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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."
For anyone that hasn't heard of this incident before...
But...but...you have Robocop!
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
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'
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.
"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.
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).
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.
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?
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'?
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."
I suspect a significant part of this decision comes from supply chain considerations. Consider that the US is still one of the largest markets for the electronic gadgets they make. If they ship their products on the ocean from China to the US, it will probably take 4 to 5 weeks to arrive in the US warehouses. Even if they go by air, it may take up to 14 days by the time it clears customs.
Now think about the volatile nature of the markets for these products - they are difficult to forecast accurately, and small things can cause large swings in demand... rushes on product that empty store shelves, or a popular review that points out some flaw in the product. Plus these products have a relatively short "shelf life" of being "hot". As an example, the Nexus 32 GB came out 6 months after the Nexus 8GB.
4 weeks of slack in your supply chain represents 4 weeks of tied up capital that is not doing anything but costing money. Additionally, it makes you 4 weeks further from being able to respond to changes in the market. Let's say your product has a fatal (in terms of the market... you have to hold it "just so" to get reception) flaw and sales tank sortly after launch. You already have 4 weeks of product sitting on the water. On the other hand, let's say the product takes off far more than forecasted. Store shelves are empty and it's going to be 4 weeks before you can stock them up again.
At the other end of it, because your supply chain is less responsive to the market changes, you have a greater risk of having more obsolete product at the end of its lifecycle. You can destroy it and write off the costs, or you can try to liquidate to make more revenue - but then you have old products competing against your new ones.
You can mitigate some of these issues by moving some of your manufacturing capacity to "near shore" or "on shore" with respect to the market you're selling in. You can still use "cheaper" Chinese production to manufacture some large percentage of your product line at cheaper cost, then use the nearby manufacturing to be able to quickly respond to market changes.
For a car analogy, 1 mile of train takes a long time to start and stop, but carries weight efficiently. 1 mile of trucks can start and stop much more quickly, but at greater cost. A combination of both probably gives you an optimal transportation mix - minimizing cost balanced with maximizing responsiveness.