iPhone factory workers say they haven’t been paid, cause millions in damages
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Ofcourse, American media will only focus on "loss" to the corporates (as this headline also highlights). The depressing reality is that the workers were pushed into such a drastic step by their corporate overlords.
> "While an engineering graduate was promised Rs 21,000 ($286) per month, his/her salary had reduced to Rs 16,000 ($218) and, subsequently, to Rs 12,000 ($163) in the recent months. Non-engineering graduates' monthly salary had reduced to Rs 8,000 ($109). The salary amount being credited to our accounts have been reducing and it was frustrating to see this." Some workers claim to have gotten monthly salaries of as little as Rs 500 ($6.80).
I also remember reading elsewhere that despite the pay cuts, they were sometimes also forced to work even overtime to meet Apple's x-mas demands for iPhones.
India is attempting to do an Asian Tiger FDI development model as a democracy in the age of social media where political organization is easy. Reality is, _zero_ countries have totally developed under democracy. Ever. Modern India is the first to attempt. You need a certain level of authoritarian / state controlled industrial policy and violent enforcement initially to entice FDI with stability. Conditions and bargaining power naturally improves after gaining increasing leverage once investors has commited sufficient sunk cost + creating supply chain inertia. Democracy and corporate/colonial trauma has caused India to squandered many opportunities to industrialize due to lack of infrastructure, redtape bureaucracy and grassroots organization. Meanwhile, increasing complexity in manufacturing mean instead of abusing peasants you're abusing engineers with professional degrees. Automation is around the corner, India doesn't have many chances left. Their trump card is potential market size and tariffs, but that's predicated on actually developing enough consumers to middle-income in the first place. It's a bad hand.
Zero countries other than, post-WWII West Germany (and then re-unified Germany) under the Marshall plan. The US of A, Canada, the UK post-WWII's devastation etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_and_economic_growth#...
There is a strong correlation between democracy and long-term political growth,
> Democratization of a country from a non-democratic regime is usually preceded by a fall in GDP, and a volatile but expected growth in the long run, While on the other hand authoritarian regimes experience significant growth at the beginning and decline in the long run.[4] The cause of such behavior is that non-democratic regimes, mainly authoritarian ones, are more effective at implementing decisive policies and choices as well as solving ethnic and sub-national conflicts, but are unsustainable in the long run as there is more incentive to extract money from society which in turn leads to less prosperity.[5] Democratic regimes revolve around institutions and policies which lay the foundations, through which principles of liberty and equality are designed and followed, thus directly or indirectly affecting firms or individuals who benefit from the directives and increase their growth, which in turn has a positive impact on economy.
However, I'd like to add that the reason why democracies work in the long-run is that all the good ideas, the transformational ones come from the margin. Authoritarian countries simply do not create systems where anyone other than a small group of ruling elite is able to bring their work to fruition. Whereas democratic policies and a lower social extraction leads to a strong consumer base in democracies, which in turn allows ideas from the margins to thrive.
That's the point, there is a time and place for authoritarian state direction and time and place for transitioning into democratic consumer driven markets.
As for your examples. USA: development base established from colonial direction, then exploitation / slavery, not actually democratic when considering timeline of enfranchisement. Ability to exploit labour is central to initial growth. Canada: base built by colonial direction / crown corps. Post War Germany & UK: again, base established under monarchy, post war destruction is just a hiccup in terms of actual development continuity. Marshall plan was a reconstruction "1up" for rebuilding industrial base, but physical capital is the easy part. The hard part, the _initial_ pool of human capita that takes generations cultivate has not so far manifested under democracies which seems systemically incapable of coordinating long term generational projects. Part of that is the conditions for development is predicated on the ugly business of "solving ethnic and sub-national conflicts" including groups that operate contrary to state development interests, like these unions. Authoritarians / state controls simply is better at starting the ball rolling. On paper it doesn't have to, but there aren't counter examples, so India is pioneering. They may very well succeed, but cards are stacked.
As for democracies working in the long run, modern democracies has not existed long enough for these dogmatic believes to hold true. The irony of your quote from wiki is that it's from WEF/Davos, embodiment of problems undermining democracies today. IMO current democracies thrived because US has overwhelming geopolitical advantage, multiplied post war when continental competitors got glassed and had the ability to suppress non-democracies - the wank around democratic development and democratic peace" exists because preeminent superpower happens to be democratic and made war with ideologic rivals while handwaving away the contribution of their authoritarian roots. That said, I broadly believe those "virtuous" democratic concepts are true and something to work towards, when the time is right. I think too many Davos/liberal democracy enthusiasts forget that "end of history" still started from somewhere, and historically that somewhere is authoritarianism. It's also just useful to evaluate most recent successful development models: Japan, S.Korea, Taiwan and really the only comparable analogue, China.
> Ability to exploit labour
> The hard part, the _initial_ pool of human capita
> ugly business of "solving ethnic and sub-national conflicts" including groups that operate contrary to state development interests, like these
> Authoritarians / state controls simply is better at starting the ball rolling
That "human capital" is made out of people, human beings, who are often executed for speaking out of turn in authoritarian countries. Who are worked without fair pay in starvation wages in these countries. What you seem to be - and I deeply apologize if I'm wrong - implying when you say "colonial direction, then exploitation/slavery" is that slavery itself and near-slavery like conditions are necessary for development. That is a deeply disturbing perspective to me.
I may seem to be rejecting your core thesis out of hand, but I feel like you handwaved these examples away. I can talk a great deal about the US as I know it well, and the industrialization of America is a complex story with many moving parts, with labor rights being fought for side-by-side. The most backwards states today are the ones that were the most exploitative of the "human capital" that you mention.
It also feels like as if you've handwaved the other answers away. Western Germany and the UK etc were flattened, glassed as you said it, and their "human capital" had been greatly diminished. And yet they prospered with the right policies and public investments. Reducing this to a "wank around" is deeply misguided.
> preeminent superpower happens to be democratic and made war with ideologic rivals while handwaving away the contribution of their authoritarian roots
Furthermore, the US hasn't always spread democracy around the world. When the CIA did regime change, they usually replaced democracies with autocracies, with extremely bad results in several places. These examples are excluded in your analysis.
But setting aside all the historical evidence and the statistical arguments that others have made, the sheer idea that exploiting and authoritarianism i.e. telling people, with force, is necessary for economic growth and that this is desirable is appalling. You seem to be under no illusion of what it means, but let me spell out what it does mean,
It means parents disappeared in the middle of the night.
It means the torture of anyone who disagrees.
It means the rejection, beating, and killing of those who are different (the "ethnic and subnational conflicts" you mentioned, that's how autocrats usually resolve these, murder and ethnic cleansing).
It means forcing people to work against their will.
It means suspending the right to due process.
It means making some people more than others.
And it means a legacy of death, destruction, and hate that will take generations to dissipate.
It feels as though you understand all of this and yet you support it as the "necessary price" for "progress", because you believe that you won't be the one paying the price. And that's what horrifies me.
The implication here, correct me if I'm wrong, is that you genuinely think that in an autocratic society, you'll come out on top. The odds are that you won't. Even if you're the supporter of the right autocrat and kiss up to the right people. The first thing autocrats do, when they come to power, is that they purge their supporters. Ask the supporters of Mao, Stalin and Hitler (nacht der langen messer/the Röhm Purge) how it went for them.
A famous story from a small town in the Netherlands during the Nazi occuption is that they had an air raid shelter in the town. The Mayor invited everyone to safety at the shelter. When they arrived there, mind you these were the "aryans" that the Nazis were obsessed about, they were soon gunned down, because they weren't loyal enough. Not that they were disloyal. But simply because they weren't loyal enough.
> It's also just useful to evaluate most recent successful development models: Japan
Yes, Japan. Japan's record economic growth happened under a democratic constitution and government enacted in 1947. Their industrial base was rebuilt from scratch after the firebombing/raids had decimated all industrial capacity.
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dang, if you ever see this, I apologize for the rudeness.
First, a comparison of infant mortality using 2019 data:
India population: 1353M
Birth rate: 18 per 1000 people
Infant mortality: 28/1000 births
Infant mortality: ~736000
China population: 1393M
Birth rate: 10 per 1000 people
Infant mortality: 7/1000 births
Infant mortality: ~97000
That's the moral calculus once you look past platitudes of slow democratic development from poor countries that start at the bottom. Infant mortality is just _one_ cost of retarding development in terms of avoidable / excess deaths. India had substantially worse child mortality and higher birth rate 20 years ago relative to China (authoritarian family planning perk), the improvement is steady but glacial. Poverty translates to hundreds of millions of avoidable deaths as function of slow development / poverty alleviation rate since Indian democratic experiment began postwar. That is the cost of being poor and democratic. Persistent poverty and deprivation ripples through generations and has mortality comparable to total war - compare military vs famine + disease (poverty) related WW2 fatalities, when both data points is available, poverty consistently comes out worse. Addressing poverty rapidly trumps all other moral considerations. Poverty will outlasts bad dictators but is avoidable under good ones. Repression is short term, gains compound long term. Short term because even living generations can enjoy fruits by very nature of developing rapidly. Korea/Taiwan remember growing up under dictators. Singapore/China remembers how shit postwar struggles were.
Indian democracy is eeking out 1/5th of China's GDP despite having comparable starting position and much better external conditions for development - CCP was sanctioned and hamstrung by western bloc for decades postwar. India's slow / dysfunctional and now more and more illiberal democracy had more unfettered opportunities, but is just not effective relative to proven authoritarian models. Which leads us to Japan who developed under authoritarian prewar government. Their Manchukuo model is copied by Asian Tigers. They are the poster child for rapid modern development jump started by authoritarianism. Postwar Japan was in the same position as other destroyed postwar countries, the institutions setup by authoritarian legacy enabled transitioning back into previously developed conditions when US funded reconstruction. There is continuity in state capabilities due to institution memory embodied in human capital initially cultivated by authoritarian direction [0]. Again, starting autocratic doesn't mean staying autocratic. Different systems are effective for different stages of development. Inefficiency is total deaths under curve for time to develop to wealth level necessary to mitigate effects of poverty. This is an incredible number of lives over multi-generational time scale.
Manchukuo = Manchuria, the amount of Japanese atrocities there was incredible, but subsequent SKorean / Taiwan dictatorships managed to replicate Japanese model with comparably less atrocities. Which circle back to spectrum of authoritarianism, from relatively benevolent (Singapore) to benign available to make this model work. India democracy could still succeed, if it does, it will take longer, the interest rate is millions of avoidable deaths. That's what gets hand waved when people fixate only on good democracies and bad autocracies instead of the entire spectrum. Another personal handwave... the moral costs of starting authoritarian is cheap. It's better population to have 5/10/15 of bad time now in exchange for generational prosperity. India "democracy" is kind of devolving into a shitshow, they seem to be hurtling towards the worst of both worlds.
[0] Re: human capital, I poorly articulated my point. I really mean state coordinated institutions that makes running a modern developed country possible. It's easy to train a bunch of scientists, engineers etc, but you need competent state to coordinate moving parts into something productive. OECD democracies are standing on foundations built by exploitive / authoritarian pasts. Hence my emphasis on modern India as an experiment on "total" development based off democracy. They started from close to zero and after 60 years, coordination is not there and the system is floundering on the precipitate of significant demographic, technologic deadlines. The system is not producing the results. Ultimate question is if it's a matter of "if" or "when". If not then democracy will have doomed 1.4B indians -> 1.6B by 2050.
As long as people get their Apple magic, nothing else matters...
There is no way this is the correct amount, is there? Less than $10/day for an engineering graduate??
Checking... it's low, but maybe not impossible. [Glassdoor](https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/india-graduate-engineer-t...) says ~$460 / month. I'm absolutely astounded at how this is possible.
but Rs21,000 is below the bottom of the barrel for engineering graduate.
Rs 25,000($340) per month would be bottom of the barrel, with Rs 50,000 ($680) per month a decent amount for engineering graduate.
Source: Am engineering graduate from india
I don't think location should play a negative role here, as factory is located in industrial area, where engineering grads would really not prefer going without a premium (or desperation as is the case here)
If anything, sheer proximity to bengaluru should drive salaries up.
the general verdict here is that the company was offering piss poor salaries to desperate students, and then decided to go lower.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narasapura_Industrial_Area
And there are so many engineering colleges here in india, you can get into them irrespective of your skills, knowledge, or financial status.
Not exactly. These are contract employees.
How it works is that corporates often have tie-ups with certain HR firms to provide them employees with certain skills, on demand. Depending on the requirement, these tech employees work remotely or on-site, but on the payroll of the middle-man HR firm.
So when you ask Cisco for a network engineer, they contact these HR firms and send them the requirement. The HR firm sends a list of candidates, and Cisco selects the most-suited one. This person is then sent to you. But they are not paid by Cisco as they are not really a Cisco employee. Cisco pays the HR firms a fixed contract rate and the HR firm pays a percentage of that to the worker.
Cisco definitely skims some of the money, but a large portion of it does go to these kind of contract HR firms.