Foxconn May Lose Workers After Cutting Work Hours

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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Foxconn is back in the news again, but this time it’s for doing the right thing. Foxconn has cut workers hours per an agreement with a labor group, but it seems that Foxconn is damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Workers are now resigning for lack of hours.

"A lot of workers have clearly come to Shenzhen to make as much money as they can in as short a period as they can, and overtime hours are very important in that calculation,"
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Honestly seems most of them want to work as much as they do for the wages they get.
 
Looks like all the foxconn employees will be "taking to the wind" and will have a "falling out" with the company. :D

But in all seriousness unions suck.
 
I think this is where the NGOs get it wrong in China ... they should be pushing for voluntary overtime and some high level cutoff where safety becomes an issue ... rather than trying to make China conform to western standards (which don't always interest them)
 
mannyman said:
Looks like all the foxconn employees will be "taking to the wind" and will have a "falling out" with the company. :D

But in all seriousness unions suck.
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This has nothing to do with unions ... this is the NGOs imposing a western standard on the OEM customers of Foxconn ... who are now forcing Foxconn to meet these standards ... no union activity here at all (although I suspect that the western country unions might be pushing the NGOs for these standards possibly)
 
kbrickley said:
I think this is where the NGOs get it wrong in China ... they should be pushing for voluntary overtime and some high level cutoff where safety becomes an issue ... rather than trying to make China conform to western standards (which don't always interest them)
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That's exactly what they're doing, making Foxconn not REQUIRE overtime, but also having a hard cutoff at a certain point. It's not a really low cutoff in world standards, but it looks like it to some of the employees.

Some people take these jobs because they want to do good for their family, but don't care about themselves. They don't want personal time, they just want to make as much money as fast as they can.

A middle ground would be a cut off point on overtime, where an employee has to ask specifically for more time, have a physician check them out with a quick exam to make sure they're not going to hurt themself, and have them sign a waiver and let them do it. Make the checkup mandatory after a few months to renew their overtime waiver. It's not healthy, but like the people in the US who have 3 jobs, sometimes they just need to do whatever they can to make ends meet.
 
ballistic90 said:
That's exactly what they're doing, making Foxconn not REQUIRE overtime, but also having a hard cutoff at a certain point. It's not a really low cutoff in world standards, but it looks like it to some of the employees.
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Actually the standard the NGO have been pushing is extremely low (less than 50 hours total per week) ... in the US I don't think safety requirements limit overtime until somewhere between 80 and 100 hours total per week ... I think the cutoff should be no more than 16 hours per day (a double shift) and no more than 6 consecutive days (at least one mandatory day off) ... that should keep the workers happy ... but there is no way the NGOs would support that

Ultimately the solution to this problem is one neither the Chinese government nor the companies want to try ... there is reason that overtime isn't extensively used in the US (except for professionals who aren't payed hourly) and that is the pay rules ... with time and a half and double time rules it becomes very expensive to use too much overtime in the US ... If China would allow that rule there, overtime would be greatly reduced (much of the Chinese overtime is paid as straight time) ... but some businesses would move to another country so that rule won't happen there anytime soon
 
Yay for arbitrary limits that some workers clearly don't want.

We're from the NGOs, we're help to help.
 
Something not being discussed it what employees would actually do with this 'time off' other then stare into space. Foxconn and indeed many of the Chinese 'factory cities' are not day jobs with long hours, they are self contained living environments with closely guarded access in pursuit of a germ free environment (a sick worker taken off the line is a liability, a sick worker who doesn't want to lose a days pay and so doesn't report their illness infects the whole line).

You wake up in your dorm with the dozen other workers in that room, you shower and eat in communal areas, you go to work, and that's pretty much all there is. Access to family and friends is limited (inmates at US prisons can have better visiting privileges) and while there are a few basic 'recreation' areas they tend to be minimal and designed to control symptoms instead of actually improving quality of life; one example is an area with dummies and bats so that the workers will work out their frustration on them instead of staging strikes, suicides or fights with the guards.

In this kind of environment having extra free time becomes a negative. They have nothing to do, no freedom to go as they please and are not earning any money which makes this free time feel like time spent in a prison.
 
This is why we in the west need to stop sticking our noses into China's business and applying our western standards to everything. It's one thing when an oppressed group is crying out for help, but it's quite another when we start telling otherwise content Chinese workers that they can't work so many hours.

Giving people help they don't want is annoying, and sometimes insulting.
 
ballistic90 said:
They could offer the workers a bit more money. Might be too crazy an idea, though.
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When they do that the workers will take the extra money but still want overtime. It's been tried at a lot of factories in China. The factory workers there are often really poor people working to send money back home to their families so all they want to do when they aren't sleeping is work and make as much money for the family as possible.

There was a time, long ago, when the US workers had that same sort of work ethic. Then some companies took advantage of it and started requiring crazy work hours and that's how we got unions and all the good and bad things that came with them.
 
bbqrooster said:
Foxconn (Hon Hai Precision Industry, stock symbol 2317.TW) TTM net profit margin is 2.19%. My God, that's way too high. Got to shrink that. :rolleyes:
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lol didn't think about looking it up. I was thinking about apple when i made the comment though =P

Apple Profit Margin:25.19% for June 30, 2012

Looks like i was right in my assumption.
 
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