Apple and Foxconn win permission for 12-hour shifts for women in India | Hacker News Reader

Apple and Foxconn win permission for 12-hour shifts for women in India

gadgettendency.com

226 pointsthunderbong250 comments

https://nypost.com/2020/12/15/riots-at-apple-plant-in-india-...

this is what apple does. they use their clout, then they turn their back and play ignorant whilst placing unrealistic demands on the subcontractors who then place those demand on the labour.

from: https://www.macrumors.com/2023/02/14/only-half-of-indian-iph...

> 'Apple engineers told that Chinese iPhone suppliers and government officials have a "whatever it takes" approach to win iPhone orders, work was often completed weeks ahead of schedule at "inexplicable speed". In India, [we] are not running at this pace. "There just isn't a sense of urgency," one Apple engineer remarked.'

I like when people use words like inexplicable for things for which they know exactly how it’s achieved, but want to pretend they don’t because the answer is disturbing.

iPhones are not worth that answer. Nor is any other electronic. I wish this was escapable somehow, but my employer literally requires and pays for this equipment. To abstain from employment would be crazy – it wouldn't send a message to Apple. What the hell can someone do?

I think a general strike is desperately needed. Seeing Biden do a complete about face on unions to enrich the robber barons that run domestic rail was the last sign I needed. Unfortunately the people who would benefit the most from striking are those who either drink the propaganda from conservative outlets or are otherwise marginalized. Felons, people on probation, green card workers, the poorly educated, chronically overworked, etc.

Corporate legal requirement to maximize shareholder value makes their behavior gas like, they’ll expand to fill all possible space and permeate any advantageous cracks. It’s counter productive and contrary to reality to pick on any one company for behaving as they’re legally obligated to do. The issue isn’t apple, the issue is governments that allow behavior we can’t accept by corporations. The way to prevent a gas from permeating spaces you don’t want it in is to seal the space, not rage against hydrogen.

have you considered that both state and capital are the problem?

Capital follows the state. The fact that capital also often guides the state is a flaw of the state. Capital is just people doing the job they were hired to do, often in a corporate framework, legally obliged to maximize profit and shareholder value. There’s definitely a feedback cycle, but the source of all control and governance is the guys with the guns and prisons.

edit: sorry, misunderstood implications from your pro state and capital position

Whaa? I’m stating the opposite. I’m saying the state needs to sack up and do it’s job.

> Capital is just people doing the job they were hired to do

No, that's the people that are employed by the capital. If you do entertain this worldview, then at the very least do it correctly.

The few people usually described as capital are the owners of the vast majority of wealth in the developed world.

And they're most assuredly not following the state. They're constantly pushing for unequal legislation and exploit as much as they can get away with. That's how they gain this kind of wealth

You ascribe way too much power to the individuals who have claim to capital vs the organizations that manage it. It’s really common to do so, it’s easier to vilify a person than a process, and conspiracies are really exciting. I’ve worked in the worlds of those that hold claim to capital and I know for a fact that yes they can make decisions given their claim that most people can’t, they are actually less likely to see their decisions happen because it’s carried out through a large organization. They’re also often subject to boards and other control entities. But more than anything, they’re not evil super geniuses. They’re people like you and me that randomly emerged as the richest people on earth through whatever process that selected them - business success, investing, birth. I knew one guy who struggled with profound depression and low self confidence but was the heir to a largely privately held major corporation. He would gain lots of weight and his jacket would rip down the back before he went out to talk to investors and he was so depressed he couldn’t care - he had to have handlers to change his jacket for him. Some are bipolar and their evil conspiracy like behavior is because they can’t control their mania and no one will tell them they’re sick. Etc. So, yeah. I don’t buy that it’s a few people pulling the strings of the world in a nefarious plot to make women in India work 12 hours a day because they hate women in India and want to see them suffer for profit. It’s a set of non human organisms made up of humans making millions of micro decisions at all times towards the goal of maximizing shareholder value. It behaves like a slime mold or amoeba, as I said elsewhere, a gas, and invades all spaces it can that are advantageous to it.

Here’s a concrete example: is Jeff Bezos powerful? Or is Amazon what is powerful? Jeff Bezos doesn’t work at Amazon any more. Is Amazon less powerful? Who is the Jeff Bezos at Amazon now? Andy Jassy? No. Andy is an amazing person, but he doesn’t have the power Jeff had at Amazon. So who is it in your evil capitalist genius rubric that pulls the Amazon strings? Absolutely no one. It pulls its own strings.

You can point fingers at a corporation all you want but that corporation is still made of people making decisions and doing the behaviors

It is. But I assume you work at a corporation, or for a corporation, or have some affiliation with the decisions of a corporation, or have done in the past. Me too. We are all a part of the problem.

I work in academic research, generally speaking the only options for workers is to unionize otherwise they have no say

this is what apple does. they use their clout, then they turn their back and play ignorant whilst placing unrealistic demands on the subcontractors

While making $30 billion in profit for the first quarter of 2023. Apparently, this disappointed Wall Street, because they made $34.6 billion in Q1 2022.

So, time to squeeze the vise on the little people.

Also, they have $165 billion in cash and securities. Maybe they could just physically crush underperforming workers using gold bars.

> vise

Alternative spelling of vice. News to me.

It's the American spelling.

As a American, I write it as vice.

A vice is a bad habit, a vise is a tool that clamps things together.

*in American English. Both are ‘vice’ in English English (UK/NZ/AU) as far as I’m aware.

‘Vice’ in American English, still has alternative meanings, like ‘vice president’.

> ‘Vice’ in American English, still has alternative meanings, like ‘vice president’.

Does that count as English? I though it is borrowed Latin, like de facto, et cetera or per se.

No idea - it may have come to English via French too.

English is a mongrel of a language.

From a brief dip in the multi volume full OED it looks like "Vice Chairman" (etc) came about via vyse | visage | "face" .. as in "This person is a substitute | deputy | "the face" of another person or role"

It's a usage going back to at least 1597 and lost in the fog of time before.

Interesting. It works the same in a most European languages (Vicepresidente, Vice-président, Vizepräsident, Wiceprezydent, Viceprezident, Віцепрезидент, Вице-президент, ...).

> ‘Vice’ in American English, still has alternative meanings, like ‘vice president’.

Why do you think it has "alternative'' meaning ? /s

You had me curious so that's about 3k short tons of gold. Could crush a lot of people. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=165+billion+USD+%2F+%28...

Should be fine as long as the put the nets on the outside of the buildings to catch the jumpers. /s

In addition to the 12 hour shift for all, and night shifts being allowed for women, there is still a 48 hour workweek, and maximum overtime of 145 hours in a 3 month period (an average of one extra 12 hour shift per week). Indian employers are required to pay double for overtime, so this seems mostly like the ability to move to 12x4 instead of 8x6. From an Indian minister:

> “Now, the rule is that workers should work for 48 hours and the aim is to reduce work from six days a week to four or five and in a total week, the work still remains at 48 hours. In the case of those working for 10 hours a day, the workers will work for five days a week and those who work for eight hours a day will work for six days a week,” Ashwathnarayan said.

From https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/other/karnataka-passes-bill-a...

This reminds me of when people in China were expected to work on Saturdays back in 1999. Developing countries often require 48 hours a week as a way of catching up.

1999? This was news in 2019.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system

Jack Ma took some bad rap for promoting it if I remember correctly

Ya, it is still common in some tech companies, but it was ubiquitous in 1999. By the time I started working in China (not for Alibaba) in 2007, it was not a mandatory practice anymore. China had changed a lot in just 8 years.

ugh, really gets to me. What the hell is the point of claiming to be the political inheritors of a proletarian revolution if you're gonna treat workers like that?

A way of "catching up"? Demanding an inhumane amount of work out of people doesn't help those people catch up, it uses up their one and only life to create wealth for a few elites in their country, and shareholders outside their country.

That could be true, but America and Europe did the same thing before they got rich. Isn't it a bit hypocritical to wag our finger at developing countries now for doing the same thing that our countries did?

Can you provide a source for your statement?

https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours

https://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/

https://www.timesizing.com/history-of-the-american-workweek/

and slaves before that and share croppers after slaves.

Even after slavery, the 5/40 didn’t become standard until the 1950s.

I think the mistake you're making is implying that bad working conditions are inherent to a poor nation, and good working conditions are inherent to a rich nation, so the ends (good working conditions in the future) justify the means (bad working conditions now). Might it be possible that america becoming rich and america getting better working conditions were not causally related? It seems to me that better working conditions came out of labor organizing, rather than a natural result of wealth increase.

All countries that have gone through development started with bad conditions that got better, not just America. China is proof of that right now. You could just as easily condemn the people you would otherwise want to help to poverty instead.

It's mainly the country "catching up". One would think development of China helped more than just a "few elites in their country".

The HN headline is incorrect. It’s not “12 hour shift for women”. It’s “12 hour shifts AND night shifts for women”. Night shift were not allowed earlier most likely because of safety reasons considering India’s not so great women safety record. Not saying it’s justified but that was the reason most likely.

That’s just made it even darker. Holy crap.

At the headline itself: only literally. For example, I (and many others in Canada) work graveyard. I only have to work 4 days a week (which is fantastic), and it's apparently echoed in this legislation as it "...limits the maximum workweek to 48 hours". Graveyard can limit ones health, but I think it gets a bad rap, and could wax poetic about other reasons I prefer it.

Sent during day two of my long weekend :)

I believe you but I don't fully understand this. Can anyone suggest an accurate, neutral title, preferably using a representative phrase* from the article? If so, we can edit it.

* https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

The title of the referenced article itself should be good enough "Apple and Foxconn win permission for 12-hour shifts and night shifts for women at iPhone production in India". The original poster omitted the words "and night shifts" for some reason.

OP here. Tried to add that but HN has a limit to the length of the title and couldn't fit it.

HN has an 80 char limit, which made that impossible (as thunderbong said).

Labor regulations in India are at state-level. Minimum wages, max hours per day, max hours per week/period, duration of breaks, spacing of breaks if overtime is involved, number of consecutive days of work (eg: 7th day must be off, if for some reason the worker must be scheduled for the 7th day, then policies for dayoffs/compensatory offs required), overtime pay rules, hours of operation and what is considered night shift, supervisory requirements (eg: need a night shift woman manager if utilizing women in night shifts), transportation and security requirements and the list goes on.

At some level, the states do compete on setting labor rules policies to appear business-friendly. The article mentions three southern states where Apple's plants are operating. You can be sure that the rules vary in slightly different ways between the states.

Again, the statutory rules are governed by different laws -- eg: Shops and Establishments Act vs. Factories Act. Historically, they have been different. For eg: A software company or contact center might be governed by the former while a manufacturing plant would be governed by the latter.

I have very little understanding of India. While reading the article, it sounds like the changes to Indian labor law would enable more hours to be worked. However, I don't understand whether this is a good or bad thing for the average worker (and/or woman) in India.

Can someone provide more insight? Thanks.

I don’t know the finer details, but if they are proportionately paid more this is definitely a big step in the right direction for women workers.

In general, women participation in workforce is outright abysmal in India. Hopefully this will be on of the many small steps towards addressing that.

Can you elaborate what precisely is the issue with low female participation in a country's workforce?

The fact that half your workforce doesn't have an opportunity to contribute to the country's growth?

I mean, cut the US or Europe's output by 25-30% (to match India's low female participation) and you're basically talking about eliminating decades of growth. People would be so much poorer and worse off.

And that's just at the national level. There are a whole lot of other issues at the individual level, and the fact that it indicates a lack of freedom and opportunity for nearly half the country's population.

Is a nations prosperity only related to its nominal growth and GDP?

Then why don't we send more children to work as well to increase "growth" a bit further?

Are there no tradeoffs involved? Like what it does to a country's demographics and families?

Are there other ways to increase GDP without forcing women into the workforce - with potentially better tradeoffs?

Especially when a bunch of that extra income just goes to childcare and services to make up for having less time to manage the house. And then much of the rest is eaten in competition for housing, with prices increased by all the extra money from those second incomes.

I'm skeptical that we'd be much worse off, in actual experienced fact, if the norm were single-income households. I wouldn't be surprised if measures of contentment or happiness actually increased, overall.

Any ideas on how to ensure women retain financial independence?

Not at a policy level, really. Women could prefer stay-at-home spouses, to protect their own financial independence, though, even in a world so extremely into single-income households that such arrangements were somehow legally mandated (which isn't workable and probably isn't desirable anyway, but, even in that extreme, there'd be options, provided regulations weren't, themselves, sexist).

It's all hypothetical, anyway. We're not going back to that. Outside chance a few other countries do (some are still much farther that direction than we are) but the US never will, barring tyrannical theocracy or something like that. I do think we're buying rather less happiness than one might hope, for all this extra paid labor, but I also doubt that's a solvable problem, realistically.

Independence from whom?

From their husbands? Only to be dependent on some stranger boss instead?

What reason is there to assume spousal abuse and abuse from a boss is comparable in either frequency or severity?

Not to mention that one relationship seems much harder to get out of than another.

You are surely making great points. Some people obsessed with mindless economic growth don't think there is anything beyond it. With full support of media, intelligentsia and economists there is this myth created where anyone not doing a paid job for external entity is an inferior person or oppressed person.

I have read endless stories in Indian newspapers where a person hauling their four member family on an underpowered scooter to a McDonalds meal is a aspiring middle class. On the other hand if a family is having a hot meal at home on weekend it is obviously because women of house is oppressed to stay at home and cook.

You do realize that prior to women entering the workforce a man, and his partner and three kids, working a full time factory job could lead a better lifestyle than two l5 engineers in CA can today, right?

Forgot the /s..

You do realize that women did not have as much freedom under that arrangement?

Also, the demand for living in California drastically increased relative to supply of housing, but that is a different point.

Are you seriously suggesting that in order for women to have personal autonomy the quality of life for everyone needs to decrease? Really ripped your mask off with this statement.

California housing is so fucked because of ladder pullers and obstructionists. That has nothing to do with women’s rights.

So they’re at home contributing to their families growth instead of their countries numbers - sounds like they are doing it right.

Are you claiming that you in the state should be the ones deciding where women place should be, not the women in question?

It makes it harder for women who want to participate to participate. Simple as that.

Women aren't commodities whose freedoms should be limited relative to men because of what it might do to "demographics and families."

Women aren't slaves to be tied to home. They have agency and should be awarded the same legal freedoms as men.

It’s not that simple though. Being a house slave is bad, being a factory slave is too and that’s what others here are saying this is.

Perhaps this isn’t actual progress?

It is progress relative to current position, where men have the advantage. It would be better if regulation was equalized for both in the other direction, but that did not happen.

That's an issue that needs to be tackled, certainly, but "solving" the issue by limiting women's rights relative to men and stripping them of their choices is horrific.

> if they are proportionately paid more

Apple and Foxconn wants to pay them less (in particular, pay less overtime)

It's terrible for the workers, because currently they get overtime pay beyond 9 hours, this law effectively reduces overtime by 3 hours. Women also play a bigger role in running the household, and with 12-hour shifts plus commute time, this must take a big toll on the family.

These are - relatively - good jobs, right?

I don’t think these jobs are making them rich. No need to relativize a socially backward policy.

Not particularly.

You're earning around $2.5k a year (1.8 lpa) which isn't the most competitive even in most of India tbh, especially when factoring CoL in Karnataka. If this was Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, or Harit Pradesh/Western UP (regions of India with the right mix of supply chain and cheap labor), it might fly with migrants from Bihar, Purvanchal, and the Tribal Belt, but definetly not in KN.

You can easily earn that much in farming, or via alternative unskilled labor with better work hours (eg. street food stalls, MGNREGA, etc).

1.8 lpa is better than what many "uskilled" labourers make even in Karnataka. 1.1 to 1.44 lpa (9k to 12k a month) is what the cleaners, for example, makes in a college where someone I know studies. Daily wage labourers make a similar amount.

True! But cleaners and mazdoori labourers make that much for better hours.

Also the 1.8lpa figure is for their "Graduate Engineering Trainee" - for assembly Foxconn began leveraging Engineering graduates to work in assembly. So this isn't an unskilled job, and even then pay is on the lower end for a fresher.

That's why there was a violent bandh a couple years ago at a Foxconn supplier named Winstron - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NqvT8LYj2Ic - bad pay and bad hours pissed workers off.

They would be better if each person worked fewer hours so more people could have jobs and demand higher pay.

Well family is the last thing on mind for Economic planners and political class. They have this cartoonish belief that they can beat China by having worse labor laws on workers' welfare.

> they have this cartoonish belief that they can beat China by having worse labor laws on workers' welfare.

Is it really cartoonish when everyone apparently agrees that China became what it is today by having worse labour laws then the rest of the world?

Plenty of countries had even worse labour laws. Worse labour laws than, say, the USA and Western Europe, sure, but India is already there.

outside of factories, indian offices/businesses/shops/schools/hospitals no one uses hourly wages. Its just "you work for us 6 days a week, 9/(now 12) hours a day and you get x amount, are you okay with that or we have 120 people outside willing to do this work, quick.

The part of the reason is the population is so much and there are so little positions so people are forced to take up whatever is infront of them.

Personally, i run a small office with a dozen odd employees. For the female staff, our timings are 10-5 x 6 days a week. I personally work 10-9x6+sunday regularly so yeah. The situation is not 'that' terrible with regards to women workforce. If you can do the work and not be bogged down by too much 'home work' you can work as long as you like because people are willing to give out work.

I don't own a big factory or a 1000 person business so i can't say about those things but in big cities like mumbai/delhi, you normally have women AND men working 2 jobs just to make ends meet.

You can work 10-4 if you like, there are jobs like that but your pay will get decreased accordingly (without overt hourly calculation)(like we dont have concept of billable hours for example)

Well, Apple/Foxconn gonna do Apple/Foxconn. But India really needs to look at growing unemployment problem for its massive population. Working hours need to be set like 30-40h a week. It helps nation (not necessarily companies) in two ways:

1) Employees to not get overworked as a rule. 2) Companies can hire more employees and run more shifts if they need 24/7 work.

Right now there are huge number of young people sitting at home for years unable to find any employment and other few are being overworked.

If Foxconn is going to follow the campus model, which is likely because Apple manufacturing cities draws labour from across country, that means building infra to house 2x-3x more workers, especially during surge production for new launches. Reality is it's a low margin business and Taiwanese companies have decades learning to squeeze blood from stone, hence their reputation of being slave drivers across Asia for a reason. Of course your system is good for India, but these companies are only in India because it's good for them.

Agree on all points. I feel in larger picture it is not just that China is geopolitical risk out of nowhere. The demographics of China is changing and they themselves do not want 12 hour slave labor type of jobs as much as they would in last few decades.

With India's still growing population and unimaginative political class the only model to follow is Chinese model of past. And these Foxconn factories are example of that.

I try not to judge these jobs by first world standards.

What I don't understand is why a company can use $2 an hour labor and then sell a product for $1K.

If I ran the US, I would put heavy tariffs on goods that companies try to outsource for cheap labor.

This would encourage them to use technology and robotics to produce domestically.

Tariffs would increase the cost of these outrageously profitable products decreasing their market reducing sales. All things capitalists hate. Lofty goals like safe working conditions will always be fought against by capitalists who, by design of their own, are completely disconnected from the reality their greed creates.

There are no alternative economic systems without questionable environmental and safety records. Any production system will be designed to maximize outputs at the quality the customer requires while minimizing process inputs. Whatever psychological and social framework is used organize companies, governments and individuals, the individual workers will still be performing the same assembly processes on the factory floor.

That's a nonsensical statement. Slavery, feudalism, and neoliberal states all attempt to produce as efficiently as possible, but they're obviously quite different...

The internal mechanisms are quite different, yes, however, the inputs and outputs are for the sake of this discussion, identical. The people, regardless of the system, would probably be performing the same types of operations. I’m not sure you read my original point as I intended it to be understood. A worker making tires under authoritarian communism is still going to be making tires under democratic capitalism - the differences in this worker’s experience may not be the result of these political and economic systems but rather policy at the corporate, departmental or state level which are not unique or exclusive to a particular government or economy. Any system will self propagate at the expense of other systems and individuals like workers.

the state works with capital, not against it.

It's not judging the job by "first world standards" to say that nobody can work 12 hours a day (6 days a week) and have a life outside of work.

If I'm following the numbers correctly it seems to functionally come out at max of ~60h/week where ~12 of that would be at an overtime rate. Not sure what that compares to before but it sounds like an increase in both base and overtime limits. Interesting the night shift wasn't allowed for women before.

Previous was max shift of 9 hours and max overtime of 75 hours per three months. Now it is 12 hour shifts with 145 hours of overtime per three months.

So yeah, this comes at 5x12 shifts.

A point of comparison - in Norway employers need special dispensation to have workers work more than 100 hours overtime per year (with max 40 regular hours/week and five weeks paid vacation time).

I mean worker rights in Scandinavian countries are rather the exception.

Scandinavia, especially Denmark, are known for having few labor laws. That's the point of the Danish model: few workers' rights

True, but Norway is an oil nation.

Denmark, Sweden and a bunch other countries in Europe that have similar rules (probably lower pay though...) are not.

I believe that after a period of strong Norwegian krone - we're now back to normal, and pay is generally better in Sweden and Denmark.

yeah, interesting. Sweden is pretty close to Norway but Denmark is considerably ahead of Norway. Doesn't seem that a high GDP correlates than much with higher salaries in Norway's case (unlike in Switzerland)

So is Qatar. (apparently 48 hour week / 8 hour day - two weeks of vacation - overtime to be compensated 25% - unsure about limits?)

> The legislation limits the maximum workweek to 48 hours, but also increases the number of overtime allowed to 145 over a three-month period from the previous 75 hours.

A 5x12 shift would require 1/5 of the time to be classified as overtime. Indian labour laws seem to state that overtime must be paid at 2x regular wages.

Almost seems like it would make sense to hire more people and have them work 4x12?

It depends on the benefits, taxes, training they pay for the incremental employees if it's worth it to plan for overtime or hire more people. Foxconn is a massive operation making a tiny profit margin thru contract manufacturing so if they're doing it this way, it probably makes sense for them.

My mom works 12 hour shifts as a CNC machinist in the United States. Is there some point to this article or is it just neat to know?

Yes, most modern countries have between 35 and 40 hour work weeks.

I don't believe that "most modern countries" don't make exceptions for work that requires it or critical fields. In fact, those of us who've worked non-traditional shifts usually get some perk out of it. When I worked 12 hour shifts I'd work 3-5 days in a row, then get the same amount of days off. To this day 5 days on 5 days off is the best schedule I've ever had. I also had a friend working in mines up north in Canada. He'd work on-shift for weeks at a time and then get 3 weeks off with a flight paid anywhere he wants in the world. Is Canada not a modern country?

Is there anything about sitting in a line manufacturing electronics that requires 12 hours shifts?

Profit

And it isn't for the peons doing all the work...

Well……. The peons need to feed their kids and send them to school and shelter their families. So, yes, actually it is for them too. 12 hour shift jobs usually pay better and have longer contiguous time off. But, yes, these are all happy side effects. Profit doesn’t give a shit, and if it could find a way to get the same for less it would.

I never worked in a line, but have seen a lot of antiwork discussions, and also the discussions on commute ... I know 12 hour shifts are arduous, but you do 12 hour shifts for 4 days then on one hand you reduce 1-2 days of commute, and on the other hand maybe you can commute at better commute hours.

India has a 48 hour work week which is unrelated to this article.

Most modern "developed" countries. 48 hour standard work weeks are pretty standard for developing countries.

How many of those shifts does she work in a week?

Not sure, but I assume 40 hours total. It looks like India has a nationwide maximum of 48 hours before overtime. So they have a whole extra day's work than we do in the US.

That is now for both men and women.

The contract team I used to work with would work Mon-Sat. That then changed to Mon-Fri + alternate Sats, but over a decade ago they simply became Mon-Fri.

So at least in tech, it seems the norm is becoming to work 40 hr days as well.

A lot of hospitals (and Tesla plants) have four 12 hour days, then 3 days off (the next batch switches to nights though). Works neatly to around 40 hour weeks, but very hard to match to school schedules, plus switching days and nights weekly is tough.

Does she work more than 40 hours / week? If so, she very likely gets paid 1.5x for any hours worked above 40.

Do you think Apple and Foxconn are paying Indian women time and a half for hours above 40?

That said, I'm nearly 100% certain that these women would rather have these jobs working in a clean facility than the alternative.

They have 48 h weeks and the ability to add an extra 50 hours per month.

There's a name for places with a 60 hour work week: they are called sweat shops.

Someone tell the people working at startups.

That's very different: startupers are generally capitalists, they either own the company or have vigorous stock compensation. They don't rent their work to scrape a meager existence, they compound their capital with the expectation of a large payoff and generally have the option of a job.

Although it's not great to need to work that much, you can make absolute bank doing overtime.

My mom's a nurse and occasionally gets called in out of the blue if there's shortages. If she agrees, she can get x2 to sometimes even x3 depending on what time and day of the year it is.

As much of a drag it can be getting woken up to work, she still gets excited when it happens because of how good the pay is.

12 hour shifts, and night shifts for anything but emergency services are inhumane.

https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/18/us-workers-n...

You might want to look into the overall workinig, compensation and living standards in these countries. Especially for the kinds of plants that Apple runs. And how they might be just a bit ...those of a skilled machinist in the U.S.

That might have something to do with the article's point. And would be "neat" for you to know as well.

I will get my mom to send me a picture of the production floor of her factory, you get me a picture of an Indian Foxconn plant, and we will see how different they truly are.

All the comments hinge on whether it is fundamentally wrong or abusive for people to have to work 12-hour shifts or significantly more than the current American 40-hour per week standard.

It's not the absolute amount of work people have to do to survive that is fundamentally wrong. If everyone commenting here got ship wrecked on a desert island together and we worked 100 hour weeks and had children work too in order to survive, it is obviously not fundamentally wrong.

What's fundamentally wrong is that we effectively have a world-wide caste system. People in the upper castes live in better environments with better laws, consume a far greater share of the planet's resources per-capita, don't have to work as much, get paid more and own more of the planet per-capita, and on top of all that they leverage an economic system that is able to provide them with even more wealth (super computers in their pockets, hand-picked strawberries) and the freedom to work less and play more (hire nannies, maids and janitors, have food delivered) for incredibly cheap by coercing a race to the bottom for those in the bottom castes, who have to work harder, longer and in jobs upper caste people would consider nightmares and would need expensive therapists to recover from.

I hate Elon Musk and Twitter is a hellscape, but if you used it for one thing, it should be to follow United Farmworker's account for a daily reminder of what your upper caste life is built upon.

https://twitter.com/UFWupdates

Somehow, Apple will have a moving video about their human centered values at their next product launch and there won't be a dry eye in the room.

It's sickening how effective it is.

Yes these are the kinds of people in Silicon Valley that like to lecture everybody else on how to think and behave.

They make it up with those watch armbands and some women presenters, it’s fine!

"we are diverse and inclusive". That's all it takes for western consumers to forget about the unethical and immoral way these corporations make money and feel good about themselves. 20 years ago it was "we're green", in 20 years it will be something else.

To be fair, this does seem like a step forward wrt gender equality.

It’s always race to the bottom for workers when multiple states are fighting for iPhone factory. They drop the labor protections, drop minimum wages($2-3 per day), increase working hours. It’s just a win for Apple and nobody else(maybe politicians). All this for a bigger screen to watch TikTok on. What a sad time we live in.

I don't get this. Why push your work force like this? It's clearly very bad for the workers. And also for the factory, surely having 3 shifts is more efficient because your workers are not as fatigued so will work faster with fewer mistakes?

For 24x7 production operations, 12 hour shifts make a lot of sense. You work 12 hours, hand off your role to the next incoming shift, and 12 hours later they hand off back to you. You do this for 3 days one week, 4 days the next. 4 hours of OT every day. I did this for 2 years at an LSI fab in Colorado Springs and it was great.

Why would this make more sense than three 8 hour shifts per day, for anybody but the employer?

I don't think it is the rational to come into a situation and assume that everyone but you is wrong and incapable of judging what is best for them.

in India there are hundreds of millions of workers that would love to work 12 hours shifts for more pay and a better quality of life. I'm sure there are advantages to the factory as well.

The reason it's wrong is that if you work for 12 hours per day, and sleep for 8 hours per day, that leaves you with only 4 hours per day for living your ONE AND ONLY life

The problem is you don't know what the next best alternative is for that person.

Maybe that option is working 18 hours getting fucked in a brothel and sleeping 6 hours.

Maybe that option is working 8 hours, but watching your children starve to death.

If people are lining up for these jobs, it is clearly better than their next best option in their mind. Who are you to say they are wrong?

The next best option for that person doesn’t impact the morality of the people making massive profits off them working their life away. They may not have another option because apple needs to add another percentage point to their profit margins, not because that’s the natural state of the world.

So, no, they are definitely not wrong. But anybody who is profiting off their choice while living in comfort is wrong beyond belief.

You see this in hospitals too and I believe the rational there is that you want to reduce the number of shift changes. In a manufacturing context where you might need to shut down the line in order to change shifts it might be a big money saver to only have to do that twice a day even if you're paying out overtime.

Except that rationale has time and time again shown itself to be horseshit, and doctors would be better off with more shifts (so they weren't overtired like half of their shift and therefore making mistakes) and better processes for hand offs.

It only makes medical error and accidents in US hospitals the 3rd leading cause of death, estimated at more than 250,000 deaths per year. But the hedge fund managing hospitals around the country save so much money by not having to hire sufficient staff and have reasonable shift turn-overs they all got bonuses, so it's all good.

I'm not talking about doctor's here there scheduling is basically hazing, I was talking about nurses where they have to do a complicated patient hand off every time the shift changes and each time they do it there is a chance some ball can drop. My kid has had some extended stays in the hospital, so I can say as somebody with skin in the game that 12 hour shifts for nurses have at least a plausible benefit.

When workers work longer hours, employers can lower wages due to higher labor supply.

I don't think this is meaningfully impacting the labor Supply in India

Simple, because it is cheaper for companies. Less logistics to take care of. As for worker welfare they wouldn't give two hoots, if they are fatigued and produce defective parts they can be fired and replaced.

https://archive.ph/FOBB2, since the original link doesn't render the text for me for some odd reason.

So from what I can tell, it sounds like this is a win for women in India. They were restricted from working as long as men (and still are?) so they couldn't make as much money as men.

I mostly post this because my initial reaction was "oh they made it easier to abuse them!" but it sounds like that's not actually the case, which is a bit of a relief.

Or maybe the men are already being abused? Perhaps if there were working hour rules for everyone, wages would have to come up?

The US has working hour regulations, but I don't hear the workers complain that they are being stifled from working as much as the want.

What's inherently abusive about a 12 hour work day?

And you don't here complaints in the US because the US does not limit the amount of hours you can work in a day. It just says that companies must provide an unpaid break for more than 5 consecutive hours of work.

If you want to dedicate your life completely to work, go ahead, but others maybe just want to work normal 9-5 jobs and have some free time for other activities

That's exactly how it is. Nobody requires you to have 12 hour availability. It's just allowed now for women like it has been for men.

I’m no expert on this but there’s a long history in the fight for an 8 hour work day. Many people (myself included) think we should move to even shorter workdays, or shorter work weeks.

I like the slogan they had: “8 hours for sleep, 8 hours for work, 8 hours for what we will”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day

Nobody is forcing anybody to work 12 hours a day?

Many employers effectively force exempt employees to work 12 hour days.

Then don't take a salary. Nobody is forcing you to work for a nice salary. If you want to be paid by the hour so that every hour is accounted for then go for it.

Of course, in practice that is not a possibility for most people. You can't just choose to work hourly if nobody is willing to hire you on these terms. Without regulation the balance of power is strongly in the hands of capital and inevitably leads to employers working employees to death. We have plenty of examples of this in our past.

You can go work at McDonalds right now for $20/hr where I live. You can structure your work as a consultant and bill hourly. No you can't walk into a company that is looking for a salaried employee and tell them you're going to work hourly (I mean you can try, it might work). But you have plenty of options and there's plenty of work out there.

I don’t think they were complaining about being paid per hour or not, just the expectation in many salaried jobs you work arbitrarily long hours in a competition with the nerd next to you for how much you can sacrifice for your employer.

I later in my career learned you can actually invert it by just being really effective in a shorter number of hours and work 6 hours a day and just leave the nerd next to you to expire from burnout. But it helps being later in my career and knowing how to be more effective in a shorter time.

Except most tech and quant jobs I’ve had where 80 hour work weeks are expected, but not required. It’s really only required if you want to keep your job.

There's stories and there's reality. I've seen 60 hour weeks occasionally but not 80 and not de-facto required. Most places have decent managers that understand work/life balance. Find one that does.

My story comes from my life experiences starting at SGI, Netscape, Wall Street, etc over 30 years. What you deem reality i extrapolate from my reality as a recent emergent reality based on broad social trends that may or may not stick. I think the work life balance stuff is really recent and coincides with employers trying to convince people they’re not really evil and part of the recent wave of liberal humanism in western societies. It’s a great trend. But it’s neither concrete reality nor proven to be permanent.

> Nobody is forcing anybody to work 12 hours a day?

Do you have a source for this claim? Normally when I hear about workers at factories like this, they are treated like shit in all kinds of ways, given few other options, physically abused, and strongly coerced in to the longest shifts legally possible, or longer.

See this documentary about global garment workers. Hopefully Foxconn is better, but we can't just assume people are not being abused.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxFwA-jw3X4

I didn't say don't take abuse seriously. I questioned whether allowing a 12 hour workday implies abuse.

Dcow says this in a discussion about a company that has to put suicide nets in their factories to prevent their workers from killing themselves.

this was in china and not a thing anymore

Oh, all right then!

It's unfortunate that economics is pushing many people to work 12 hours a day, leaving them with little time for anything else. These long work hours can take a toll on both physical and mental health, and many people are struggling to make ends meet despite their efforts.

In countries like India, unemployment is a significant challenge, and for those who do have jobs, the wages are often insufficient to afford basic necessities like housing, education, and healthcare. This situation can be especially difficult for families with children who are trying to provide a good life for them.

This comment lacks either empathy or ignorance.

The most obvious problem is that you make workers compete against each other in a race to the bottom, with fewer and fewer protections, and employers select among the workers for those most willing to endure the most demanding hardship.

So because some people don't want to work more than 8 hours a day we must prevent everybody from working more than 8 hours a day because it will inevitably spiral into a race to the bottom? That's rhetorically pretty loose. Do we have that problem in the US? No. I don't believe this race to the bottom actually exists. Companies need all sorts of labor. Diversity of labor is good.

>No. I don't believe this race to the bottom actually exists.

There are literally companies using child labor in the US RIGHT NOW, and a huge argument against increasing minimum wage is that "they are jobs for teens and teens don't need that much money" so desperate (or privileged enough in their position to not need to demand more) people are depressing wages in the US currently.

You are 100% spot on. States are weakening worker and child protection laws around the country. Destroying oversight of child protection: no need to check that kids are at least 16 before they are hired in Arkansas. Ohio Reps want to let 14 year olds work year round until 9pm each day. Iowa wants to let 14 year olds work in meatpacking plants AND indemnify companies from liability if the child is injured or killed at work, isn't that just grand?

Minnesota trails with a bill to let 16 year olds work on construction sites. Do I hear 14? 13? How much for 12? Why any age at all? If a baby can swing a hammer, then what right does the man in Washington have to stop him? Is that baby not entitled to the sweat of his brow? I say YES! And if that baby should fall off a ladder dragging a square of tiles behind him, should the company not be protected from liability for it was that baby's own fault? I say YES, most emphatically! /s

>Do we have that problem in the US?

We did, until we established labor laws preventing it.

> And you don't here complaints in the US because the US does not limit the amount of hours you can work in a day.

The media may not amplify the complaints but the complaints are very real.

> It just says that companies must provide an unpaid break for more than 5 consecutive hours of work.

US law does not say that.

What does it say?

US Law does not mandate breaks at all.

Are there not working rule limitations for everyone? It sounds like this will effectively limit them to a 4 day work week if they're working 12 hour shifts, barring overtime.

>The state of Karnataka passed an amendment to the laws allowing 12-hour shifts and night shifts for women. Women dominate electronics production lines in parts of Asia, but are underrepresented in the Indian workforce. The legislation limits the maximum workweek to 48 hours, but also increases the number of overtime allowed to 145 over a three-month period from the previous 75 hours.

I think the main takeaway is that India (well, in the state of Karnataka, population 64M) now allows 60 hour work weeks for non-salaried people of both genders. Not as an exception, but as an average.

And that Apple was behind this. It's pretty hard to view this as a positive change.

Ding ding ding! Crazy people don't get this and defend this as totally normal ignoring this company has actual suicide prevention nets to prevent their employees from killing themselves because the companies employment practices at that friggen aweful!

I have no idea what those things have to do with what I just wrote but I love your enthusiasm.

> The law makes Karnataka one of the most flexible places to work in India

This is quite a take. The flexibility seems here is meant to be in favour of employers, not employees who are in a situation to work 12-hour shifts. In that case, the word exploitable would be more appropriate.

> be very efficient in terms of increasing productivity

If the increasing length of a shift is seen as productivity improvement, I wonder what the next step is going to be for them. Stagnating wages in an inflationary environment seems like a good candidate.

I once had a typing job working 3 days at 12 hours each with 4 days off. Though by the third day it was kinda rough, it was still the greatest arrangement I've ever had.

This makes sense, since in general India is known for it's lack of available work force, so having people being able to work more overtime is the most logical thing.

/sarcasm

Yes, let's take these high repetitive stress injury rate jobs and tack an extra four hours on. Of course the workers will do it, they don't have a choice. But their body's won't for long. But that's a sacrifice Apples willing to make for the convenience of less production line handoffs.

As someone who has been at the bottom and had very unfavorable work conditions forced on me because companies could F! Apple, do better, be better.

Encouraging women to work, and go work more hours has to be one of the biggest swindles in modern society. It leads to less time to focus on children, puts more pressure on families, and gives more influence to outside factors like government, media, and businesses on children, instead of parents.

Frankly I’m waiting for when UBI can be more disbursed and people can work for useful things as they please without the millstone at their necks.

There is no article, just a single line of text as a headline.

For comparison: That is 4-6h less per day than at the shop which produced the jeans you are wearing.

I read TFA and didn't notice an answer to my question below.

Do men already have this permission? If so, I don't see why women shouldn't.

This article[1] has a bit more detail. It mentions:

> The maximum work hours for workers in Karnataka industries will be 12 hours in a day but capped at the same 48-hour work week. This means workers can put in 4-day or 5-day work weeks while more flexibility is available for the management of daily production lines.

> Finally, women will now be allowed to work night shifts – from 7pm to 6am.

[1] https://www.india-briefing.com/news/karnataka-india-work-hou...

Thank you. This is the type of info I was expecting in TFA.

Shouldn't be too hard with a good reason. Ever noticed how men and women aren't exactly the same?

They aren't exactly the same. They are very different. I am far from a copypasta liberal politics idiot. A quick look at my comment history would have indicated this quite clearly to you.

Please explain to me why women shouldn't be allowed to work 12 hour days? I eagerly await your response.

Gut Reaction: In what ways is this different from woman nurses in American hospitals regularly working 12-hour (or longer) shifts?

Nurses take care of people

But yeah we also have 12 hours shift in the west in some industries, I don't feel like it's a goal to strive for though

Perhaps it's not worse, but why do we reflexively set the bar at the worst working conditions we can think of?

If tens (or hundreds?) of thousands of rather well-paid American professionals are also working in the conditions mentioned (12-hour shifts), then I assume that the headline is "anything that says 'Apple'" clickbait.

Or a symptom of sheltered & pampered western office workers - who at times seem to view normal, physical work as a human rights violation.

I used to do 12 hour shifts in EMS, where men and women are on the same shift system, so no issue with the hours. But factory work (which I've also done, 8 hour shifts) is constantly intense across the whole shift and I wouldn't want to do it for 12 hours.

Not trying to justify the 12 hour shift, but I imagine work at an electronics factory would be less stressful than your typical factory job.

All production line work is intense. You're going to be doing the same small task, to quota, the whole shift.

My mother did twelve-hour shifts as a nurse because that was her preference. There were plenty of opportunities for more traditional shifts but because most nursing jobs with twelve-hour shifts are working seven days straight and then have seven days off, she liked it better having those long stretches of uninterrupted days off when she could pursue her personal interests. My siblings and I adapted pretty quickly and learned to hold anything that wasn't an emergency or needed immediate attention until her days off.

We (the US) are in the top 10 when it comes to hours worked / overworked. Nurses are probably within the top 10 overworked professions within the US. High rates of burnout and stress.

> High rates of burnout and stress.

Not to mention an elevated rate of medical errors caused by tired and overworked hospital staff.

Well, there’s no shift manager walking the hallways in hospitals with clubs threatening you to work faster or suffer punishment. And the nurses can quit without fear of violence or imprisonment.

Gut Reaction - How short of shifts would make those things okay? 10 hour? 8 hour? 6 hour?

You know that I never said those things were OK. So maybe think for a moment before posting gut reactions.

My point is that the horrible sorts of working conditions which you mention are orthogonal to the shift length. EDIT: So if they are doing the things you mention (or exposing workers to asbestos, or paying starvation wages, or whatever), then that would be the real problem, which needs to be treated as such.

Yes it's just as bad. Long shifts are hard on the mind and body regardless of profession

The username fits the sentiment

Hospitals are a little different in that society has more of an incentive for longer shifts since shift changes end up killing people as the knowledge transfer isn't perfect from one shift to the next. That incentive makes it reasonable to treat healthcare workers a little differently from a legal perspective when compared with jobs with less societal benefit like making iPhones.

The shift change problem can be eliminated by having shifts overlap, hospitals just don't want to hire more staff to make that happen.

Exactly; this idea that we HAVE to overwork our medical professionals is just outdated, and especially since COVID, actively detrimental to our healthcare systems.

Hire more people, pay them more, and give them time off so they don't burn out or get sick themselves.

> Hire more people

Sure. Where are all of these medical professionals who are looking for work?

A reasonable percentage may consist of immigrants who qualify to practice in their native countries but do not in America. I think that’s a thing.

Fun fact, the American Medical Association artificially limits the number of doctors that can go through residency programs each year. The limit is actually lower than the number of medical school graduates, forcing some small number of new doctors to leave the country because they aren't allowed to become licensed.

We should be aggressively recruiting and training folks to go into the medical professions, and paying for their training so you don't have to go into huge debt to become a doctor.

An overlap improves things slightly, but it isn't a magic solution. If it was that easy to transfer knowledge during an overlap, then they could also document that knowledge for the next shift without any overlap. And if your suggestion really just amounts to hiring more staff improves patient outcomes, I don't think anyone would disagree with you.

Do they work 12 hours every day (mon-fri), every week?

Vote with your dollars, people. Don't buy Apple and Foxconn products if you care about the wellbeing of workers.

What’s the next best alternative?

True. We wouldn’t want women to be able to earn as much as men in India. It’s important to take a principled stand against gender parity and punish these guys with your wallet.

We don't want people crippled from abusive levels of hours doing a task at high risk of repetitive stress injury just so that Apple doesn't have to deal with shift changes. They are trading lifetime quality of life issues for their workers (who don't have much other option) for a reduction in shift changes. As someone whose been at the bottom and seen as throway sorting trash at a recycling facility and whose hands still often ache from that job, F! Apple!

Sorry, but men were already allowed to work these hours and shifts. It was women who weren’t. The shifts still conform to standard work week in India (48 hours). 12 hour shifts are not uncommon anywhere, and they come with generally better pay and more contiguous time off, which can be more meaningful to some people than more time off in a single day. I feel like perhaps the clickbait headline worked and it may be there’s not much of a story here other than women being granted equal footing with men in the labor market.

Hmmm there's a logical fallacy in there just waiting to be unearthed... I feel it...

Is your argument seriously that it’s unfair that women aren’t overworked in India

My argument is that it’s unfair that there’s one set of rules for men and one for women. “Overworked” is qualitative call. 4 days at 12 hours is what we are talking about here, which is not an uncommon labor structure in the west or east and has a lot of advantages to the worker. It’s not 12 hours a day 7 days a week. It’s 48 hours a week, a standard work week in India. Those shifts also pay better, and have more contiguous time off. Why, on the basis of their gender, were women not allowed to compete for those jobs against men?

Note absolutely no one is forcing anyone to do absolutely anything. It’s just opening the possibility for women to hold a job any man can have. Who are you to tell them they’re wrong for wanting it and should enjoy their station as a woman?

I am not saying what should and shouldn't be done - your points about it being unequal between men and women is totally valid. I am simply saying that pretending that this isn't coercive labor is so silly - apple clearly wins out here in terms of benefits, and they are couching it in an equality argument when , in reality, their bottom line and labor allocation is all that matters to them.

Wait what? Because of 12 hour shifts? Should I not use hospitals either? Or are you referring to other working conditions unrelated to 12 hour shifts?

Is someone doing the same task 60 times a minute in the hospital that entire shift minus a lunch break? Do assembly line workers for Apple get treated the same as hospital workers? Not eve close! Do hospital workers have to ask permission to go to the bathroom? Do hospitals have suicide nets to prevent their workers from trying to kill themselves because they have lost all hope? You are talking two very different things.

How about we also address the issue of hospital working conditions? Nurses shouldn't be forced to work more than an 8-hour shift. While there may be some issues with knowledge transfer during shift changes, there are solutions available that may increase costs but are necessary to prioritize the well-being of healthcare workers.

In the case of Apple, it appears they are being driven by greed, and the transfer of knowledge to work in their factories is generally unnecessary. I require people to not support greedy corporation.

Yes cause other major manufacturers or not exactly the same or (more usually) worse (because the press/public pays much more attention to Apple than to anyone else)

I sleep so much better with my Samsung

"Among the most alarming information were reports that miscarriage “is very normal.” As one worker said, “It is very normal if they are young. If they are pregnant … for the first trimester it is very difficult, they miscarry a lot.”

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/03/14/your-cool-...

So don't buy any electronics? It's pretty hard to avoid Foxconn they are used by almost everyone.

The sad thing is, there are no other alternatives. I want to move to another platform, but they are littered with tracking and nonsensical ads. Additionally, the hardware is generally abysmal.

The good thing is that Microsoft made Windows Phone, and it was somewhat flawless. Unfortunately, they later killed it :(.

What a sad world we live in where the ability to work for 12 hours straight is seen as a good thing.

meanwhile here we are discussing 4-days work week

I know right? I find it strange how the bulk of the HN crowd seems to applaud this.

12 hour average job in India is not like your comfy WFH Silicon Valley BS Jira ticket work.

"Yayy women can finally be away from darned prison that we call home for 12 hours a day and even at night to do some bullshit job to help some idiot get a little richer yasss let's celebrate wohoo"

I take back my other comment. I don't eagerly await any responses from you. Your comments are childish.

Get off HN and go enjoy your 20s. If by chance you are older than that, grow up.

No one is forcing anyone to work 12 hour days. It's about allowing it should a woman choose to accept the position.

I get your angle now. Trad nonsense.

Hopefully he isn't working in India on a 13 hour schedule lest he shall be able to enjoy his 20s. Just pay the worker a fair wage and they won't be pressured or expected to work these long shifts (which is what we all know is REALLY going on.) Putting pressure on The Corporation is asking too much, right?

Yes, corporations should pay a fair wage. This is about gender parity in government policy.

I will entertain arguments that no one should be allowed to work 12 hours, or that both men and women can. If you look at the other comment he made, you'll see he's arguing for neither of those.

And why should men have to work longer than women?

I'm working a 12 hour shift right now

12-hour shifts

and also

nightshifts for women

Fuck you Capitalism. I hate you.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com