BS: Everything will be made by Foxconn and s

12 Sep 10 - 04:58 PM (#2985284)
Subject: BS: Everything will be made by Foxconn and s
From: Ebbie

Still wonder why the Chinese are gaining on the west? This long article, although it doesn't talk about things we don't already know or guess, is damning. iPhones, Sony PlayStations, HP and Dell computers — and lots more - are made under these same conditions, all in the pursuit of obscene profits.

The closest thing I can think of in the American workplace - currently - is at Vail, Colorado, where I understand they have erected dormitories for the workers that serve the monied - because the workers cannot afford to live in town otherwise.

I think that the road we are on leads to a great and permanent divide between the Have Nots and the Haves or, as Dubya would put it, the Haves and the Have Mores, and the Have Nots.

The Man Who Builds Our Toys, and Lots More

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12 Sep 10 - 06:14 PM (#2985346)
Subject: RE: BS: Everything will be made by Foxconn and s
From: Q (Frank Staplin)

Suicide rates are higher in many countries.
Foxconn factories, roughly 10 suicides per 900,000 employees, is very low.

China as a whole- 28/100,000 population
UK- 24/100,000 (low).
Belarus 73/100,000 (highest)
Russia- 46/100,000
Belgium- 38/100,000
U. S. - 22/100,000
Canada- 23/100,000
France- 35/100,000
Japan- 50/100,000
(WHO, 2008 figures)

The reporter just wanted something to add shock value to his story.
The real story is the entrepreneurship and productivity of China.

Many workers in the factories come from rural China. Most factories have the holiday set at the same time, thus there was chaos a year or two ago when train travel was disrupted by storms.

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12 Sep 10 - 07:46 PM (#2985405)
Subject: RE: BS: Everything will be made by Foxconn and s
From: Ebbie

If you'll notice, Q, I never mentioned the suicides. What struck me and what I'm remarking upon is the factory campus living, the long hours and the small pay.

While the owner earns BILLIONS of dollars.

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12 Sep 10 - 08:03 PM (#2985411)
Subject: RE: BS: Everything will be made by Foxconn and s
From: Jack Campin

Dormitory accommodation is where the bothy ballads of Scotland come from and where the IWW did most of its organizing in the US 100 years ago. Satoshi Kamata described how it worked for Toyota in Japan in the 1970s in "Japan in the Passing Lane".

It's not a Chinese innovation, it's how capitalism works.

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12 Sep 10 - 08:35 PM (#2985424)
Subject: RE: BS: Everything will be made by Foxconn and s
From: Q (Frank Staplin)

Remember the shirtwaist fire and similar incidents? The workers crowded in the factories, then returning to sleep in crowded rat-infested tenements. Both England and the U. S. went through that.

The Chinese worker dormitories are clean and safe, according to the journalists who have visited them, they will never experience the squalor of the European-North American experience. The workers are receiving a wage that will help the family who remains behind in the village. In many families the money goes toward the children's education.
Not conditions we would want to experience, but for them better than they had.

Somewhere I have a book on conditions in Edinburgh in the 19th c., and a reform group going through the streets with nets to catch urchins to clean and school them.

Banff and Lake Louise in Alberta compare to Vail, but even fewer accommodations for workers in the hotels, restaurants and shops. Lake Louise has only the dormitories for the workers, many of them students and temporary.
In all three places, few workers are there for any length of time.

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12 Sep 10 - 09:06 PM (#2985443)
Subject: RE: BS: Everything will be made by Foxconn and s
From: Ebbie

There is something very offensive to me about dormitory living in this context. I realize that we in the US are not 'classless' but we like to pretend that we are and this goes completely against the grain.


This article presents itself a bit less than cheerful:

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-02/foxconn-workers-in-china-say-meaningless-life-sparks-suicides.html

And I don't agree that this is capitalism in action. If it were, I would want nothing to do with it. Capitalism, perhaps- but only as it was in the US with the robber barons before the unions came in. I would be ashamed of my country if I thought that is the norm that we should accept.

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12 Sep 10 - 10:57 PM (#2985487)
Subject: RE: BS: Everything will be made by Foxconn and s
From: The Fooles Troupe

Didn't Ford or Edison have worker accommodation?

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13 Sep 10 - 01:11 AM (#2985523)
Subject: RE: BS: Everything will be made by Foxconn and s
From: Ebbie

Not so far as I know.

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13 Sep 10 - 01:44 AM (#2985529)
Subject: RE: BS: Everything will be made by Foxconn and s
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity

Ebbers: "Not so far as I know."

When did that ever stop you???

GfS

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13 Sep 10 - 04:34 AM (#2985570)
Subject: RE: BS: Everything will be made by Foxconn and s
From: The Fooles Troupe

From Wiki

Henry Ford was a pioneer of "welfare capitalism", designed to improve the lot of his workers and especially to reduce the heavy turnover that had many departments hiring 300 men per year to fill 100 slots. Efficiency meant hiring and keeping the best workers.[23]

Ford announced his $5-per-day program on January 5, 1914. The revolutionary program called for a raise in minimum daily pay from $2.34 to $5 for qualifying workers. It also set a new, reduced workweek, although the details vary in different accounts. Ford and Crowther in 1922 described it as six 8-hour days, giving a 48-hour week,[24] while in 1926 they described it as five 8-hour days, giving a 40-hour week.[25] (Apparently the program started with Saturdays as workdays and sometime later it was changed to a day off.) Ford says that with this voluntary change, labor turnover in his plants went from huge to so small that he stopped bothering to measure it.[26]

When Ford started the 40-hour work week and a minimum wage, he was criticized by other industrialists and by Wall Street. He proved, however, that paying people more would enable Ford workers to afford the cars they were producing and be good for the economy. Ford explained the change in part of the "Wages" chapter of My Life and Work.[27] He labeled the increased compensation as profit-sharing rather than wages.

The profit-sharing was offered to employees who had worked at the company for six months or more, and, importantly, conducted their lives in a manner of which Ford's "Social Department" approved. They frowned on heavy drinking, gambling, and what might today be called "deadbeat dads". The Social Department used 50 investigators, plus support staff, to maintain employee standards; a large percentage of workers were able to qualify for this "profit-sharing."

Ford's incursion into his employees' private lives was highly controversial, and he soon backed off from the most intrusive aspects. By the time he wrote his 1922 memoir, he spoke of the Social Department and of the private conditions for profit-sharing in the past tense, and admitted that "paternalism has no place in industry. Welfare work that consists in prying into employees' private concerns is out of date. Men need counsel and men need help, oftentimes special help; and all this ought to be rendered for decency's sake. But the broad workable plan of investment and participation will do more to solidify industry and strengthen organization than will any social work on the outside. Without changing the principle we have changed the method of payment."[28]

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13 Sep 10 - 11:11 AM (#2985748)
Subject: RE: BS: Everything will be made by Foxconn and s
From: Bill D

The problem with modern technology is that gradually, those lower classes are seeing what the middle classes have. (They already knew what the rich had, and weren't really expecting to get THAT.) Now, there are SO many interesting things that 'seem' almost attainable, and even as many are living in dorms and working for minimum (or below) wages, there is widespread discontent.
Increased immigration is one facet of this growing issue.


CHORUS
How 'ya gonna keep 'em, down on the farm,
After they've seen Pa-ree?
How 'ya gonna keep 'em away from Broad-way;
Jazzin' a-'round',
And paintin' the town?
How 'ya gonna keep 'em away from harm?
That's a mistery;
They'll never want to see a rake or plow,
And who the deuce can parleyvous a cow?
How 'ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm,
After they've seen Paree?

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13 Sep 10 - 11:31 AM (#2985764)
Subject: RE: BS: Everything will be made by Foxconn and s
From: Ebbie

Thanks for the Wiki article about Ford, Fooles. Note, however, that not only did he NOT build dormitories for his workers to live in, he paid a baseline wage that would be much more in today's dollars than corporate America is willing to have paid in their name and he brought their working hours way below what they are requiring today.

As for saying - and believing - that these workers in China, Viet Nam or wherever, are making more money than they would do if the company were not there, that is begging the question.

These are human beings that are being treated like cattle - in our name - Whatever is wrong with bringing the pay more into the proportionate level that is being charged at the outlet? What would be wrong with cutting the hours of the workers, most of whom are standing for 12 hours a day? Why is it acceptable to us to let a worker be paid pennies for a product that puts $100 a clip into a non-production person's pocket?

My sister in law worked for years in a garment factory - Pendleton Woolen Mills, in Portland, Oregon - in less than optimum conditions.   The room temperature, from all those clothes presses, would soar over 100 degrees, but it paid well, it had a good vacation plan and the company was well aware that regulators kept a close eye on conditions.

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13 Sep 10 - 01:52 PM (#2985901)
Subject: RE: BS: Everything will be made by Foxconn and s
From: Q (Frank Staplin)

Ebbie, you misunderstand the dormitory usage in China. Many businesses and factories there use them to house workers who cannot afford to live in the big cities because of high costs for private rooms and apartments, which have no vacancies although new ones go up all the time.
The workers are mostly from rural areas, and may quit at any time. They come, make money for the folks at home to which they will return, or to save for an apartment, which they need in order to get married and raise a child if they stay in the urban environment.

Some forward-looking businesses in the U. S. and UK had dormitories or subsidized housing in the past, but the situation in China, where a small town or fields may become a an urban center of millions within 10-20 years, is unprecedented.

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13 Sep 10 - 02:05 PM (#2985914)
Subject: RE: BS: Everything will be made by Foxconn and s
From: olddude

Special on TV on CNN a week ago, they are forced to work 35 hour shifts many die at the work station from exhaustion ... they get paid 31 cents per hour .. so they can make the electronics we are addicted to

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13 Sep 10 - 02:40 PM (#2985942)
Subject: RE: BS: Everything will be made by Foxconn and s
From: Q (Frank Staplin)

Olddude, the toy factories, many with illegal workplaces, are the ones with bad conditions, which are being rapidly improved as China restricts laissez faire procedures which bring condemnation and refusal of products from the West.

Foxconn, subsidiary of the Taiwan company, Hon Hai Precision, is raising wages at their factories. The basic salary at Foxconn is about $130 per month, which with the subsidized yuan, is not a bad wage in China.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37398510
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An article on the toy factories, with their 13-15 hour days here:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/mar2006/toys-m25.shtml
This is a rather old socialist worker paper which deliberately paints the worst picture.

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13 Sep 10 - 03:38 PM (#2985987)
Subject: RE: BS: Everything will be made by Foxconn and s
From: olddude

Q
on CNN a week ago some folks went into one of their plants and recorded video .. including the workers talking about 31 cents per hour and 35 hour shifts. They talked about one man who tried to organize and got 12 years. Another who ended up dead .. Their report was about how the public sees one thing but reality it is far worse then we know.

I pray you are the one that is right my dear friend. I pray you are right and not them

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13 Sep 10 - 03:40 PM (#2985988)
Subject: RE: BS: Everything will be made by Foxconn and s
From: olddude

business week

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13 Sep 10 - 03:42 PM (#2985992)
Subject: RE: BS: Everything will be made by Foxconn and s
From: olddude

please read

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13 Sep 10 - 03:45 PM (#2985995)
Subject: RE: BS: Everything will be made by Foxconn and s
From: olddude

In a nutshell it appears to depend on the factory itself. Some seem to be much better than others. The report on TV was about one of the worst. All in all the Chinese are where we were during the first part of the 20th century when it was profit, child labor, terrible working conditions .. they have not yet addressed this and I hope they do soon

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13 Sep 10 - 03:50 PM (#2986000)
Subject: RE: BS: Everything will be made by Foxconn and s
From: olddude

working conditions

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13 Sep 10 - 04:02 PM (#2986013)
Subject: RE: BS: Everything will be made by Foxconn and s
From: Bill D

The conditions in those factories is intolerable. Just because 'most' workers do not commit suicide, this does not indicate it's all ok! We do not NEED many of the items they are selling... at least not in the quantities we consume them. There needs to be fewer people (both in China and here) and better jobs and live for them.

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13 Sep 10 - 04:19 PM (#2986025)
Subject: RE: BS: Everything will be made by Foxconn and s
From: Q (Frank Staplin)

None of us could survive under their factory working conditions, but China is an evolving country, and conditions are improving at their own pace.
Conditions were worse in UK and N. Am. factories at the same stage of development, 100-125 years ago.

Stop purchases and close the factories and achieve the alternative of starvation.

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