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Foxconn Unit To Cut Over 10,000 Jobs As Robotics Take Over (nikkei.com)
According to Nikkei Asian Review, "Foxconn's panel arm Innolux is planning to slash more than 10,000 jobs this year as part of the company's aggressive efforts to increase the use of automation in manufacturing." Honorary Chairman Tuan Hsing-Chien said in a press conference on Tuesday: "We will reduce our total workforce to less than 50,000 people by the end of this year, from some 60,000 staff at the end of 2017." From the report: Innolux is a liquid crystal display-making affiliate of major iPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry, better known as Foxconn Technology Group. Tuan is also a technology adviser to Foxconn, Sharp and Innolux. Tuan said up to 75% of production will be fully automated by the end of 2018. Most of Innolux's factories are in Taiwan. Tuan's pledge came a few days after Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou said the company would pour in some $342 million to overhaul its manufacturing process by using artificial intelligence.
And their pink slip said: Me Chinese. Me play joke. Me go peepee in your coke.
. . . until they could perfect a robot that could commit suicide due to poor working conditions.
https://www.salon.com/2018/02/...
How is this honorary?
Build A Wall to keep the jerbs in and keep the robot Mongolians out!
You're using some lovely RIAA math there, sport.
Wisconsin is paying nothing by offering tax breaks and tax credits for a company that otherwise would not even be setting up shop in Wisconsin.
Missing out on money? Debatable. But that tax income does not exist. There's literally nothing being paid.
Finally, Foxconn are doing the right thing, striving to eliminate those awful working conditions.
They already cut the workforce from 110,000 to 50,000.
Somehow, when it is cheaper to replace Chinese workers with robots, those manufacturing jobs will come back to the US...
Now they won't have to work in those "sweat shops," right? They'll be so much better off unemployed than having that "sweat shop" job.
FoxCONN (as it was a CON) bringing in the big new Diplay factory to Mount Pleasent, WI promising 30,000 jobs - yeah for ROBOTS! Foxconn even bought the old Northwest mutual building in Milwaukee to make it their North American Headquarters.
A bunch of property owners are SUING over the use of "eminent domain" to take their land for the foxconn plant. Boy is Good old Scott Walker FUCKING the people of WI with this one!
The Truth is a Virus!!!
The good news is that the replacements will have higher wages and better living conditions.
They'll be so much better off unemployed than having that "sweat shop" job.
It is unlikely anyone will be unemployed. Most of these robots are going into areas where labor costs are highest, which means the areas around Shenzhen. There are plenty of other jobs in that area. Nearly every business is looking for workers.
The headline and summary are misleading. What they describe as "job cuts" and "slashing" are really Foxconn dealing with hiring shortfalls. The one child policy started in 1979 and became more strictly enforced in the 1980s. Workers born in the "bulge" generation before that are no longer interested in working on factory floors, and there just aren't enough young people to replace them.
There are three solutions:
1. Move manufacturing further inland or to other countries (such as Vietnam), where supply chains will have to be rebuilt, and new workers trained.
2. Raise wages to draw more workers off the farms.
3. Use robots.
From a business perspective, #3 is the best choice.
Just like a late stage capitalist to paint a false dichotomy between death and sweat shop conditions. Come the revolution, perhaps you'll recant as you're lined up against the wall.
We will reduce our total workforce to less than 50,000 people by the end of this year, from some 60,000 staff at the end of 2017.
That's outrageous! People really need to contact them and let them know what they think about this statement. It's not less than 50,000 people. It's fewer than 50,000 people.
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
Shenzhen is in China not Taiwan you idiot, so the the Chinese government has no say over this.
....a German union responded to increasing automation by striking for a 28 hour work week with a pay increase....and they won.
...are in Wisconsin.
factory that is supposed to be built in Wisconsin. Our brilliant governor gave them 3 billion dollars in incentives to build the factory because they promised "as amny as" 13k jobs would be created. I guess they didn't specify that they'd be jobs for humans...
We all know what the most important issue is here: the pay gap between male robots and female robots.
"From a business perspective, #3 is the best choice."
It does look nice if you don't know what's involved. It's not so great when you actually try to implement robots and automation. It requires a lot of good involved key technical people and lots of patience. There are quite a lot of pitfalls, lots of headaches, things not working, lots of planning, lots of engineering involved and a lot of innovation involved. If you can't keep these people around, your robots might as well be expensive paper weights.
I run into a lot of plant owners around me who think automation allows them to get rid of all their expensive employees, but it's actually the inverse. You end up getting rid of your cheap labor for highly paid skilled positions. To me it's a great thing, it's actually overall cheaper for me with better paid employees who care and knowing things get done without me having to worry or be stressed out. But there are a lot of managers and owners who don't see that at all and expect automation to replace their expensive maintenance people and engineers. They buy these expensive automated machines and expect Juan on minimum wage to be able to figure out how to run it, fix it, troubleshoot it, and also at the same time expect Juan to be QC. Then they cry and wonder how it turned into a disaster.
American businesses chose cheap labor in the 90s, in spite of the availability of robots, so, why pursue robots now, instead of more cheap labor?
lol You are an idiot. Shenzhen is in China. This news is happening in Taiwan. How did you even get Shenzhen when it's not mentioned anywhere?? The subtitle is 'Taiwan's Innolux upbeat on mini LED display that can be used in cars'. How in the world do you miss that? God, you are probably American too. We are so fucked if this is the level of reading comprehension in this country.
American businesses chose cheap labor in the 90s, in spite of the availability of robots, so, why pursue robots now, instead of more cheap labor?
Because the 90s were 20 years ago, and robots today are way better.
So... you expect us to believe that in a country with over a billion people, they can't find factory workers?
You're joking right?
Maybe, just maybe, they've decided that raising wages to attract more workers is more expensive than installing robots to replace the workers they can't attract?
lol You are an idiot. Shenzhen is in China. This news is happening in Taiwan. How did you even get Shenzhen when it's not mentioned anywhere?? The subtitle is 'Taiwan's Innolux upbeat on mini LED display that can be used in cars'. How in the world do you miss that? God, you are probably American too. We are so fucked if this is the level of reading comprehension in this country.
Foxconn is a Taiwanese company to be sure but it operates factories in mainland China. One of those factories is a flat-panel display factory in Shenzhen, China. He probably assumed that Foxconn is making these panels there which is not an unreasonable assumption. Myself, I have no idea where these panels are being made, it could be that Foxconn also has a flat-panel factory in Taiwan so this is my first and last contribution to this flame war.
They'll be so much better off unemployed than having that "sweat shop" job.
It is unlikely anyone will be unemployed. Most of these robots are going into areas where labor costs are highest, which means the areas around Shenzhen. There are plenty of other jobs in that area. Nearly every business is looking for workers.
The headline and summary are misleading. What they describe as "job cuts" and "slashing" are really Foxconn dealing with hiring shortfalls. The one child policy started in 1979 and became more strictly enforced in the 1980s. Workers born in the "bulge" generation before that are no longer interested in working on factory floors, and there just aren't enough young people to replace them.
There are three solutions:
1. Move manufacturing further inland or to other countries (such as Vietnam), where supply chains will have to be rebuilt, and new workers trained.
2. Raise wages to draw more workers off the farms.
3. Use robots.
From a business perspective, #3 is the best choice.
If these jobs are so horrible that workers at Foxconn factories are committing suicide the perhaps it is for the best these jobs are being automated. Having said that, this is a situation where you can't really win, automate the jobs and you are a villain, do not automate them and you are driving workers to suicide on behalf of Apple, the root of all evil in this and all other parallel universes so you are also a villain. People in the west piss and moan about automation and the condition of workers at Foxconn (and make no mistake about it the conditions are no less brutal at other non-Foxconn operated factories). Do those same people want to pay USD 1000 for that plasma flat-screen they can currently buy at Costco for USD 500 so Chinese workers can get a better living wage? The hell they do, that would be highway robbery!!
Itiot Governor Scott Walker and bigger idiot Dotard gave away the farm to Foxconn, thinking they could take credit for the new factory to be built in WI. That factory had been planned for a long time, but Walker gave them a ton of tax breaks, anyway. Now, these idiots are going to learn how dumb they are when all those promised jobs end up being done by robots. Walker and Trump are fools!
Because robots provide a much higher consistent product, can do it much faster, can work 24/7 without having to change shifts, no need to take any safety procaution, so can actually do it's work in a much smaller room (so more lines could be stacked upon each other in one room), and are less prone to 'sickness' as a human (with that I mean, they break down less than a human). So there are so many reasons why it's better to use a robot.. Also robots have become much better and much cheaper the last couple of years.
If these jobs are so horrible that workers at Foxconn factories are committing suicide ...
They aren't. A few Foxconn employees have offed themselves over the years, but with over a million employees, that is a statistical certainty. Foxconn employees are actually less likely to kill themselves than the average in China for people of their age and gender.
Not only are they better today but also more widely dispersed, as well as increased availability.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
The irony is that "come the revolution" the capitalists will flee the country and it'll be the "true believers" among the bourgeoisie that will be lined up against the wall by the poor they claim to represent.
Foxconn employees are actually less likely to kill themselves than the average in China for people of their age and gender.
If Foxconn factories are so terrible because of the suicides, then the American universities campuses must literally be hell.
Facts get in the way of the evil Foxconn suicide narrative.
"His name was James Damore."
Reduced production costs mean more goods are produced cheaper. More goods produced cheaper means those items can be sold for less and used to create jobs. If Henry Ford had decided not to use automation less cars would have been made and while he may have had more workers fewer people would have been able to buy the cars because they would have been more expensive. The low cost of automobiles have made product delivery cheap and accessible.
Automation has created more jobs than it has "taken away" .. if automation only takes jobs, how do we have more employed people in the world today than 100 years ago when women didn't even work. The workforce has increased even though manufacturing uses automation.
The more low cost products we have the more services and things around that product will be needed. If more people have smartphones more people will be needed for everything from setting up cell phone towers to making cat videos.
For every person losing their job assembling iPhones, there will be two new jobs for people making content for smartphones.
as do the suicide nets!
as do the suicide nets!
The suicide nets were a PR response to pressure from the media to "do something" about a problem that didn't actually exist.
This is good news, because 10,000 people will no longer be exploited by Foxconn. Right? That is how it works, no?
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.