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Comment by sjtgraham | Hacker News Reader

"A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames."

Is anyone else disgusted by this? Waking employees during their rest period, not to mention it being after midnight. These poor workers are essentially slaves in all but name. It's quite unconscionable that Apple should make $400,000 profit/employee while the aforementioned is happening.

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Fair enough, but this perspective is very Western, ie, further along the economic development timeline.

In China, it can be argued that this represents progress over the alternative, which would likely be rural poverty. The alternative might be 16-hour days, without anything resembling a dorm.

Again, I understand the disgust, but sweatshops are part of our economic history too. The question is whether it is a necessary (and net-positive) step. It might be.

This. I'm not sure any country in the world ever rose up out of abject poverty (which persists in rural China, e.g. Szechuan province, where no Western reporters ever seem to go), without going through a phase where everyone had to work 12 hour shifts at shitty factory jobs. That includes the US, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and every European country.

It sucks that things seem to work that way, but it looks like China is moving in the right direction here, not the wrong direction. At some point (as was the case in all the countries I mentioned) they will demand and receive there rights. There is evidence of this happening in China already.

At least all the Foxconn workers all agreed to work at Foxconn, which implies that their alternatives were worse. There are countless millions of others in the world who aren't so lucky.

>It sucks that things seem to work that way, but it looks like China is moving in the right direction here, not the wrong direction. At some point (as was the case in all the countries I mentioned) they will demand and receive there rights. There is evidence of this happening in China already.

Correct. There are many incidents in southern China (e.g. Guandong, wenzhou, and other cities with a large factory presence) where workers have gone on strikes to protest for fairer wages and better benefits.

Also, I read a NY times articles (can't recall the link off the top of my head) where Chinese factories were competing against each other for qualified workers. As a result, workers were given higher salaries and better benefits.

Ireland never industrialized. Went from subsistence tenant farmers to post-industrial, via famine, revolution, civil war, disillusion with church institutions and attracting foreign direct investment in the middle.

But was there a component of Irish people working in England and repatriating wages?

Ireland generally inclines towards actively forgetting those who leave. There's a deep vein of begrudgery for people who found success abroad, like they're too big for their boots, and a kind of shame that keeps people silent for those who didn't. The way Joyce put it, Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow; people who leave usually don't come back.

I don't think remittances were ever a significant source of income. It's not like patterns of emigration seen with other countries, where one or the other parent leaves and sends money back to the family, and eventually returns. If anything, remittances were used to fund further emigration, so that families could join up abroad. Ireland's population still hasn't recovered from the famine of the 1850s.

Thank you, that was very well put and explains a lot of other things I've read about Ireland and the Irish diaspora.

Disgust comes very quickly in economic history after sweatshops, though. Major industrialization along the lines described here, with mass-scale factories and a "company town" where employees live/work/sleep there, happened in the United States in the 1880s. And that whole decade was immediately full of labor unrest, most famously the Haymarket riot, but including thousands of strikes, protests, and other "labor disturbances" across the country, due to a feeling that industrialists were getting rich by treating their employees as quasi indentured servants. The backlash was severe enough that by 1900 both major parties were attacking the industrialists, with Democrats having ties to the unions, and the Republicans led by trust-busting Teddy Roosevelt. (I'm guessing the Chinese authorities are keenly aware of all that history.)

I recently read an article about Foxconn workers threatening mass suicide if conditions don't improve, so it's happening there too.

Eventually they will run out of their supply of peasants fresh off the farm and things will change. Or robots will take over, which happens first is anyone's bet.

There are a few issues at play here.

1) Many of the companies are with working with low profit margins, i.e. the profit margin is <5%. With rising costs in both raw supplies and worker wages + low demand from abroad, many of these companies are being driven out of business due to their decreasing profit margin.

2) Since rising costs are eating into companies' profit margins, many companies are looking at relocating their manufacturing base from China to countries with [even] cheaper manual labor. For example, Foxconn has recently inked a multi-billion w/ Brazilian gov't to produce ipads and apple related products there. Other companies are looking to relocate their manufacturing base to SE asian countries like Vietnam where cheap labor and gov't wiling to bend the rules for FDI are still aplenty.

Like you said. We'll see what happens.

Not arguing with your general point, but I think the Brazil rule was to get around tariffs (35% on 100% imported goods for the Mercosur bloc).

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/13/us-brazil-foxconn-...

If that's the real reason, it seems that Brazil's protectionist tariffs are having their desired effect (forcing more manufacturing to be relocated to Brazil). No idea if they're a net positive for Brazil's economy, but this move will probably be taken as a vindication.

No doubt that's how it shall be taken, but it is not having the desired effect.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/30/foxconns-brazil-ipa...

In my opinion there are some positive effects but overall it's really bad.

As you can see in the link in the sibling comment, the overhead of employing people in Brazil is quite big. Besides, there's also additional overhead due to a myriad of non-labour-related taxes, and living cost and the minimum wage are significantly higher than in China and SE Asia.

So while we do have a large industrial base, it's not like we have factories for every kind of product just because of protectionist tariffs.

That results in the curious situation of having to pay (say) U$1000 in Brazil for some Chinese-made product that can be had for U$500 in the US.

A Brazilian worker earning the minimum wage[1] every month, and considering that there's a whole set of taxes that an employer has to pay for every employee in Brazil, mainly for social security, that probably will turn every Brazilian employee worth almost 2 to 3 Chinese doing the same job.

So that's probably not the case for Foxconn as well.

[1]: Which according to Wikipedia is more in US dollars than what a typical Chinese worker in Shenzen earns in a month, US$ 390.93 versus US$ 208.32

> Disgust comes very quickly in economic history after sweatshops, though. Major industrialization along the lines described here, with mass-scale factories and a "company town" where employees live/work/sleep there, happened in the United States in the 1880s.

...and yet most people are still not sure if their clothing / food / gadget / jewellery was produced ethically.

For sure, there's stuff like fair trade, and "Ethical Consumer", but these are still niche products.

It seems many people are happy to offload those dirty low paid over worked unsafe jobs to other countries.

Economic development doesn't end slavery, enlightenment values do.

It was the intellectual enlightenment that modernized Europe. Slavery is not a transitory "stage" it typically lasts for thousands of years.

>In China, it can be argued that this represents progress over the alternative, which would likely be rural poverty. The alternative might be 16-hour days, without anything resembling a dorm.

Well said. I would highly suggest that people watch the documentary "the last train home" (available on Netflix streaming), where it shows you the mentality of migrant workers who leave rural China for factory jobs in urban China.

It's not so much the midnight wakeup and the rush to accomplish some necessary goal. In the right circumstances, that's actually kind of neat.

But we do have to understand, these employees live their lives in company dormitories, and for this above and beyond effort, are not paid in overtime, but with a biscuit.

Apple (and others) are arbitraging the more humane and worthwhile labor arrangements our parents (and their parents) literally fought for, and died for, to make our working lives much better.

It actually is, pretty despicable, not that foreign workers are given a chance to better their lives, but that the Apple's (and others) decisions work not to raise everyone up, but to bring us all down to a minimal level.

I think all of us are eager to see living and wage conditions rise all around the world. It is the race to the bottom that is disturbing.

If China were to improve its records on the environment, worker rights, and human rights, it sounds (from the article) as if they would still have an advantage in manufacturing that would be pretty hard to overcome by another country.

But I would certainly feel a lot better, and would even be willing to pay a bit more for my products, knowing that the government did indeed enforce similar regulations to what we see in Western countries.

Ironically, the Chinese government, which is still ruled by the "Communist" party, is demonstrating the worst aspects of capitalism -- namely, that profit trumps all other considerations.

Nah. That's the price you pay to make Apple move their factories from the US to China. If not, Apple will make their plants in the US.

As some has mentioned, it's the price you pay for growth when you are poor. I have been there, and done that. Still not rich, but situation improved. I couldn't do it otherwise, and I'm happy I did it and moved forward.

The advantage is partly from having less focus on the good of an individual vs the good of the whole. It looks like there's an inherent cultural aspect to this that exceeds what we've ever seen in "western" cultures, but some of it will almost certainly fall by the wayside as economic development continues, as it did in the west.

The edge will probably be there for generations to come, but I expect the gap to shrink dramatically.

I don't see any indication they aren't paid overtime, and other stories indicate that they are, in fact, paid overtime.

      not paid in overtime, but with a biscuit.-

The article doesn't say that. Work was on, and people were woken up, given a quick supper and the men/women were on to it. That is service.

How is it exactly different from when I'm in on call rotation, phone goes on at night and I have to rush to computer?

The list of things that both you and the person who is roused at midnight both chose:

- The job.

The list of things you get to choose while you're on call and what the person who is roused at midnight did not get to choose:

- Where to live. - What to eat. - What kind of bed in which to sleep. - What type of housing in which to live. - The mode of transportation to and from work. - The environment of living in which to simply exist.

Here in India, being permitted to live on site is considered a perk of employment by many. Among other benefits, if you are a migrant worker, it means you don't need to pay for both your family's housing and your own.

>Is anyone else disgusted by this?

Not me. For these people it represents a step up from the alternatives. And if you somehow force China to meet western labor standards, you're not going to make them better off. The jobs will move to Burma, or Indonesia, or Vietnam, or Guatemala. Then the Chinese factory workers whose condition so disgusts you will lose their 12 hour a day factory jobs and return to working sixteen hour days on the farm.

Keep in mind that it is an American company that these workers are manufacturing products for.

Should we as Americans feel good about ourselves for giving work to overseas workers that is better than their baseline, but still represents shit work that we ourselves would never do?

>Keep in mind that it is an American company that these workers are manufacturing products for.

Keep in mind that the work is not taking place in Cupertino, but rather in places like Longhua. Also keep in mind Apple is a multinational corporation, and that Apple products are sold in places other than the US, and that Apple's international competitors don't pay US wages to manufacture their products.

>Should we as Americans feel good about ourselves for giving work to overseas workers that is better than their baseline, but still represents shit work that we ourselves would never do?

Yes, as a matter of fact. Because this is the way poor people become not-poor people. Economic growth is the basis for improved living standards.

It's not intrinsically shit work. I have worked in industrial factories. They can be good jobs. Obviously they can be crap jobs as well. All depends on what sort of society you want your children to live in.

Agreed. The media is not helping either by framing the issue wrongly. It's not US competitiveness that is the issue here -- it's China's lack of human rights.

This is a somewhat controversial article but it makes a point that China's unfair competitive advantage is its lack of respect for most human rights, IP laws, etc.

http://www.tapsns.com/blog/index.php/2010/01/what-is-china/

EDIT:

Another thing is that going to college is not a fundamental right of a citizen. If you do not score high enough on the NCEE, you are basically slotted for factory work (if your family is not well-off enough to pay full freight at at a European or American institution)...

"Students in the Chinese education system endure six years of elementary school and six years of middle and high school to prepare for what is often the most important turning point of their lives: the National College Entrance Examination. The exam takes place once each year. If student scores are high enough, they might be able to enter one of the few high-ranking Chinese universities in big cities like Beijing or Shanghai. This builds the foundation for good jobs after graduation. And if their English is good enough, they can take the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) or the IELTS (International English Language Teaching System, or the British equivalent of the TOEFL). And last, if their families are financially blessed, they might have a chance to apply to colleges in English-speaking countries such as the USA, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, or New Zealand.

Unfortunately, if their entrance examination scores are below a certain point, the options after high school are limited to obtaining associate’s degrees or starting in extremely low-paying jobs.

For most Chinese students, the only way to a brighter future is to ace every subject in school and to be in extraordinary condition on the three days of the National College Entrance Examination...

Many American students find it hard to understand the Chinese schedule. But we accepted the rigor because competing for the few high-ranking Chinese universities requires a lot of work. Nearly 8.8 million students take the college entrance exam each year, and only about 20,000, or 0.2 percent, make it to the top colleges in China."

http://www.mercurybrief.com/2010/06/chinese-teenagers-stick-...

Reading this, I have to offer an anecdotal (counter?)point. All of the following is true, but is by no means the norm.

My father was born in rural China. He grew up eating roasted grasshoppers. His parents were both teachers; they were proletariats and there was no way to rise up the social ladder (not that there was much of one within thirty miles).

Around fourteen, he realized he was in serious trouble. There was no way out, he was trapped in that village. He decided to start paying attention in school and worked on mathematics problems in his free time. Mathematics problems were all he needed (solutions to them were nice, but not necessary after a few examples). He also worked on a few other subjects, but those were all closely related to mathematics (physics is one, for example).

He did well on the NCEE, and went to TsingHua. After that, he immigrated to the United States.

He maintains that there is no such thing as being "genetically smart". All there is to it is work. He has a brother and a sister; none of them achieved the level of success he did, simply because they didn't practice math problems when they were young.

So yes, you're right when you say "For most Chinese students, the only way to a brighter future is to ace every subject in school". However, contrary to what you make it seem, it isn't impossible or even extremely difficult though; all it requires is determination and work.

Of course, this is anecdotal evidence. It is by no means a key to success in China today.

Also, there may be structural reasons why it can't work for everyone. I imagine that if everyone studied harder, the score needed to go to college would go up.

There is extremely strong evidence for a genetic basis to intelligence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ

Though other factors come into play, environment, education, etc., we are not all gifted with the same faculties, and it is ignorant to claim otherwise.

Not only that - but it is American's companies willingness to exploit those conditions for their own benefit.

Apple cannot make the glass screens or the iPhone in the US because no US contractor can supply those type of conditions.

> Is anyone else disgusted by this? Waking employees during their rest period, not to mention it being after midnight. These poor workers are essentially slaves in all but name.

That's second half of the 19th century western world by all accounts. It's exactly the kind of stuff you find in e.g. Zola's Germinal.

It's even exactly the sort of things related in Marx' Capital, and the very reason for the creation of Communism as an ideology.

Yes, it's quite interesting that the position of the author of the article seems to be that if only the US had hordes of slaves kept captive in slave camps where they can be awakened at midnight, then perhaps we could be more "competitive". You are right to be questioning this as an advantage as opposed to a reason to ban the import of all goods from this slave society and put the "businessmen" that knowledgeably profited from it in prison for crimes against humanity.

Yes, I also read that very paragraph and highlighted it to copy in to a post over here for further discussion (and with much the same conclusion as you). Here were two others from later in the article:

:"The Chinese government had agreed to underwrite costs for numerous industries, and those subsidies had trickled down to the glass-cutting factory. It had a warehouse filled with glass samples available to Apple, free of charge. The owners made engineers available at almost no cost. They had built on-site dormitories so employees would be available 24 hours a day."

Not just slave labour, but Chinese-government subsidised slave labour.

:"The facility has 230,000 employees, many working six days a week, often spending up to 12 hours a day at the plant. Over a quarter of Foxconn’s work force lives in company barracks and many workers earn less than $17 a day."

... no further comment.

China is lifting itself out of poverty and they aim to be the most powerful country in the world, not a cheap labour factory. Meanwhile the US is a rich developed country with over 2 million slave labourers (prisoners) living in dormitories, subject to violence and working for less than a chinese laborer with fewer rights. I would rather buy an iPhone made by aspirational Chinese than victims of the war on drugs. I tend to avoid US products due to a perception that US employees don't get decent wages or health care compared to other developed western democracies.

"I would rather buy an iPhone made by aspirational Chinese than victims of the war on drugs."

One of the weirdest statements on this topic so far, it supports the hypothesis that humans are not rational (and likely are completely f*ing insane) when it comes to arguing theology, philosophy or politics. Let's just take the gloves off (or better, pull out the guns and start shooting) - we're obviously better designed to do that than to come to any reasonable compromise (it is always a compromise, not an agreement) through speech.

P.S. Am reading Maurice Ashley's "England in the Seventeenth Century". That was a period chock full of political/theological/philosophical madness. Threads here show humans remain as "rational" in their thinking as they were then.

Both the book and this topic are a hoot until one realizes that some of those involved were/are in responsible positions. My conclusion so far: Taleb's description of Black Swans is optimistic: we're much more likely to see some civilization-crumbling in our lifetimes that we formerly thought.

It's been a quiet and peaceful ride down the river so far but I'm going to buy a barrel and some tar - I think the roaring sound I hear ahead is a waterfall.

You have to understand that in context.

That $17/day ends up being up to ~$5300/year. The official "absolute poverty" line in China is $90/year. That's not a typo -- $90/year.

When the cost of your meals can be measured in US cents, what constitutes a living wage is vastly different.

slaves aren't paid, though, and these workers are. for me, the saddest thing about those conditions isn't that workers have to endure them, but that they voluntarily endure them. whether it's because either the pay is high enough or the job is better than any other job they can find or a combination of the two, the important thing to realize about these working conditions is that people are fighting to get/keep these jobs because the other jobs are worse. industrialization is messy and horribly exploitative.

Is it that different from getting "pager duty"?

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