Naked gyrating iPad vid exposes truth behind Apple's billions
Foxconn has allowed a journalist to film inside an Apple iPad factory in Shenzen, revealing a fresh-faced workforce. The resulting three-minute video shows young Chinese employees at the quarter-of-a-million-strong factory filing into work at 7am, fitting motherboards into cases on clean, brightly lit assembly lines and playing …
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Re: It's not just about the wages/hours
Ermm, I am straight but well ok.
Can be a better fate than others...
Although I'm sure there are many bad things which go on in these factories, it's important to remember it's not all bad. According to reports, Foxconn pays more than many other factories, and probably can get away with less than smaller ones.
When listening to the first radio show, one interviewee said that most of the factory workers they've spoken to, said they preferred this work to the only thing they had before, which was working in the paddy fields, effectively living in poverty.
Totally unrelated
but when did AOL buy TUAW, and why'd it take them so long to consummate what is obviously a match made in heaven?
i want to see
the World of Warcraft farming factories/offices, how do they get so much gold ???
Hopefully
this bogus video will make iPad owners better about themselves..
it's all relative isn't it?
One of the best places to work - compared to what alternatives?
People queueing up to work there - the same can be said of the sweatshops (they call them factories) that Adidas run in Indonesia, the work is intensive, exhausting and carried out over long hours, but the pay is better than anywhere else.
But of couse it's still nothing like a western worker would get (and yes I've heard ALL the b.s. excuses big business use to justify this).
I hate this sort of quasi-slavery. Not having a go at Apple or Foxconn, just the world we live in.
Re: it's all relative isn't it?
Uh, yeah?
So people are migrating from the countryside to do "quasi-slavery"? Ain't that bizarre. Why didn't they stay in the countryside?
"the pay is better than anywhere else"
Ah yes, that's the point, right.
Re: it's all relative isn't it?
Yes that was my point, and you've missed it spectacularly. Well done you.
Re: it's all relative isn't it?
AC, it's no use pointing out evil to evil people - they just think you're agreeing with them.
Re: it's all relative isn't it?
I am just wondering - what would actually happen if a factory popped up in China and started offering the same salaries and t&c's* as the west? The lucky few would get jobs there, everyone else would just shrug their shoulders and say that's life? I don't think so. There wouldn't be 500 people queuing for jobs, there would be riots and murders.
These countries will go through the same journey as the west, possibly a lot faster than the 200 years it took us to stop treating factory workers as expendable slave labour. Heaven help the fat and lazy UK when they get there, but they will.
*I know, but it doesn't look right without the aberrant apostrophe.
Re: it's all relative isn't it?
well firstly only those on an approved list (Communist Party membership most likely - in Zimbabwe it's Mugabe's thugs party ZANU PF ) would be allowed near the place; secondly only those on the approved list with relatives (or political sponsors) would be allowed to apply for a job; and if its anything like some other Asian countries (Indian Seafarers come to mind) it could cost up to 3 times annual salary to get the job. So there wouldn't be anyone queuing for the jobs; as they wouldn't be allowed to. And riots would indeed be met with murder - Tiananmen Square style
(Acronyms and abbreviations either do NOT take plurals or look like this - All MPs lie when they open their mouth)
"If you ignore the suicides and toxic by-products, I am sure it is."
Perhaps you better compare it to any other large industrial company - i.e. what is the suicide rate per 10,000 people? Any company that employs enough people will be unfortunate enough to suffer suicides.
Do would these workers be BETTER or WORSE off if Apple moved production out of China? They come to work in the factory as it pays decent wages (relative to what they were working), they actually get paid and it's a job so they can feed themselves and send money back to support their families.
People in the US / Europe cannot really appreciate it - the idea of working 'hard' for a day for what they get free in benefits or for 1-2 hours work is alien to them.
I'm sure if Apple buggered off these people would be significantly worse off / pooreras a result.
What people in the West miss is that the option here is earn a decent wage making iPads of Microsoft or [insert almost anyone else] products - earn enough money to keep yourself and be able to send some home to support your family - or to be a farmer earning very little or unemployed earning nothing.
People travel long distances and queue to try and work there - it's not what you would (in the West) call 'good' or 'easy' work but it's better pay / conditions than the alternatives. People in the US / Europe look and think 'they are working for less than $2 an hour - I would not be able to live on that' - that's right but it's probably double what they were earning if they even had a job and the cost of living in China is also much lower.
Re: But ...
The population of China is more than 4 times the population of the USA, and most of the people there are poor. Putting up the price of an iPad and paying Chinese workers a bit more to manufacture them isn't going to fix that situation.
Re: But ...
...that doesn't make it right, does it?
I'm not sure it makes it wrong either - the world isn't equal; it doesn't necessarily fit into a "Western" ideal of what's right and what's wrong. In many places the consumption of alcohol is wrong in others the consumption of marijuana, the age of consent varies across the world, in some places you can't openly criticise your beloved leader (that's a term that's actually used without irony in some places believe it or not).
I can see people having to work longer hours, for less pay, and for more years in the UK as the population continues to age - we'll look back and realise that the "baby boomers" had it easy. We'll not return to the kind of industrial age working policies current in China but then China will probably creep forward towards more "modern" (in the "Western" world) workplace practices.
It's all swings and roundabouts and as long as there are cultural, social or economic differences, someone, somewhere will profit from it.
Re: But ...
Intractable Potshard
Yes it does. If it costs you $10 a week to buy food and $5 a week to get 'decent' accommodation for your family (decent is a sliding scale from malarial infested mud huts to Park Avenue) then $2 an hour is riches indeed.
You can not do this stupid $x per day is poverty comparison UNLESS you also add in the COST of living to a LOCALLY acceptable standard. Not everyone has/needs/wants an iPad; xbox; giant tv; rolls royce and a slack handful of bimbos (or toy boys). Some of them would just like to know they have some where the roof don't leak and they earn enough not to starve.
I hate Apple with a Passion
Don't get me wrong, i think the world would be a better place without their ethos, but Foxconn are a decent employer for Southern China, far far better than a lot of companies that size, and the plant is state of the art, and if they keep jacking up the wage rate like they have been for the last couple of years it is going to make keeping staff a nightmare for anybody in 300 miles of them. Foxconn are the 800 pound gorilla in the room for all our shiny toys, ignore them at your peril, but they are getting a poor press.
I strongly doubt...
...that production line runs at that slow speed. It will have been slowed down for the video by at least a quarter.
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