Foxconn workers threatened mass suicide for their working conditions
theatlanticwire.com
theatlanticwire.com
When Western media freaked out over the suicides, Foxconn got scared. They started making their employees sign non-suicide agreements. What? That is the height of stupidity. If a worker wants to commit suicide, a contract isn't going to stop them. However, if a worker does not want to kill themselves ... it creates a new bargaining opportunity.
I have zero sympathy for Foxconn on this. They created the problem with a bad business decision, by explicitly broadcasting where they were vulnerable and making themselves even more vulnerable.
You don't need to be sympathetic with the workers either. They're just negotiating for higher pay in a unique way. Completely within their rights. Nobody is jumping. The ones who are going to jump won't advertise it or ask for anything beforehand.
Exploitation of the poor is at the root of capitalism if you think about it from a basic level. It's all about making profit, and for that you need cheap labour provided by the poor, globalization provides an abundance of poor people to be exploited. Don't like the working hours here? Hey we got queues of peasants lined up outside to replace you. Get back to work.
And if they stop paying people money to build stuff for them (as in Flint Michigan), you also criticize them for exploiting the poor?
Profit? How about the buyer?
You're free to tell Apple that you won't buy unless they pay enough so workers can have BMWs. If Apple believes you, it will do so and pass along those costs.
What? You're not willing to pay for workers to have BMWs?
You're awfully free with other people's money.
Buyers find out what they're interested in.
> Were the buyer able to make an informed decision regarding his/her purchase, perhaps they'll choose otherwise.
You write that as if there's no relevant experience. "Fair trade coffee" is merely one of the examples.
Cheap labor is not the only source of profit. Many companies employ only highly compensated individuals to create products & services that they sell profitably.
The root of capitalism is private property rights & the right to voluntarily exchange goods & services.
Don't fool yourself - China is capitalist. It is capitalist regardless of what its leadership claims or the extent to which it uses state mechanisms or market mechanisms.
http://www.as-coa.org/articles/2982/The_New_Mercantilism:_Ch...
The capitalist exploitation of the working class comes in many forms, in China it just doesn't involve market mechanisms.
Threatening to jump off a building shows even less conviction than a genuine hunger strike (which will kill you more effectively than picketing on a rooftop making idle threats). IRA terrorists have engaged in hunger strikes to get released from prison--does that mean it's abusive to imprison terrorists?
Source: http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/10/world/asia/tibet-march/index.h...
Also, Gandhi went on hunger strikes.
As I pointed out, so did the IRA.
If these workers were subsistence farmers back in rural China, with earnings < what they get at Foxconn, they would be worse off. They just wouldn't have anyone to blame or to demand more money from.
This is why prosperity often results in unrest.
If they want it to be better, they need labor laws. The people working that kind of job have little leverage. For example, if people are working 20 hour shifts in ~120 degree heat, it just sucks to be them. But once someone turns that into an on-the-record safety issue? Things get fixed. Maybe China should copy that...
Of course not, they are just accepting 36 hour shifts because they are bored. Not because the alternative is starvation and unemployment.
They're not asking for higher pay. They're asking for basic rule of law and enforcement of contracts. Foxconn promised them money and then didn't pay it. In Shenzen there is no practical way for the worker to force the company to pay. The workers are screwed.
Getting your employer to pay up shouldn't require negotiation of any kind, much less 'negotiation' of this extreme nature.
I'm halfway through the TAL piece and this sort of thing is all that most workers are asking for; "Pay my overtime." "Use less toxic chemicals on the assembly line." "Let me do different activities so I don't destroy my hands from doing the same motion all the time." "Let me join a union without putting me in jail."
I have sympathy for anyone who works in conditions where simple basic things like this aren't taken for granted.
This is bizarre to me. Shouldn't we be sympathetic to the workers? Some of us are really lucky to have been born in a country where the industrial revolution already took place and labor union struggles already succeeded in establishing the ability to take group action against your employers for better working conditions. So what if paying a fair wage or giving better conditions hurts Foxconn's bottom line?
Also, it is not true that those that threaten suicide do not intend to follow through. This story is an unusual situation since it is group action against an employer, but people threaten and commit suicide for a variety of reasons the world over and your statement erases those peoples experiences.
Industrialization – over the course of more than one century – led to a more prosperous, just and healthier society in many western nations. That doesn’t negate the millions of workers who were exploited along the way.
One party can't exploit another without the threat or use of force. If no threat of force is present, then the relationship is voluntary and both parties should accept responsibility for participating in it.
> It might be better than the alternatives but it’s still exploitation.
If a man one thousand years from the future came to visit you, he may very well consider your standard of living absolutely deplorable. But that wouldn't mean you are being exploited. Since no force is being used. See above.
> I simply cannot comprehend how you cannot have empathy in such a situation.
Why would I have empathy for either party in a business transaction? What? This is business. It is as much business for Foxconn as it is for their employees. Let them hash it out.
When is a disagreement not business? Why should we be unwilling to take sides in a negotiating even when it is "business?" When a person's negotiating position is so bad that they use suicide to opt out, I feel sympathy, and I suspect that humanity might me better off if their position were improved by non-capitalist intervention of some kind.
They don't have to suicide. They can also quit and work somewhere else.
When's the last time you fel the need to threaten someone with suicide? My guess is never. In that case, can you begin to imagine how desperate someone must feel if this strikes him as a viable option?
I have not heard that things are so bad in China that it's impossible to get a job and suicide is the only alternative. This is just a negotiating tactic.
Also, by reading this article, aren't you now hearing that "things are so bad in China?" Given the size and importance of Foxconn, this is the equivalent of wildcat strikes at GM or Ford. For all we know there are many small firms that are also abusive, but they don't get the media attention.
Whether their plan to suicide is a bluff is relevant to our apparant disagreement. I think it is at least partly not a bluff, because Foxconn employees have a history of killing themselves. Given that their employees commit suicide based on their working conditions and perceived lack of alternative, I don't think you can rationally think it's good for them to be in this situation. I am not telling you that you should feel sympathy for them, although I certainly do. What I mean is that it is possible for a person to be in a business negotiation position that is bad in the same sense of the word "bad" that being raped is bad. The fact that they have multiple options and that the options involve money is not enough to absolve their malefactors. If I were forced to choose between paid to amputate my own body parts and starving to death for lack of money, and the person asking me to amputate my limbs could pay me without amputating my limbs at no cost to themselves, I would call that unethical. I would say so even if they were not themselves amputating my limbs, killing me, or actively restricting my other options.
This isn't true. Foxconn employee are less likely to kill themself than the general population.
I think a hypothetical example can be helpful here: Imagine you are in the middle of the desert and dying. Some guy in a helicopter arrives and offers you a contract: He will get you to the closest hospital if you give him all your money and nearly all of all your future income.
There is no external coercion involved, nobody is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to sign, but it’s still exploitation. (All the laws I know acknowledge that: Not helping someone who is dying is a crime.)
What's not there, however, is any “threat of force” and that is what I was responding to.
Exploitation can happen through more than just force. Of course, at what point you call something duress, coercion, or force is somewhat subjective, but none of these requires someone putting a gun to your head. If you are offered money to do something that you don't want to do, but the alternative is starvation because you're so poor, that is certainly duress, it is probably coercion, and it may even be force. But it is also certainly exploitation.
Income inequality, which creates power inequality, is the main driver of exploitation. If you make people poor enough, you can make them desperate enough to do just about anything. There are people in this world who will sell you their children, and all of them are poor. There are also people who will buy those children. This is not a free exchange that makes both parties better off. It's exploitation. No guns required.
To lose your job there is to immediately become homeless.
It seems pretty clear that the workers think that their working conditions are unjust. Further, they apparently would be OK with those conditions if they got more money.
That suggests they don't consider them inhumane, (not justified regardless of pay) rather they are economically unjust.
The truth of whether or not they are economically unjust (in a market driven economy, which China isn't really) is that if they quit there will be no one else to fill those roles (economic scarcity created by a price imbalance). However if there are people who will fill those roles at the prices offered, then they will simply be out of a job.
It is always true in market controlled transactions that the buyer thinks they are paying too much for a good and the seller thinks they are paying too little. It's the fulcrum that creates the equilibrium point for the price of a good or service.
So in a dispassionate economic way one can say the employees are working to maximize their own economic value. If by periodically pulling stunts like this gets them more pay then they are doing their part to improve their economic station at the expense of the company. The company of course may try to use that to increase the price they charge to assemble such devices, and perhaps give some of that increase to their working staff.
Saying that their other option is to 'starve' seems improbable in a country that is based on the communist teachings of Mao and Marx. One might presume (but I don't know since I don't live there) that there are state jobs available. I could certainly understand it if those state jobs were less desirable. But what I do know is that nothing, and I really do mean nothing, is the same regarding working in China as it is in any western (non-communist / non-totalitarian) country. The best one can hope for looking in from the outside are shadows of those things that are creating them.
The other option would not be to 'starve', most likely, since there is an abundance of low-skill, low-pay work to be found. But don't be fooled into thinking the government (especially the local government) or the companies care about the workers.
No one will be doing them any favors.
To expand on what you said, here's an article from 12 years ago (that's getting incredibly weird to say) about China opening up to private enterprise: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/591841.stm. I think most would agree that China is now considered a "socialist market economy [with Chinese characteristics]" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_market_economy)
I think it's really interesting to observe the progression of China's economy over the last 70 years, from the "Great Leap Forward" (and the subsequent Cultural Revolution) up until now, they've had quite some twists and turns, but their underlying ideological basis I find intriguing: they derive their policy from the 'Scientific development concept' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Development_Concept).
The Brookings Institute also has a good look at China's most recent economic plan if you're interested in looking over it: http://www.brookings.edu/events/2011/1101_china_economic_pol...
In other words, less "USSR", more"Sweden without elections"?
TLDR:
They can't bargain. Plain and simple.
We have worker protections. If all that mattered was the free market then we wouldn't need them.
I'm saying that the article says they want more money. I'm sure there are lots of other things they want too but as I mentioned its very dangerous to assume anything when dealing with a culture and political climate that is so very different from one you are in or grew up in.
You point out that "Third there's a never ending supply of new workers, ..." That is, unfortunately, the economic force that is allowing these conditions to persist.
It suggests that one way to put pressure on Foxconn would be to cut off that supply through education and outreach to the people immigrating from the rural areas but I have no idea how that might be accomplished.
wages: http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/06/06/us-foxconn-china-i...
No, it's a government problem. An individual is not on equal footing with a group of individuals (e.g. a company). Therefor either the government must allow workers to unionize or it must enforce some level of sane working conditions.
If your "free market" allows companies to exploit people to the point that working slowly kills them and not working kills them quicker then I want nothing what-so-ever to do with it.
Chinese policy is based upon the teachings of the capitalist roader Deng Xiaoping. Go into a Chinese bookstore and you will find his writings not things by Mao or Marx.
There isn't any sense in which China is communist. How could the working class be in control of the society, when they are suffering in foxconn? Such a thing could never happen under communism.
I don't think that's what happened. Both the Atlantic and the "Want China Times" article say that the mass suicide threat happened after FoxConn didn't pay compensation to the employees who quit. So that seems more about human dignity, not just angling for a raise.
But the story says that employees staged the suicide threat, which confuses me. It's not clear to me if this was a move in sympathy to their former co-workers, or if those ex-employees somehow regained access to the building, or if the ones who tried to quit didn't succeed because FoxConn refused to let them out of their contracts or something.
Second, China has not been 'communist' (note the scare quotes) for many years now.
Third, there certainly are many people starving in China, just as there are people starving in some part of pretty much any society. I find it entirely believable that there are people who one day's worth of unemployment away from starving in China. For that matter, I would have no trouble believing the same about a capitalist country like the US, or the socialist countries in Europe/South America.
There are dollar values in which many people will work in inhumane conditions, especially if it means supporting their family. Many people would willingly give up half their lifespan if it meant a good life for their children.
If you're willing to commit suicide as an act of protest, then you are truly desperate.
... freakin' really??? And I suppose that when I ask Siri in jest to open the pod bay doors, I should be worried that my phone is plotting my demise based on the response?
[0] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/454/m...
Siri, where were you made? Siri: That's classified.
I don't think this is Apple "programming siri to avert uncomfortable questions" as much as another joking response to a nonsense question along the lines of "Open the pod bay doors" or "What is the meaning of life".
The implication struck me as utterly absurd.
That's a pretty shitty thing to do. Had the manufacturing process not been outsourced to Foxconn, would this kind of behavior fly under the Apple or Microsoft brand image? Probably not.
the bigger question is, is working at foxconn better than starving on the farm? I don't know much about rural China. I have a hard time believing that people would be driven to suicide without the factory job.
also, a lot of stuff i could likely make myself - i'm just to freaking lazy to buy the parts, solder them up, 3d print a case, and code up the OS.
I'm not saying every company needs to be lilly white, but i'd pay an extra $50 for a device that had a significantly lower probability of driving the maker to suicide.
-- edit -- to be clear, i could get a lot of what i want out of something like this: http://www.adafruit.com/products/330 + wifi + gps. i'm pretty sure i can get a cellular connection via a sparkfun board.
of course, i'd never get through security with a battery hungry monstrosity like that, but it's pretty doable.
Also, someone will probably point out the parts come from places far worse than foxconn, so perhaps i'm screwed.
So the more pertinent question in my mind is, "Is there any company that sells ethically built technical gear?"
On the other hand, people are fond of pointing out that people who work at Foxconn are choosing what is far and away the best of all available options. So it's really a matter of cultural relativism whether a given set of conditions is good or bad. 100 years from now, are people going to feel guilty about using software that was developed by programmers working in cubicles? It's more likely than you think.
It could be argued that by getting rid of your phone, the person buying from you (or being given it) would not buy the new smartphone that they would otherwise have.
I'm not taking a side, in this comment, on the Foxconn question.
I believe the response from the anti-fur side to your observation is that, by continuing to wear and display the vintage fur, you help to prop up the perceived value of fur in general and encourage more furs to be ripped from the rodents.
Our society generally disagrees with the idea that the damage is already done. For example, we can look to child pornography. Technically speaking, the damage is already done, so we shouldn't be concerned about the photos themselves. However, the sale of the photographs still demonstrates a market for which others will continue to try to fill, and therein lies the problem.
By buying a phone, the manufacturer of said phone will set those workers to work on the next generation phone in hopes that you will buy another. It's going to take a few generations for them to finally realize that you are no longer interested in buying their products.
I know this sounds overly snarky, but it's true. Those are the options. Either get out of tech on "principal", or realize that would be cutting off your nose to spite your face, and use these devices to help change the way of things.
Simply put, until market pressures are brought to bear on companies like Apple to clean up their act on the manufacturing and sourcing side of the house nothing is going to change, regardless of what you do with your ipad.
In other words, in order to ditch every piece of technology that's got a foundation in human exploitation and suffering, you practically have to ditch technology altogether. That computer you were using to post was probably built in part on human exploitation.
An employee who serves you is not a slave because he makes less than you.
Where? At the government-mandated pick-a-plot-land-for-free fair?
Now whether this is actually true or not? I don't know.
I think it could be argued that this reliance on natural resources by Spain, contrasted with commerce favored by Britain, for example, resulted in the slow decline of imperial power by Spain. I think by the 1800s, Spain had pretty much ceased to be economically relevant vis-a-vis the more commerce oriented Empires of the time.
A crude analogy would be China selling to their diaspora outside China proper.
My point is that the strength of the UK economy of the time wasn't just 'factory workers', conquering a quarter of the world's landmass and nicking their stuff also helped significantly. China can't replicate this.
So instead of messing around with all of that, China's expenses are limited to building infrastructure in China, maintaining vast military forces to guard China and occasionally menace Taiwan, and converting the Chinese to some vaguely secular state-approved worldview. And they have the benefit of modern technology and the entire developed world to crib notes from. They don't have to figure this shit out the first time. A factory anywhere in the West in the 19th century was a best guess--a Chinese factory today benefits from 200 years of experience and empirical research into how to run a factory, robots, computers, a huge foreign population of people buying stuff, and thousands of Western-educated professionals. I think China has the advantage.
Also, not sure what you mean by world war between colonies. Spain, England and France had numerous colonies, but didn't abandon them when warring between each other. Germany, Austro-Hungary and Italy weren't big on colonies, and neither World War involved much in the way of colony-on-colony fighting - pretty much all things you would call a colony in some way were fighting on the side of the Allies in both wars.
Yes, someone has to actually fix the working conditions, but it's not going to be you or me, it's going to be the Chinese workers themselves. American and British workers formed unions and engaged in often violent struggles to improve pay and working conditions; some enlightened industrialists like Henry Ford voluntarily and profitably improved pay and working conditions on their own as well. The same thing will eventually happen in China as soon as the country has enough wealth to bargain for. It'll probably happen easier because the Chinese can learn from our history.
And that's working for China. As has been pointed out -- 12 hours in a factory beats 16 hours in a rice paddy. These people aren't slaves -- they are working hard to secure a better life (mainly for their children).
China is turning into a rich country. Go and watch this video: http://www.gapminder.org/videos/hans-rosling-asias-rise-ted-... and play around with the gapminder tool: http://www.gapminder.org/world/
Do we know that the Galaxy Nexus is completely Foxconn free? Foxconn may not assemble the phone, but they make a lot of electrical components and Samsung is a Foxconn customer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn#Major_customers
Digging a little deeper, it seems some people have Nexii with "Made in China" on the back, whereas some say "Made in Korea". I suspect even the Korean phones are only assembled there.
After the incident, Microsoft gave Kotaku's Brian Ashcraft the following statement.
Foxconn has been an important partner of ours and remains an important partner. I trust them as a responsible company to continue to evolve their process and work relationships. That is something we remain committed to—the safe and ethical treatment of people who build our products. That's a core value of our company.
Is there anything human about this statement? Clearly they have never been committed to this. You know what sounds human to me? Someone admitting a mistake has been made and fixing it with clear actionable items. I hope I speak for the masses when I say I'm completely desensitized by comments like this in today's world, because I simply don't believe it.
Anyone who can't see the exploitation in this has their head in the sand.
If you are paying/treating people less (in value) than what they contribute (in value) back to you, you are exploiting them. Simple as that.
Apple have taken to boasting how great their profit margins are, another way to look at that, is to say they are boasting at how well they can exploit others (suppliers and consumers).
Seriously, stop rationalising that your iDevice/Android is a moral device, it isn't in a utilitarian, or deontological sense, by any stretch. Only some weak relativistic point of view can justify it. But that's what helps people sleep at night, so we all just hover around there.
How are you even defining value? What if I like bananas more than shirts and you the opposite? Do we somehow exploit each other when we trade?
bananas and shirts have an intrinsic value, it isn't subjective, they cost X to produce/ship, that's their value. The rest is exploitation.
Of course, a pro-capitalist isn't going to like this line of thinking, as it is explicitly anti-capitalism.
This may seem like a silly example, but think of how the invention of the tractor affected the draft horse industry.
There is no such thing as intrinsic value. There is only the value the marketplace assigns to it. The Soviets spent decades trying to quantify it -- that is, to figure out how much to pay the janitor compared to the factory manager -- but ultimately gave up.
so because the soviets tried and failed (with stalinism that is). We should just assume that "free markets" are the best solution despite the obvious exploitation that occur due to the 'profit motive'?
You wouldn't accept a political system that gave more votes to a select minority, so why so keen on an economic system that does that? (substitute votes, for money)
Poor families stay poor, rich stay rich.
In our political metaphor, it is the same as totalitarianism, the powerful stay powerful through use of force, and weak stay weak.
Why do the same people advocate polar opposites regarding politics and economy?
Rhetoric only gets you so far. It's easy to seize the moral high ground when you don't have to actually implement. It's like me saying "there needs to be a better search engine than Google" and getting mad if someone suggests I build one.
And as another commenter posted earlier, the US Senate prioritizes votes from low-population states.
And "money" is just a store of value. Ultimately it has to be backed by a marketplace that accepts its value.
And how is a business going to get the capital to start if it can't take in money to pay interest? If that would be allowed you're dangerously close to capitalism.
Also I disagree that your idea is in fact anti-capitalist. Paying people based on the value they provide in exchange would favor giving successful wall-street fund managers hundreds of millions of dollars which seems supremely capitalist. (the business itself being exploitative to externals doesn't really matter here)
I don't understand your capital/interest point.
except in a world of no-profit companies... wall street fund managers wouldn't exist.
Creating a banana farm takes money. Who is going to do it? If there are no profits then nobody that focuses on money will bother, and nobody that focuses on rewarding labor can get a loan either.
And fine, if you won't ignore the nonexistence of fund managers long enough to answer a question about principles I'll try a different tack. If I invent a banana picker that saves ten million dollars am I entitled to ten million dollars? Value in, value out.
So this hypothetical (socialist) banana farm, in order not to disadvantage anyone, would have to be owned by the local community (and ultimately the nation), given private ownership wouldn't exist. People aren't focused on money, or profit, they are focused on bananas, because they enjoy contributing to society.
> If I invent a banana picker that saves ten million dollars am I entitled to ten million dollars.
You are phrasing the question from a capitalist centric point of view. If you invent a banana picker, that is super efficient (and in a capitalist workforce would allow you to cut costs but firing your ten million dollar workforce) then you could just let your workers work less, given there is no profit, and you are already servicing the needs of your community with bananas. So perhaps the workers can think of improvements to other parts of the process, like shipping, or perhaps you just want to give them more time to their family.
It's actually very difficult to think about, given we have an innate capitalist view of things.
Hypotheticals aside, Is it really a controversial point to say that "profit" and "free markets" (while providing an efficient way to price things) motivates a whole lot of behaviours not in the "public good". Should we not explore other alternatives?
So you're saying there isn't private ownership of any objects but there is private ownership of money? That's not something I had realized about your scenario and if I've got it right I find it strange.
Or do people not get paid in private money and I don't understand your original point about pay whatsoever.
And yes that scenario I was making is deliberately about an exploitative capitalist.
Yes, profits lead to both good and bad.
I think this should be seen as a case for why robotic automation should be encouraged wherever and whenever possible. There tends to be an undertone of fear when we talk about automation - fear that robots and technology are going to eliminate everyone's job. Lets also consider that certain jobs out there are not suitable or healthy for breathing, thinking, creative, unique humans (which we all are) to be doing.
And that's partly why it wouldn't matter. People generally connect Foxconn with Apple stuff, and will then boycott by buying other computing products that are also manufactured by Foxconn.
and would make the ending more tragic. this young member could simply have a bad day etc so him staring bleakly into the camera wouldnt affect me much. how about the plot is about parents who (at the beginning) lost their child that commit suicide cause working 19 hours a day was bit too much, and at the end from overprivilaged, undereducated spoiled teenager camera cuts back to mom and dad hand by hand jumping from a factory roof. i think that would do it.
All the photos I've seen of the factories in question are as well-lit as American factories. The working conditions are poor, but they're far better than what early American and British workers endured during the industrial revolution.
Also, such a film would only be complete if it documented the nerve and joint damage caused to American vinyl and PVC manufacturers not given proper ventilation. Would you listen to a blood record, or defecate in a blood sewer pipe?
That's pretty funny, because last time I checked, films were considered art and used to tell whatever story the writers and directors want to tell. Good luck finding a "complete" film to your standards.
Call me cynical, but everyone loves cheap products much more than far removed suicides of random people half way across the globe.
Simply, the working conditions might be extra bad at FoxConn, but they're bad everywhere else in the general area. The wealth of cheap workers who are willing to work in horrible conditions for pay is still great, and it would take a LOT more suicides than Foxconn has employees for that situation to change for the better. I think.