1,000 workers at Apple’s keyboard suppler in Shenzhen walk out in protest | Hacker News Reader

1,000 workers at Apple’s keyboard suppler in Shenzhen walk out in protest

cultofmac.com

61 pointsDiabloD319 comments

Apple, and LG, and IBM, and... (Why are factories often attributed solely to Apple? I think we should hold all companies using the products from factories responsible for who they supply from; the article even claims only 1/10th of the factory is for Apple.)

The article is published on Cult of Mac. The blogs audience is most likely only interested in Apple related news and events. For its target audience it is perfectly acceptable to present Apples role, even being a minor player.

Good for them! Organizing is a good way to fight these abusive labor practices.

For those of you not familiar with Chinese manufacturing this is essentially bullshit. If you walked in to the factory tomorrow offered way better working conditions and no overtime everyone would quit. This is purely about money, and most likely fueled by the Foxconn/apple publicity from last year. I worked at a Chinese contract manufacturer for six months on site and our biggest cause of workers quitting was lack of OT. The most interesting part of this article is which factory it is though, I am not sure of the percent of keyboards they make but I believe this is the fabled factory I was told about while in SE China that makes the majority of the keyboards in the world.

Just remember what happened at Foxconn before power to the people starts rolling off your tongue; they had the best working conditions in any Chinese factory(arguably), a number of suicides that was below the national average for the number of people working at the factory, but because they where Taiwanese owned the Chinese gov't let the media run with the Apple suicide link. Foxconn raised salaries and it all disappeared. This isn't a human rights situation, this is all about money on both sides.

well, I believe outsourcing in general, which is the reason why this problem exists, should be controlled and better regulated

It causes unemployment (at least short term) in the country outsourcing its work, and created bad working conditions and unfair working environment in the country receiving the outsourced work

There is obviously something wrong, and the poor are being exploited.

One could argue that those poor exploited people would have been even poorer, without the outsourcing model, and my answer to that, is that I don't mind or see a problem in them being paid less, being paid less is for sure better than not being paid at all.

But these stories are really more about greed and exploitation, which we should definitely stand against by asking for more regulations, monitoring and rules for outsourcing

I can't see the situation improving. Governments are in a weak position due to globalisation. If they increase regulation and improve conditions then those businesses (especially the ones with poor ethical standards) will just move on to a more desperate country.

"It causes unemployment (at least short term) in the country outsourcing its work"

This isn't a problem with outsourcing. It's a problem with technology. Technology has now made it so everyone must compete on a global level. An small mom and pop shop now competes with Amazon and every other website in the world that sells similar merchandise.

If you control it in the US, business owners will just incorporate elsewhere to remain competitive. The US should provide tax incentives to business owners that keep jobs in the US.

"There is obviously something wrong, and the poor are being exploited."

Rather than blaming companies, which are actually providing people with a living, blame governments. In many of those countries (especially China), bribing government officials is the only way you can do business.

"But these stories are really more about greed and exploitation, which we should definitely stand against by asking for more regulations, monitoring and rules for outsourcing"

It's interesting because outsourcing has many parallels with software piracy. Many people don't want to pay the price for some software (businesses don't want to pay American wages) so they download it for free instead (businesses go to a foreign country and pay peanuts). We see what happens when you try to control these sorts of situations.

More regulation and control isn't the answer. It needs to make sense business-wise to keep jobs in the US rather than outsourcing. Some jobs are already gone forever. But it doesn't mean there won't be something else to take its place. It will just require different types of education.

This is only the beginning.

Open source will eventually either put developers out of a job, or massively decrease salaries. Why would a business owner pay for a software engineer when they can pay for a software mechanic (someone with much less experience and at a lower pay-scale)? Open source developers are giving out the difficult parts for free, most business owners only need to make additions.

Right now, we are in a transition. Many business owners don't realize this. In 5-10 years, this won't be the case.

We're likely to hear more and more of this over the next few decades as workers in China retrace the steps of the labour movement in the west. Here's hoping them speedy success.

The work hours are weird. 7-11:30 then 6-12pm? Why not have a full days work like 8-5 with one hour break ? What does splitting the day like that offer?

In assembly factories people work shifts, not full days.

Their regular hours ar 7-11:30 and 1-5. The 6-12 shift is added as overtime.

Why do the articles say Apple or IBM supplier? It's a Chinese company that treats its employees like shit and makes money by doing business with Apple. It's the Chinese govt. that needs to intervene.

I think robots will completely replace humans on these kind of factories.

I don't know anything about fabrication, but my spidey sense tells me that this won't happen for a while. It isn't a capability issue, it's a cost issue. There's obviously a tipping point, but cheap human labour has to be way ahead.

For robots, beyond the cost of powering and maintenance, repurposing has got to be a killer. Changes in material (plastics, to aluminum to composite...) has got to wreck havoc with automated assembly lines.

And yet their keyboards are still 70 dollars.

You beat me to it.

People complaining about high prices and factory working conditions at the same time always baffles me.

You do realize that the cheaper some product is, the less these people are going to be paid, right?

Of course the reverse is not a given, but at least it gives more wiggle room to everybody.

Your comment doesn't make sense to me. He's pointing out high prices not complaining about working conditions. Of course it's baffling to complain about high prices and expect perfect working conditions. Common sense.

You do realize that the cheaper some product is, the less these people are going to be paid, right?

They'll be paid the minimum amount possible anyway, and the rest just goes to company profits.

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