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Foxconn Sees New Source of Cheap Labor: The United States
hackingbear writes "Foxconn is planning to build manufacturing plants in the U.S., probably in cites such as Detroit and Los Angeles. 'Since the manufacturing of Apple's products is rather complicated, the market watchers expect the rumored plants to focus on LCD TV production, which can be highly automated and easier.' Foxconn chairman Terry Guo, at a recent public event, noted that the company is planning a training program for US-based engineers, bringing them to Taiwan or China to learn the processes of product design and manufacturing."
Americans may have invented a lot of the manufacturing processes used for consumer electronics, but China and other Far Eastern countries have a big edge on us now. Let's put our egos aside and learn what we can from the Chinese.
They would do better to build their factories in flyover country, where cots of living are lower, average wage is lower, cost of utilities is lower, and all that jazz.
The central US is well connected for large freight shipments by rail.
Chinese companies are more willing to be self sufficient and train workers than American companies, who are constantly whining that the government should do it. And theyre from a communist country where the government is much more powerfull. Good job, assholes.
Detroit (Flint as well) is on the list, L.A. is maybe for managing offices, but the largest plant is going to be in the south. Most likely northern Alabama or possibly Louisiana. How do I know? I work in one of the State Governors office and there has been Foxconn AND Pegatron groups in and out since at least, roughly, Christmas 2011
Gimme a break. Unions are the only thing that defends the middle class from the rich shareholders that demand ever increasing dividends.
You're right, unions ruined everything, including child labor and slavery. Oh the good old days, when you could lock your workers in a factory, and watch them burn to death. (Actually happened)
Not sure how it works in the US. But in Europe a typical valid answer is "if management did not treat the workers like shit, they would not be unionized."
Ha ha hahahahahahaha... Sorry not laughing with you. Oh and your ignorance is showing, might want to put that away before you scare someone.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Unions are parasites that ruined American labor.
When your workforce is so unstable that you might be crushed at any moment by a strike, you hide behind layers of bureaucracy. The system turns to chaos.
Yeah, those Chinese are smug right now but wait until they face their first strike with unionized workers asking for hardwood chopsticks and extra lead in their toothpaste.
lucm, indeed.
Everyone seems to overlook this factor when talking about stuff like this! Last time I custom ordered a laptop from Toshiba Direct, they decided to build it and ship it out of Shanghai, China without really warning me. It took 11 days to build and about 4 more to ship and my customer was PISSED! I was twice as pissed! That long of a delay is unacceptable! If I want something from anywhere in the US, I can get it in 1 day. Remember the Nintendo Wii shortage? Yeah, with a 3 week delay in build and ship time, you're going to lose millions and make all your customers mad. Oversease production and shipping is NOT fast enough for today's businesses and they will not order from another country at any price if they can avoid it. That's the real reason things need to be made here.
For anyone that hasn't heard of this incident before...
I was really confused until I realized there has been a mistranslation. Replace the word 'design' with the word 'copying', and then the summary makes much more sense.
Union strike? In China?
We've all seen what happens when Chinese people rise up against the establishment.
But...but...you have Robocop!
I guess high priced oil is working in our favor for once. Considering the majority of their market is here, they might even be realizing consumers with money buy stuff. Who'da thunk.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
That's why you are supposed to order from Lenovo -- then it will be a better laptop, shipped from Shanghai faster.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The right to join and form a union is important; but I reject the idea of 'Union Shops', where you are required (if not literally, at least practically) to join, and pay.
It's like flag burning and gun ownership; I have no interest in them now, but if you try take away my right to do so, I will just to protest.
First off, it is Apple, an American company who outsourced all its production to China. It is Americans who think iPhone production is to complex for Americans.
Second, building a highly automated plant is NEVER about labor costs. It is about avoiding import duties. Assemble it in the US and it is a US product exempt from import duties and hence cheaper. If Americans were normal people it would also generate some good will, creating jobs in a down economy, that is of course terrible! How dare they insult you? This from the same Forbes that cheers all outsourcing. Damn those Chinese, how dare they outsource back to you! Next thing you know people will actually be having jobs and not leeching from the state!
You will note if you follow the articles, that it is Market Watchers (people who didn't see the crash coming) who talk about iPhone production being to complex. It ain't even for sure yet what will be produced or if the factory will come at all but hey, market watchers already know why it will be producing X and not Y. Even if they don't know what X is.
As for training... gosh... maybe they will train the Americans in English so they can choose between city or sites and not make up new words. Oh wait I forgot, training on the job. BAD. People should have all the required skills from the start or you will bitch you can't find any workers locally and have to import them or outsource.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Why stop there? Sure, you can make a lot more money without paying your employees well, but why pay them at all?
Slavery greatly increases labor efficiency. Instead of providing a salary that your workers will inevitably waste on unnecessary items like iPhones and designer shirts, you simply provide your workers with the necessities directly.
If you want to blame someone for killing American manufacturing, blame Lincoln.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
On site dorms likely will be a no go in the USA or they will not be able to force people to live in them or change you so you pay drops under the min wage.
You jabber on about how unions are bad, how they destroyed this country, but you couldn't be more mistaken. The reason we became a world superpower was because of unions, not in spite of them. When the industrial revolution first made land fall, people left the farms to move into urban factories. There was no health care, no OSHA, no retirement or social security, no educational system, and no child labor laws. Workers would get chewed up by machines and that was that. No lawsuits, no nothing -- your livelihood was destroyed. Quite possibly, you later died of starvation. All of the problems that are present in China today were there at the start of our industrial revolution as well: Corruption, environmental contamination, worker abuse, long hours, low pay, and massive wealth inequity.
Then the unions came, and with it; OSHA, social security, public education, child labor laws, overtime compensation. And you know what happened then? Civilization didn't collapse. In fact, it prospered: The roaring 50s. A single man could now drive a car and live in a house he paid for, in full, and support a wive and two kids, working only 40 hours a week. It was the first generation to grow up with public education, and that literacy reflected in every area of american living; Anyone could invent something new and sell it. America became the land of opportunity. Immigrants flocked to the stars and striped by the millions. The middle class grew, and upward mobility was something just about anyone could achieve. For the first time in modern history, hard work nearly guaranteed a comfortable living. And work hard we did. When Europe was devestated by the world wars, it was american industry and ingenuity that pulled their ass out of the fire, and I'm not talking about the unparalleled capacity to produce ships, tanks, guns, and planes either. We didn't just build our own country -- we rebuilt a dozen others as well in post-war reconstruction. And after all that, you know what we did then? We went to the fucking moon.
Even Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations pointed out that one of the essential duties of government is to provide for the safety and well-being of its citizens. In other words, the work force. America's investment in its labor force resulted in economic gains far in excess of anything even the largest mega-corporations of today can match. And then it all went wrong.
It started with the Boomers. Having been given everything by their parents, they didn't understand the price paid by their predecessors. They assumed that this temporary equilibrium, this golden age, was a permanent feature of America. They felt entitled to it, instead of thankful. And when they seized power in the 70s and 80s, they cut social security, education, defunded OSHA, deregulated... and for a time, it was good. But in the shadows consumer debt piled up. The cost of an education skyrocketed, and illiteracy creeped back in. Our scientific and technological progress peaked, then rapidly deflated as the careers of scientist, engineer, inventor, were removed from public prestige and replaced with ridicule and scorn.
Today, our media holds illiterate opinions as equal to the most established of scientific truths. Our children are unable to afford an education, and we're witnessing the lowest graduation rates from all levels of education that anyone alive can remember. Our economy is in ruins, the middle class is rapidly evaporating, and the few wealthy compete amongst each other to auction off our civil infrastructure and institutions. The bridges and roadways our grandparents built with pride that enabled our economy to prosper grow increasingly deficient, falling into rivers or eating tires and vehicles. Our railway and roadway networks are so badly mangled that the idea of bringing back blimps has been floated a few times as a way of getting goods around. Our air space is managed by state of the art technology... or it was, in 1965.
No, unions made us a super power. And we're going to lose that status because we took what they gave us for granted.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Oh yes, it's all the unions. Even though Germany has unions, pay's it auto works more, and their car industry is profitable, makes more cars, with large amounts of exports.
Unions done wrong fuck the system up. Builds adversarial us (the workers) vs them (the management) mentalities. Unions done right, can and does work very well. It is collaborative, where everyone works together to make the company better, struggle through the bad times etc. This collaboration works both ways, if the company is hitting hard times, the board, management should be taking paycuts themselves, stopping bonuses. They have failed to lead the company into a properous position. Before they have the cheek to ask the workers to cut their salaries, they should be severely cutting their own pay first. Put their hands up in the air, and claim "Yes, we fucked up", so how can we get through this? The CEO has taken a paycut of 80% sacrificing $25 million saving about 300 jobs, can you guys cut 15% until we get through this?
Both Germany and Japan after the second world war had written into their constitutions by Eisenhower, MacArthur and their aides various protections and rights for workers to bargain and act collectively. They both have become some of the biggest players in the automotive industry, and this is not by coinicendence, it is by design.
Automation - The Car Company Tycoon Game
Citation for the parent post: Triangle Shirtwaist Company
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the (supposed) good of its victims may be the most oppressive
Right, like pension funds.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
In Holland the Big 11 (largest employers) have actually said they want the strong unions of the past decades back because although they didn't always agree, at least they could negotiate and sort things out. The big companies want "The polder model" back and preferably without the 3rd party, the government, messing things up again.
It is outside north-west Europe (England excepted) that unions seem to have such a terrible relationship, it is an English/Italian thing, to snobby to admit you are just a wage slave at the mercy of your boss and to corrupt to handle money and power. You can't compare a NW European union with an American one but then the relations between workers and bosses are totally different, Romney would not have gotten 50 of the votes in Europe, he would have been seen as the total asshole he is and be spitted out by anyone who works for a living.
You might have noted that in America, many of the working class, call themselves middle class. Here is a hint: If you live paycheck to paycheck and getting fired is going to be an economic disaster, you are working class. Lower class your economy is already a disaster even with a paycheck. Middle class is financially comfortable. And that doesn't mean you can just avoid your credit cards from being canceled each month but that if something major happens, it isn't an immediate issue, loose job, take a year to find a new one. Upper class means you are comfortable for life even if something major happens.
Quick test for Americans: Did it surprise you to find out that YOU are part of the 47% Romney considers to be a leech? Did you even dare to find out if you are in that group?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Europe's a mess. I'm sorry for not kissing your ass like a guilty American, but I've been there recently and over the last 20 years a lot has changed. Not for the better. Good luck to you all.
Back to the topic. There are valid answers and then there are truthful ones.
The truth in this is complex:
1. Some employers treated their workers like shit, especially when the workers were from ethnic groups who came into the country in such huge numbers they reduced their average value to near nothing (Irish, Mexicans).
2. Many employers treated their workers like shit because the workers, like 90% of humanity, were disorganized, lazy, slovenly, etc. and did a bad job.
3. Most employers treated their workers well for the same reason most employers do today, which is that happy people paid at market rate and overseen by decent people will in turn produce the best labor.
And then there's every total union, like the Soviet republic, where the workers were so not treated like shit that the economy fell apart.
Futurist Traditionalism
buy my Galaxy Note 10.1 before it doubles in price due to American workers. Well I was just waiting till Christmas to see if I could get my sister to get me one.
Slaves make incredibly shitty workers. They only work hard enough to not get whipped. And you have to pay someone to stand behind them with a whip all day. The hard collar for draft animals basically ended slavery's economic viability. The rest was just social inertia.
That is one of those inconvenient truths that some people don't want to hear. Free people, with lives and expenses, have a far greater labor efficiency then slaves.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Oddly enough, bad as it was, that's the sign of a turning point and things were a hell of a lot worse before that. One example is the famous bit of film of the guy that doesn't get run over by a tank because the driver keeps turning to avoid him. An example from before many readers here were born is a bit of a Godwin even if there's a bunch of us that heard about it at the time. Mao is long dead and things have been steadily improving in China since even if there is a long way to go before the reach the level of human rights we are used to in democratic countries.
You need to brush up on some history. Things that you take for granted, like having toilets at work, are all thanks to unions. The alternative, not having unions, will result in a much worse average work day for you and I than any amount of bureaucracy can create.
You need to brush up on some history. Things that you take for granted, like having toilets at work, are all thanks to unions. The alternative, not having unions, will result in a much worse average work day for you and I than any amount of bureaucracy can create.
Yes, but that is history. Like so many other things, they may have outlived their usefulness. Unions were a godsend for workers at their beginnings, but that time is now past and there are many laws that take place of what the unions once accomplished. Yes we can thank what the unions accomplished for those laws, but that doesn't mean they are still needed. I don't know if they are a good or bad thing in modern times. Most union positions have great retirement packages. Unfortunately often times they are not sustainable and many union retirees end up losing it either shortly before retiring or even after retiring. Just look at the air lines. How many lost their retirements in the last five years in that industry alone? I can't imagine how awful that would be.
I'm still not sure what to think about corporate unions, but public sector unions should be outlawed as far as I'm concerned.
I agree, it's great that I was not born in US, got excellent education, and became an engineer.
Just imagine what all random Internet trolls would become if they didn't live in a country ruled by greedy sociopaths, with culture rooted in religious extremism and slavery.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Laws can change. What makes you think they're permenant?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Though union leaders screw over the members occasionally, it's no where near as bad as what corporate executives do. In fact, unlike corporations, unions have government watchdogs. Union leaders are fiduciaries for their members, so both the members and the government regularly investigate and sue malfeasance. Corporate executives are principally fiduciaries for the corporation, and it's difficult for either the government or shareholders to ensure accountability.
The notion that unions are corrupt, their members slothful knuckle-draggers, is political spin by the GOP and the business community which has unfortunately become common wisdom. Of course there was egregious corruption (and still is, but nothing like 50 years ago). But it wasn't just the unions, sadly. Union corruption is just more memorable. We can identify with stealing cigarettes from a truck, or scotch off a boat. Most people find it hard to wrap their heads around sophisticated corporate embezzlement schemes.
Why go that far back? Here's proof you still need unions today.
Unions are parasites that ruined American labor.
They were a necessary evil to combat the exploitive corporations killing workers for profit (usually through negligence, but occassionally through murder). The corporations started it, then complained when the playing field was leveled. If the companies didn't fight so hard against worker rights, the unions wouldn't have gotten to where they are.
Learn to love Alaska
"Fucking Americans, stealing ours jobs everyday. My buddy was forced to train his American replacement. It's only a matter of time before my job is shipped overseas as well." -Random Chinese guy
Huh? You can't be for unions, but against union shops. If unions didn't have enforceable contracts with companies to only employ union members, then companies simply would never employ union members.
You have to understand the function of unions: to stabilize low-skilled, low-barrier-to-entry labor markets. There's no way to accomplish that stabilization without excluding some part of the labor market. They work by placing restrictions on the labor supply.
It my seem inefficient when you listen to anecdotes, but its often more efficient writ large. You need employment and wage stability in order for people to be able to save and plan ahead. It makes them more productive. You then reroute some of that additional gain to folks who got screwed, in the form of welfare.
That's the economic theory. Feel free to dispute the underlying premises, or debate the efficacy of the scheme. But its undoubtedly sound policy given the right circumstances.
I hope the fire codes were improved. Unions do seem to be pointless in this particular case though.
After all, people are still blaming Reagan and Eisenhower for the problems we have today.
Well, Reagan more than tripled the debt in his 8 years, starting the modern trend of cutting taxes while greatly increasing spending. And Eisenhower started the Vietnam war, which destabilized Southeast Asia still to today. And You might as well blame Truman for Fukishima, as using nukes in war set back the use and safety of them as power stations.
Learn to love Alaska
If this is über-sarcasm, kudos.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Tip: the company agrees to that contract which declares a closed shop.
Laws can change. What makes you think they're permenant?
That's true of damn near everything until the heat death of the universe.
If labor laws change for the worse, we have bigger problems to worry about. If the gov't ends up that far into the corporate pockets, they can use the military for strike busters. At that point unions are irrelevant and we're in deep shit.
I wonder how much of this has to do with American labor and how much it has to do with not having thier product stopped at the border due to patent battles.
The Government (under Clinton) provided the groundwork for the subprime crisis to begin with by rewriting the CRA and reapplying it to REQUIRE a certain percentage of loans to go to those who would otherwise not qualify. Remember, the CRA was signed into law by Carter. The rules and regulations of the CRA were tweaked by successive administrations to reel it in, or in the case of Clinton, to let more line out so the artificial bubble he rode during his 2nd term was intact (by perception) when he left office. That plus the 2004 SEC allowing these banks to borrow against 30x their working capital did a number on the economy. To say the Shrub was solely responsible is just like Obama saying Shrub caused him to run up the deficit at 4x the rate Shrub did. The concepts of the subprime crisis cross party lines, because most of the regulatory response to the Progressives' mis-characterization of Wall Street "being above the law" have done and will do nothing to fix the underlying problem that government meddling in the banking system is never for the reasons stated.
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
What's yours rooted in? Xenophobia and mass murder by autocrats? Just a guess.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
You mean Great Britain? No, France. Oh, wait... you meant Germany, surely.....
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
Yeah -- it kept sane people from trying to get into the government or building empires around their person. Mildly oppressive government is far superior to ones that whores itself to the rich.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Yeah, that's great. We had a Progressive movement 100 years ago that gave us things like minimum wage, child labor laws, and workplace safety standards that everybody has to follow.
Guess what? When you walk into the door of an employer you get all that without paying dues to union bosses
Guess what else? Workers still die in the fields of California's central valley. Just 20 years ago, such factory doors were routinely locked at chicken processing plants in the Carolinas. Where are the unions?
50-50 splitting on NAFTA because some of them subscribed to the idea that they were truly International, which is communist bunk held over from the early 20th century. They actually thought that Free Trade could be used to spread American style union procedures to foreign countries. Were they naive or paid off?
Where else were the unions? Protecting public employee pensions--six figure salaries ultimately paid for by real working people via taxation.
You cite stuff that happened 100 years ago. Today's labor movement is anything but for the working man. A real labor movement would dispense with the corrupt Democratic Party machine politics, and lobby for an expanded minimum wage involving workplace standards in a region regardless of whether or not you paid dues.
The unions are just like anything else. The ability to turn something into a profit center is irresistably corrupted. "Representing" and "negotiating" are nice jobs for union reps and lawyers. Today's labor movement is to labor what megachurches are to Christianity. They talk a good game, but it's ultimately all about the collection plate, and the preacher's Benz.
Also no one today was alive when the union movement got started. No one has in fact experience the actual violence and murder perpetrated against early unions who were lobbying for safer working conditions (such as not being forced to work in carbon monoxide polluted environments where people were routinely dying).
This should surprise nobody. Foxconn has developed as a large international manufacturing conglomerate, and the US has by far the largest manufacturing economy, manufacturing 1.7 trillion dollars a year, compared to China's 1.2 trillion dollars a year.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
It's worth noting that union influence on an industry also benefits non-union members. When you're required to adopt good practices and certain wage levels, it drags the bottom up.
You're right, unions ruined everything, including child labor and slavery. Oh the good old days, when you could lock your workers in a factory, and watch them burn to death. (Actually happened)
This isn't the 1950s. The medieval Islamic world gave us a lot of inventions too, but I wouldn't say that they are a model of global capitalism today.
No but you're naive if you think the fundamentals of human nature have somehow changed that it could never happen again. It happens in China and other countries all the damn time. Child labor is a massive issue which India is only just starting to get under control. The situation improved because of the union movement.
That's a false argument. The reason that Chinese manufacturing is less expensive is because you have lost of rural people from the villages willing to work for pennies. American and the rest of the industrialized world just can't compete. The average pay for a factory worker in China is ~$270 per month. How can you compete with that?
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
If the goods ended, we wouldn't care so much as the collapse of Dell and Apple from them not being able to sell anything. All the US companies failing because they depend on China goods would be the problem. If China stopped sending us things, what would be left for Wal-Mart to sell? Some chips and gum at the checkout lines?
Learn to love Alaska
Gosh, people still buy into this stuff?
The reason why we have sub-prime is because of CDOs, so that banks can hide their poor quality loans by bundling them together, and then slicing them up into different layers with different risk profiles. They then sold these off to investors so they could rinse and repeat.
The maths behind them is all wrong and they didn't account for the fact that although you can spread the risk by bundling poor quality loans together, the distribution of the credit events is not random.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
You must have missed election night coverage on Fox News. You can always catch up on the unintentionally funny parts by watching the Daily Show though.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
Yeah things like the 40 hour work week and paid overtime just destroyed US manufacturing. They were doing much better when they paid 3 dollars a day for 16 hours labor and you shopped at the company store on credit so you couldn't quit for another job because you owed the store 5 months of your pay. Oh for the good old days.
They're right - who in the US today studies how to set up a production line? Who gets a degree in production engineering? Production engineering is a complex problem. Failure can occur in non-obvious ways. Mistakes can lead to a plant which looks great, produces good product, and costs too much per unit produced. Or a good plant which needs huge capital expenditures and a long shutdown to change to a different product. Apple, in their manufacturing days, made both those mistakes.
The answer is not to get rid of unions in America, but to encourage them in China.
You seem to regard science as some kind of dodge... or hustle.
Although I have no problems with unions, I think the unions in north America like the UAW, need to change. They work against the very company that is providing them a living. I've heard enough stories from auto factories that make me cringe. A friend of mine interned at Ford, and he wasn't allowed to plug his computer into the socket, because that's the electricians job. Union workers who just goofed off and screwed things up all the time couldn't get fired, they just got moved to a position where they did nothing and still got paid. A friend of mine was forced to join the union after repeatedly being threatened.
Of course, almost none of the liars' loans made by the brokers and banks fulfilled the requirements of CRA, but it makes a good story for those who want to excuse the thieves and blame it on the government.
I know one former investor who lost $3M dollars (75% of his net worth) because of what the banks did to him - and he wanted to blame it on Obama (who wasn't even in office when most of the theft occurred). I wouldn't care that much if you need your deluded beliefs, but your delusions keep the crooks out of jail and that is a shame.
When you are dancing with wolves, never limp
Taiwan has the GDP per capita of Germany, is a democracy, is not communist.
Just saying.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
What about the right of the other unemployed individuals who would be glad to have that same job at the lower wage to get started and develop a work history? Is it better to have 2 employed at $12 per hour and 1 unemployed or 3 employed at $8? Shouldn't the business owner be able to make the decision of employing fewer highly skilled/quicker and more expensive workers or more lower skilled lower paid workers? If it's inefficient because of turnover and chaos in the company, the business owner is the one shooting his business in the foot, and his competitors will figure out they can make a different decision and come out ahead.
Consider this model: 10 potential workers, each equally productive if employed. The economy has $20,000 to pay the workers. Is it better to pay 10 workers $2000 or 8 workers $2500, tax the workers the $500 and pass it to the two unemployed men so they can get along? In both scenarios, each employee has $2000, but are the two situations identical? No, if each of the workers are equally productive, and each worker can produce 1000 units of goods per month, and everybody spends all of their money, then the situation with all 10 employed is better, because the economy has 10,000 units to distribute at $2/unit. In the 8 worker situation, we get 8000 units at $2.50 a unit. In the first situation, everybody gets 1000 units of economic goods available to consume and in the second you only get 800.
Think about if you started with the second situation, and tried to move to the first by cutting wages from 2500 to 2000, eliminated unemployment, and provided the economy with a productivity boost that could drive economic expansion? People would scream bloody murder about wage cutting even though eliminating unemployment would improve everybody's overall situation.
Also, the Union v. Ownership dichotomy is the wrong way to go about getting the employees a larger cut of the revenue pie. The true way toward helping the workers out is for them to become owners. Once the business is in the hands of the employees, the union is unneeded since the employees aren't likely to exploit themselves. I'd encourage a policy of preventing the owner from selling his business to a competitor or conglomerate, but instead allowing the business owner to keep his income taxes in exchange for turning the business over to his employees, although it would take several years to transfer the entire company. This would basically be the government buying the business through reduced tax revenues, although the employees union could put their dues toward purchasing the business faster if the owner were selling. Improvements under this system: More and smaller businesses, which would provide more competition both for customers, and for workers. If you aren't happy working for X, go work for Y.
Ghosts With S*** Jobs. It's quite a brilliant movie.
Once you mandate union membership you lose the edge for the unions to actually be beneficial for their members. In effect, you'll be trading one bad overlord for another. Corrupt union directors will want to protect and grow their empire, not put their energy in representing their members. A union should be beneficial enough for people to want to join voluntarily. Several western European countries still have a healthy union culture, without being mandatory membership. These unions generally do a pretty good job negotiating collective things and have "free" legal representation in case an individual member has trouble with their employer. Union strikes are relatively rare, but tend to be influential enough to be feared by employers. In short, it's perfectly possible to have the unions make themselves useful without mandating membership.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Instead of providing a salary that your workers will inevitably waste on unnecessary items like iPhones and designer shirts
Hehe, also, Foxconn would be out of luck if the workers no longer had money on unnecessary items like iPhones.
Not sure if Foxconn makes designer shirts.
The function of unions is not to exclude some part of the labor market and limit the labor supply. That is a choice that some unions have made in order to put upward pressure on wages.
Unions could instead promote safety and productivity advantage that result in a union member being higher net value to employers (and that is what some have done in the past and claim they do now, but sadly it is somewhat of a historical artifact). In a typical union-shop where a company must pay essentially the same wages to union and non-union members, there would be no net financial advantage to hiring the non-union employee if they were of lower quality and eventually that person would be forced to join the union anyhow.
Instead unions have generally forced the seniority pill on most of the union-shops using pre-hire agreements which effectively excludes parts of the labor market. I guess the people that get screwed by this get to go on welfare in your world. Sure perhaps historically one tool to help keep the company in line to not attempt to hire lower-skill employees for higher skill jobs (and bring down wages), but it's basically just the union paying back people who have contributed union due for a longer period of time. It has little to do with overall wage stability for union members and might be considered a borderline pyramid scheme for union members.
That's my economic theory. Feel free to dispute the underlying premises.
Historically in England, the middle class was the power wielding wealthy merchant class, and the upper class were the peerage, people with titles and hereditry land. Everyone else was lower class, or "common". In the US there has never been a solid definition of middle class, but one that is concise and reasonable is the following. The middle class own and use tools. The upper class hire people to use tools to fix their house and property, the lower class cannot afford to own tools or fix their house or property. It is a generalization and thus not 100% accurate, but it is still useful I think.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
This is republican troll. The global American policies, lobbied by corporations, allowed for offshoring, and companies jumped on cheap foreign labor. It had nothing to do with unions. Actually, we still need unions to protect American jobs. Unions provide a semi-balance of power which is otherwise shifted toward employers.
I think it's great for many reasons, but I'm wondering something.
The Forbes article links to a digitimes article. The digitimes article says, "The program will give the engineers an environment to learn the Chinese language, first-hand expereince in the manufacturing process, and a training that can be helpful after they return to the US, he added."
If the American workers will work in the US, why should they learn the Chinese language?
Perhaps to communicate with Foxconn managers and Chinese suppliers more efficiently? Through my dealings with Chinese and Taiwanese companies, I've found that although many engineering/tech personnel in China have a minimal ability to communicate in English (although some only by email), almost none of the factory or production personnel nor tech employees at low-level parts suppliers have servicable English communication abilities (neither verbal nor email). In a production environment, good communication skills are very important. A manufacturing "lines-down" situation can means thousands of dollars going down the toilet every second.
I'm sure this is just for supervisors and managers and product and quality engineers. They aren't gonna ship all the hourly assembly employees over to china/taiwan for training.
And guess what else? Ever since the union-busting really took off, working conditions and the share of the revenue going to the workforce have declined.
Smart people would notice the correlation.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
A real labor movement would dispense with the corrupt Democratic Party machine politics, and lobby for an expanded minimum wage involving workplace standards in a region regardless of whether or not you paid dues.
Something for nothing? I thought that's what Socialism was for!
Yup. The French Revolution abolished slavery out of principles. Then Napoleon reinstated it because he could, it seemed convenient at the time, and you don't become a controversial history figure without doing, well, controversial stuff.
Then in 1948 it was abolished again, in a move still driven by principled people (like Victor Schoelcher), but the reason it stuck that time is that it had become pretty clear that slavery was inefficient as an economic model (as had been stated by many eighteenth century philosophers). And colonialism was the big craze at the time anyway, which is another matter entirely.
There's nothing like $HOME
Huh? You can't be for unions, but against union shops. If unions didn't have enforceable contracts with companies to only employ union members, then companies simply would never employ union members.
In Europe the law usually says you can't even ask if someone is a member of a union before employing them, and can't fire them for being one. Most people join unions because it is in their interest to be part of collective bargaining, but it is illegal to require joining to work somewhere.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Chicken and egg question here. I don't know much about Japan, but from my French perspective German unions do an awesome job, and are probably one of the reasons (though not the sole) why Germany still does pretty well economically compared to other EU countries.
By contrast, the situation is pretty shitty in France. Polls have shown that among the OECD, French people put a higher value to work than most, but also that they tend to hate their workplace. Interestingly, French workers show less insatisfaction when they work for foreign companies. Some economists pin this on the fact that French economy is largely based on inheritance, and it results in a fundamental lack of trust between the various strates of workplace hierarchies. The workers, the middle management, the bosses, no one trusts another.
In the light of what you say about post-WWII, I wonder if Germany didn't ultimately benefit from getting rid of their higher ups, most of which having been in bed with the Third Reich.
There's nothing like $HOME
I don't know about LCDs, but most industrial processes need a lot of cleaning fluid. Electroplating and other coating and surface treatment processes often have to have metal contents in the effluent down in the parts per billion. There is a limit to what filtering, treatment and precipitation can achieve, and often the simplest solution (literally) is to use lots of water. (Before anybody gets uptight about nasty pollution from industry, the worst water pollution is actually the crap manufacturers put in shampoo, shower gel and the like, along with the hormones and antibiotics we and our farm animals leak out into the rivers and sewage systems).
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Wobocop in a Mau suit.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Mao was a Maoist. The last Communist in Indo-China was Ho Chi Minh, and he only was a Communist because the Americans wouldn't support his proposals for a moderate socialist Government (he lived in England for a while and wanted something like the Labour Party).
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
or Alaska belongs to Russia.
Man that has to be the bargain of the millenium, hahaha, so cheap!.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Why not just hire the three for $1000 instead and tell them to go starve unless they like that option? And if the $1000 isn't enough offer them another job with $500 so they end up having 60h weeks? You are aware of that a lot of people are sporting two (or even three) jobs and have a hard time paying their bills with the regulations present? And do you honestly think that all of a sudden these companies will nice up if there are fewer rules? If you haven't read Nickel and Dimed it's a very interesting read.
It almost sound like you think companies are in some way striving to do good, or even that they are trying to take a long term responsibility. I think that's pretty far from how they work, and that it's going downhill all the time. Companies nowadays have crazy pressure to constantly increase profits for short term winnings for the stock market.
I bet it is more efficient than having a second job just to pay the bills.
They're just moving their operations to the 3rd world like US firms did.
Have you been to Detroit lately?
There are parts that would give Mogadishu a run for its money. What they're going to find is that - like the actual 3rd world - they'll have to keep the local politico's happy, or the corrupt cops and admins will destroy them.
-Styopa
And Eisenhower started the Vietnam war
Good lord - this could not be more wrong. Eisenhower refused to get troops involved in SE Asia, despite intense pressure from the French who were being kicked around the place by the Viet Cong.
Rational thought is the only true freedom
Where I work our contract includes "fair share" for non members. You DO NOT have to join the union, but YOU DO have to pay your "fair share" portion of the union dues that pays for the operation of the union. Why? Because you benefit from the contract that the union negotiated for the entire group, because BY LAW the union MUST represent you whether you are a member or not.
Time and again the most loud-mouthed, union-bashing, "I make my own way" complainers about the fair share fee were always the first ones in my office wanting to know what the union was going to do to fix their problem, to help them deal with a disciplinary issue, fix their poor performance issues or fight their pending layoff. Suddenly wasn't it nice that there was someone to help them in their time of need? As much as I would have liked to tell them to go deal with it on their own I was bound by law to represent them
I never wanted to work where there was a union, but I was the first one in my area to sign an organizing card - I was tired of getting screwed over. I spent 12 years as a steward with eight of them as chief steward as well as being on the negotiating team. Unlike many on /. that comment on unions I have first hand experience working somewhere that went through the stages of organizing and running a union.
I remember a labor relations professor saying that firms get the unions they deserve. That makes sense. Treat people well and FAIRLY why woul dthey ever want to form a union? Treat people like crap and they will be receptive to a union organizers speech.
You noticed that? Shame more people don't. Seems to pretty much start with Reagan busting PATCO signaling open season on unions to the business community. Now those lines on the graph keep getting further and further apart.
Funny that with the dramatic decline in union membership and strength Unions are still blamed for everything that is wrong with manufacturing in the USA.
Theres good unions and theres bad unions jus likes theres good companies and bad factories.
and unions had jack all to do with slavery.
they did however have a lot to do with the avg teacher in chicago making >75k a year in salary (more than engineers with masters), and with the average auto worker, even the guy who just tightens the same bolt all day, making >130k a year in total compensation. the guy who tightens two bolts all day gets 160k in compensation.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
He means being forced to join THE union. no choice. even when they fail to represent you and go against your wishes. want to set up your own competing union that better represents you and your fellow workers? TOO BAD.
That's what he means. Dont be so ignorant Mr AC.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
It cost more to rail a container from LA to NY than it does to ship it from China to NY. The rail networks are laid out in a way that there isn't much capacity for this 'flyover country.' Major rail lines connect LA, Chicago, Houston, and Newark. Everywhere not in close proximity to one of these cities is expensive as hell to ship to and from.
The notion that unions are corrupt, their members slothful knuckle-draggers, is political spin by the GOP and the business community which has unfortunately become common wisdom.
Sorry, but this has come from current major unions such as the UAW, ILA, and ILWU. It takes years, sometimes decades of negotiations to get technological improvements tp processes that have existed for decades overseas, and the guys get paid sometimes an order of magnitude more than their non-unionized white collar bosses to put twist locks in a corner. It is not a myth, it really does happen.
Did you see that video (How Obama Got Elected in 2008): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm1KOBMg1Y8
Many of the "informed" people who appear in the video mention the Daily Show as a source for news. So bash Fox News as much as you want, but clearly (Everything - Fox News) is not doing such a good job of informing people either. Those people don't know who is Nancy Pelosi or who controls the Congress, but they know who got 50k worth of clothes or who has a pregnant teenager. Proud, informed voters.
My first post in this thread was a joke but it is now clear that Obama is like Muhammad, if you make a single reference to him that is not a praise all the cult members go nuts. This is beyond sad because the people with an ideology and a church are supposed to be the Republicans. You people behave exactly like O'Reilly who labeled anyone who disagreed with Bush as "anti-american". Shame on you.
lucm, indeed.
there are bad unions and good ones.
mine is bad from laziness. why im not a member, though they get to negotiate the CBA that i do fall under. they're negotations only "got us" the mandatory 3% raise mandated by the contract with the government anyway. congratualtion guys, you got us something already garunteed to us.
the detroit ones are bad because they drive up auto prices. sure, dude's hourly wage may be "normal". but tack on retirement and medical benefits worth >100k a year and you see where it comes from. (for reference, my medical benefits are very generous (premium entirely paid by the company), and only total ~14k a year) total compensation for a guy whose only job is to insert a bolt here and here all day exceeds 130k a year. not bad for a blue collar low skill job. the same guy at a plant outside detroit makes closer to 40-50k a year.
previous place i worked had a "good" union. they emphasized worker safety, made reasonable demands (no 20% pay raises and 5 month vacation a year), usually got what was wanted, and also emphasized worker productivity so that we earned or justified the added expense ("we cant demand these benefits if we have no justification").
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Unions are the only thing that defends the middle class from the rich shareholders that demand ever increasing dividends.
Which is probably why Hessian called them parasites. Well, that and the fact that Hessian is an asshole who has clearly swallowed way too much GOP propaganda about "job creators."
Poor union workers are a sign of a manager without the balls to do his job properly!
My union contract (IBEW) has a lot of room to get yourself fired. Right now the big item is personal cell phone use. If I am caught using my personal cell phone at work, I can be fired. Simple as that. The union has even told us flat out that it cannot defend us if we break the corporate policy.
Useless middle managers who won't do their job are the problem. If a manager won't make the workers under him do their job, how is it the fault of the union?
THE SIMPSONS: This reminds me of when Springfield's nuclear power plant became too expensive to run, (due to wages, health care benefits, etc), so Mr. Burns outsourced the town's electricity to a low wage plant in India. Homer was sent to manage the staff there and was surprised there were no safety measures, no break rooms, no benefits... so he implemented them all even including child care! You know what happened, the staff there grew used to the good life & became more demanding and expensive so... Mr. Burns restarted the local Springfield power plant because it was cheaper HaaHaaa!
What we also need to remember is that we could triple the minimum wage and it still won't mean shit if the rate of decline of the dollar's buying power continues to increase.
A "weak" currency is not the bad thing that many people suppose. A weak currency makes buying imports more expensive but it makes selling exports more competitive. Japan's currency is very strong right now and so they are having difficulty being competitive on cars they export from Japan. A strong yen and a weak dollar makes Japanese cars more expensive. A weak dollar makes is more cost effective for companies to locate production in the US and for US companies to export abroad. Part of the problem with trading with China is that China has taken steps to keep their currency "weak" on purpose which makes their exports cost less to buy. This is 100% intentional on the part of China and is a significant factor in why goods can be made cheaply in China. (the other big factor is their cheap labor)
Regarding minimum wage, that has little to do with the relative strength or weakness of the currency. Increasing minimum wage could affect product prices but that is independent of exchange rate costs.
Yes but detroit is a shit hole of desperation and low wages
Really? Oakland County which neighbors Detroit City is one of the 10 wealthiest counties in the US.
It cost more to rail a container from LA to NY than it does to ship it from China to NY
Source? My own experience says that is nonsense. I run a manufacturing company that buys stuff from Japan and China as well as domestically. I've worked doing global sourcing from Mexico, China and India. Domestic freight is almost always cheaper and always considerably faster. Furthermore you probably aren't going to use rails to ship stuff domestically, you'll probably use a LTL or FTL truck, not a container so it is a bit of an apples to oranges comparison.
The rail networks are laid out in a way that there isn't much capacity for this 'flyover country.' Major rail lines connect LA, Chicago, Houston, and Newark
No capacity? BNSF, CSX, Union Pacific and the rest will be very surprised to hear that.
Everywhere not in close proximity to one of these cities is expensive as hell to ship to and from.
Demonstrably not true.
Second, building a highly automated plant is NEVER about labor costs.
I'm a certified cost accountant and that is complete nonsense. Decisions regarding automation are almost always about labor costs. Above a certain volume of production it (often) becomes cheaper to automate production than to hire additional labor. Classically you have a high up front tooling cost but production is much cheaper once the line is running.
It is about avoiding import duties. Assemble it in the US and it is a US product exempt from import duties and hence cheaper.
Import duties are typically less of an issue (depending on the product - there are exceptions) than exchange rate risk. Japan builds a lot of cars in the US primarily because it eliminates exchange rate risk to them. It's a form of built in hedge. The Yen is very strong right now so it is expensive to export cars made in Japan to the US. Build them in the US and this problem goes away. If the Yen was cheap relative to the Dollar they would make more cars in Japan.
Eisenhower sent the first American troops to Vietnam, resulting in the first American dead soldiers. That they were "advisors" and not "infantry" doesn't change the first death of a US military person in Vietnam was under Eisenhower. Eisenhower also encouraged and supported South Vietnam to not participate in the elections, out of fear the democratic process could elect someone Eisenhower didn't personally approve of. If Eisenhower had just said "sort it out yourself" to Vietnam, the world would have been better off.
Eisenhower materially supported the south's rebellion from the north, and Eisenhower sent the first American to be killed there. That fits my definition of "he started it".
Learn to love Alaska
Actually happened, and still happening. Some more recent examples. http://wsws.org/articles/2012/may2012/phil-m10.shtml
because starvation is a much scarier whip than one made with leather
Among other things, China is developing a pretty good sense of humor
I was replying to the poster above that was making noise about Chinese stability. I did not state or even come close to implying that Foxconn is not a Taiwanese company
The economy has $20,000 to pay the workers. Is it better to pay 10 workers $2000 or 8 workers $2500, tax the workers the $500 and pass it to the two unemployed men so they can get along? In both scenarios, each employee has $2000, but are the two situations identical? No, if each of the workers are equally productive, and each worker can produce 1000 units of goods per month, and everybody spends all of their money, then the situation with all 10 employed is better, because the economy has 10,000 units to distribute at $2/unit. In the 8 worker situation, we get 8000 units at $2.50 a unit. In the first situation, everybody gets 1000 units of economic goods available to consume and in the second you only get 800.
Sure... or they'll hire 6, pay $1500, force unpaid overtime or unsafe working conditions to make 1000 units, and still sell for $2.50, and talk about record profits they pass on to share holders. And if one of them refuses? Hey, 4 other guys that would jump at the chance.
~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
QA: The art of telling someone that their baby is ugly without getting punched.
By contrast, the situation is pretty shitty in France. Polls have shown that among the OECD, French people put a higher value to work than most, but also that they tend to hate their workplace. Interestingly, French workers show less insatisfaction when they work for foreign companies. Some economists pin this on the fact that French economy is largely based on inheritance, and it results in a fundamental lack of trust between the various strates of workplace hierarchies. The workers, the middle management, the bosses, no one trusts another.
It might also be related to the grandes ecoles (with all the extra accent markers I don't feel like adding), which I've been told ends up amounting to a caste system of sorts. If you're in a French business, you're locked into your job with little upward or downward mobility based on where you went to school. Japan can be similar, as can the U.S., where the right school certainly gives you a significant advantage in a hiring process, but you can also get your own work experience and move up based on that.
~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
QA: The art of telling someone that their baby is ugly without getting punched.
Government controls the economy through taxation and regulations. If the government got rid of business double taxation(((7hr is really 14 since company pays an extra 7hr))) it would probably bring back some manufacturing. Or better yet, just stop taxing business altogether since they provide the jobs and just tax personal income. Roads are built from gas sales tax, public schools through property taxes. The federal government and states really need to get rid of pension plans for government workers and just put them on SS like the rest of us. Stop with all this overseas strategic military plans the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990's, Germans are fine, Japanese are fine, even the Chinese, we don't need the u.s to start causing issues in Europe especially what happened between Georgia and Russia. Cut military spending and stop feeding the military industrial complex for crying out loud. If housing, apartment rentals, gas, electricity, water, were priced as low as they were in the 1990's people would not have to ask for higher salaries, but instead, today, we get ridiculous high prices and low income especially here in NYC(queens, brooklyn, staten island, bronx), manhattan is a special case.
I wouldn't mind making 20k-30k if living costs were down but now I need 55k-60k(also save some money) just to live in brooklyn or queens, 1 bedroom apt jump from $1100 -> $1400 no utilities included while 2 bedroom jumped from $1400 -> $1800 no utilities included, shitty basements $1100. And of course people are inflating home prices at ridiculous levels again so we might have another housing bubble in 5 - 10 years again. a shitty home build for $25k now goes for $1 million.
So you're posting as Anonymous so YOU don't look stupid?
For the UAW in particular, I understand that it's really difficult to fire somebody, regardless of their behaviour. They also have massive bureaucracy and rules that make workers very inflexible. I'm not against unions, I'm actually for them, but the unions themselves have to be reasonable. The UAW is probably one of the main reasons there is a large anti-union movement. I'm glad to hear that not all unions are like the UAW.
Do you know why we don't have on-going nuclear war? It's because nuclear weapons have spread around so much that if one of the holders decides to go bat-shit crazy and push the button, everybody else on the planet will turn their country into radioactive glass. It's called Mutual Assured Destruction. What do you think keeps the Israelis from glassing Damascus?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Well d'oh. Adam Smith already pointed out that Unions are a necessity, because the employers sure as hell do form covenants, so if we forbid the workers to do so, we use the power of the State to oppress one part of the population on behalf of the others.
It is fairly obvious that the US Republican Party has been on a Union-busting spree of unprecedented viciousness in the Western world since Reagan; and in the same time the income disparity has increased. Correlation may not always be proof of causation, but it sure as hell implies a causation, and a smart person starts doing research to see if a causation exists or the issue is a confounding factor.
If leading philosophers of Capitalism point out such a possible causation, then the onus is on the opposition to disprove it.
And as for those that want to point at the failure of Detroit to blame the UAW: the fact that Detroit kept making bad quality land yachts in times the populace was crying out for better cars that the Japanese and Europeans were willing to supply has nothing to do with the decline of the US car industry; it's all the Unions' fault.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?