centrally managed economy, they simply didn't cut themselves off from the west like the USSR did.
And none of your post addresses the central problem which is you can NOT have a capitalist country where the vast majority have no capital or way to make capital and actually survive! Nearly half of this country pays no taxes now because they fall below the poverty level after paying their bills, that simply is NOT sustainable, no matter how you slice it. the government can't magically pay for all that new infrastructure and planes and tanks without the population working so they can pay taxes and as the birth rate climbs you are NOT seeing more appear in the top 5% but damned near all the growth is in the bottom where they aren't making enough to pay taxes as it is. The entire system is designed so that once you are in the system its damned near impossible to get out, such as the relatives I know that are on disability and living hand to mouth. they could work...if they could afford their meds but they can't qualify for a job that would pay their meds and let them eat so they have no choice but to stay where they are at.
In the end, no matter how you slice it, the system is heading for a massive crash. if you are arguing that China will become the USA and the USA will become a big enough shithole that you can dump toxic waste and take all those jobs from China? it might be possible but by then the government will have already collapsed and you will have one of the largest nuclear powers in a state of revolution...not a pleasant thought friend, not pleasant at all. And I highly doubt the USA would end up with an orderly wind down like the USSR had, there are too many factions, too many poor, and simply not enough to go around. And in the end it all comes down to the fact you could wipe out more than 60% of the poor in this country tomorrow and frankly it wouldn't change the day to day of the country one damned bit. and that tells me you have too many people friend, just too many people.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
3 shifts, huh?
So you say in China a day is 45 hours long, right?
Anyway I believe the 40.000 sq mt facility (provided it's a single floor, which I don't know) includes changing rooms, baths, halls, canteens, management offices and who knows what else.
So it still sounds like a quite crowded area to me.
Mastering the English language is fucking easy: all you have to do is to put an f* word in every fucking sentence.
If you had read carefully about that report, you would have noticed that Greenpeace made a report based on promises that companies made. As an example, HP promised to get rid of BFRs (Brominated Flame Retardants) within a few years and got 10 points of that, while Apple made no such promise and got zero points. What Greenpeace had missed was that Apple didn't make that promise because the had already removed all BFRs! So Greenpeace's rated vague promises for the future higher than action that had already taken place.
Knowledge workers have massive multiplicative effects - meaning one knowledge worker typically creates a support base of several other workers - everything from tech support to delivery drivers. Manufacturing jobs don't do that.
[FUCK BETA]
From what I gather, Apple does do some designs in such a way that it requires a lot of people to assemble just so other valued Chinese or foreign companies won't set up a mechanized line to knock out knock offs faster than Apple can produce originals. This means that to knock off an Apple product successfully, you'd need a lot of up front investment, something the knock off companies won't do.
Personally, I think that Apple, Google, et. al. should be required to maintain some sort of interoperability between their media platforms, or at least open them enough that others can compete. If I buy a movie on iTunes, I should be able to play it on an Android machine (there's no real technical obstacle.) Same for books, music, etc.
This is clear monopolistic behavior, and should be crushed like a bug.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Walled garden argument is lame? Hasn't happened yet. And the fanboi argument comes from the uncritical "I won't buy anything else because I decided Apple is slightly more 'ethical' than those other guys." As to "hypocritical"? It means doing or believing other that what one says. What in that person's post indicates that they do so, much less that they are particularly extreme at it.
It must be tough being an angry virgin these days, what with all that pornography on the internet reminding you of what you can't have. Keep your bitterness for when you're crying while masturbating.
No offense, anyone who jumps to call someone out as a fanboy of company X is usually a fanboy of competitor Y. Those of us who buy products and don't give a shit about what others like or dislike, we are the ones who aren't fanboys. -- a very happy Galaxy Nexus owner, FWIW, but also really like Apple products
I think they will all be standing :)
There'll only be one floor in this building - it's safety feature to stop 35,800 people throwing themselves off the roof to end it all.
Is it just me, or does it seem odd that they'd create a plant that has nearly 1 employee per square meter? I don't think even the nazis packed jews in that tightly. Wow...
Let me put my cards on the table - I could care less about Apple.
I've been using computers now for more than a quarter of a century and never felt the least bit inclined to buy any Apple product because nothing they've ever made would ever have enhanced my computing experience - and, yes, as a techno-geek I keep abreast of as many new products as I can, Apple or not Apple.
At this moment in time, I use mostly Linux - but even that doesn't do all I need a computer to do which is why I also do a lot of work on Windows - and even have some killer purchased apps on Windows that don't have Open Source equivalents that are anywhere near as good. But that's just the way it is, using a bit of both I can get a computer to do all I need a computer to do.
As such, Apple have no effect on my computing experience, they are entirely irrelevant to me and if other people like and buy their stuff then so be it - knock yourselves out.
But Apple or not, I do have a problem with people who believe that aligning themselves to a logo or brand makes them better than anyone else - if anything, doing so demonstrates a greater need to be with the "in-crowd" rather than buying something based purely on its technical or functional merits.
Windows 10 is great - I used it to download Linux.
What makes you think that manufacturing jobs don't have multiplier effects? You're flat-out wrong. Think about the two specific roles you cited, for a start: tech support and delivery drivers. You don't think there's an analogue to tech support for manufacturing? Trouble-shooting teams? And you don't think that goods need to be transported both to and from manufacturing sites? Manufacturing typically has a *higher* multiplier effect than service jobs. But they're both Good Things.
I am not unsympathetic to current events in India and China but why are the economic events taking place their now any different to what took place in Europe and the USA around a century ago?
I have Indian colleagues in my work team and even they will fully admit that personal wealth plays a big factor in Indian society and the caste system that still exists there - I suspect the same is true in China where the new rich there are able to use their new wealth to buy properties in London and spend their money in the West.
Wealth is a new thing to many people in Asia and therefore those people haven't yet learnt or focused on some of the consequences of attaining that wealth that we in the West identified decades ago - why do you think we came up with employee unions to fight for workers' rights or made sure that, for example, coal-miners were equipped with protective face masks to restrict coal dust exposure and resultant lung and respiratory problems?
The best people to change poor working conditions in the less developed areas of the world are the people that work in those conditions, simply because that's what everyone else in the West had to do at some point. No corporation is going to ever give anything to anyone away free unless it hits them directly in their profits - and if workers get organised and angry enough to withdraw or restrict their labour en masse, that's when conditions get changed.
If anything, the developing nations now do have an advantage now that the West didn't have then because of organisations like Amnesty International, the United Nations, etc. that exist to bring pressure to bear on bad living or working conditions. But they're not going to do anything unless the workers themselves take their eyes of the money they are earning and want to change it.
Windows 10 is great - I used it to download Linux.
Did anybody ready the article? The plant is being built in Taiwan, not in the People's Republic of China.
Half of the comments are about plants in China. Taiwan, the last I checked, is still independent of China and may have much stricter employment rules.
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
I tend to read such comments with voice of Hitler in my head. You are wrong on so many levels that it's hard to counter your comment.
"Dumb" people can have smart children and smart people can have dumb children. In fact - the smartest people usually don't have the smartest children because they don't have time to play with them. Poor != dumb && IQ != smart. Besides, "dumb" people can comprehend complex theories, maybe they're a bit slower but they do.
The single biggest thing I learned from IQ graph was that it has Gaussian distribution. The for any given population the mean is it means that the IQ of 95% of people is in range 70..130. A person with IQ of 90 is perfectly normal and capable of learn everything. Sure there are retards on both ends of IQ graph, but they don't make up the general population like you claim.
PS! don't believe the online tests too much.
Of course, this is all very handwavey and it varies hugely by sector. But the point remains that industrial towns that have undergone this transformation succesfully now have higher employment than they did before.
[FUCK BETA]
This is the direct proof that all this government intervention in the USA and Europe etc. is what PREVENTS JOBS FROM HAPPENING and KILLS EXISTING JOBS.
You say it as if that's a bad thing. The West actually doesn't want jobs. The West wants "Jobs", as in Steve Jobs, as in being the boss, the management, the CEO.
So those who already are CEOs and high level people (the rich) have ordered their governments to take steps to ensure "jobs" are not created, but them (the rich) gets to keep their high level positions (and pay)
So what's happening in the West is a feature, not a bug. The West is still a great place for high level people. Sucks to be the rest of the people who aren't the privileged minority, but hey, those CEOs don't owe any of the rest of the people shit.
Don't be an idiot. The more people we have, the higher the rate of technological advancement will happen. Humans are the ultimate resource. Without people eventually development would stagnate or even reverse itself. It has happened before when there were large population implosions (fall of the Roman Empire, Black Death, etc).
A Brief History Of China's One-Child Policy :
"Even if China's population multiplies many times, she is fully capable of finding a solution; the solution is production," Mao Zedong proclaimed in 1949. "Of all things in the world, people are the most precious." The communist government condemned birth control and banned imports of contraceptives.
Combining rampant population growth with the disastrous industrial and agricultural follies of the Great Leap Forward , China experienced one of the largest famines in modern history -- the Great Chinese Famine of 1958-1962.
Care to point to some studies that back up your position? You've just reasserted your original statement. Adding extra workers to a factory is typically done because of increasing volumes of output, and that certainly *does* increase maintenance requirements, plus all the suppliers need to make more stuff also, thus adding jobs.
A quick look at the US BEA's website suggests a multiplier of 2.34 for manufacturing vs 1.55 for professional and business services.
I couldn't find any evidence that demonstrated that (a) post-industrial towns with thriving service sectors have higher levels of employment than industrial towns with thriving manufacturing sectors, or (b) that there was a causal link (would be v difficult to show this in any event, given the amount of confounding factors)
Depending on how they counted them, there are probably also many employees working outside the plant as well, handling things like transportation and external infrastructure. For a plant of this size, the number of associated employees not actually in the plant could be quite substantial.
Off the top of my head, Lowes, Toys R Us, and McDonalds all hired 40,000+ in the past year.
Haven't seen the need, when something else that does the same thing is out for far cheaper. Guess this is icing on the cake.
I sometimes wonder what these people will do once the reverse is true.
ask uk, detroit.. where-ever.
drink booze and play pool, mostly. sometimes strip for money. if you think about it's it's not really that bad life compared to doing fucked up cultural revolutions.
why do you think apple doesn't want these people on their payroll in their factory? so that it's not their problem.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
quite, but not exactly.
it's just a whole lot easier to hire 50 000 assembly peons than to hire 500 assembly line engineers(and like said more flexible and faster).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Apple purposefully forced Foxconn to build this plant so they could pack it full of Chinamen, like livestock in a slaughterhouse. Then Apple is going to personally slit all their throats with gold knives that they bought with their large profits (those selfish assholes), because thats what Apple does. Then Apple is going to gather all the blood and bottle it for consumption in shiny aluminum flasks with Apple logos on them that they will distribute it back in Apple headquarters. The souls of the fallen will be ingested by highly paid Apple engineers to satisfy the deal they made with Satan for their intelligence. You can be assured that I know this to be true, because I use a PC made from components that, if they were so capable of dreaming, would never dream of being manufactured by a company like Foxconn, or in any other country other than the United States of America. I am superior because I built it myself, an American, by shopping for parts on Newegg in America. I have a high tech expertise level, because I know how to put components together that only fit one way, and can choose AHCI over IDE in BIOS. All other methods of using computers are inferior, and if you do not use an Android device, fuck you. Android lets me express myself by taking the work of other people and arranging it in a way that makes me feel special, a need that I so desperately require to be filled. If you do not think like me: you are just a sheep that will do whatever everyone else that does not think like me does, you poor dim-witted bastards. How dare you be enabled with the power of making an independent thought, and not come to the same conclusion that I did. And this does not apply to just people who use Apple products (you're dead to me now, Grandma), but to anyone who does not use what I say to be acceptable. I have dedicated my life to flaming you scum, and you will know that you have chosen to express you individual freedoms poorly when you feel my vengeance upon thy screen.
We are subsidizing the Communist party! How about Malasia or South Korea Apple. I may have to take a stand against Apple soon.
Ahem... "Currency of some type has been used in China since the New Stone Age. The Chinese also invented paper money in the 9th century."
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
A quick look at unemployment levels might point out that the GGGP is making the situation in Glasgow sound a lot better than it is... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8000029.stm
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
Your comment tells me you don't understand and therefore value what a good tradesman does. Most electricians and plumbers do far more than new installations.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World